Originally posted by Driline I disagree. I have both premium lenses and kits lenses to compare. The premium lenses have much better contrast, color, and clarity compared to the kit lenses. I don't even use my premium lenses much for shorter DOF. It's all about the image quality.
I chose A and E for the best image quality. Seeing that they are the DA* more expensive lenses I'm not surprised.
I have to admit here that I didn't find the DA* to perform any better: 50-135 had chromatic aberations the others didn't have while the DA16-50 was soft everywere, even hint of the issue as websize... To me, it may be a case were sample variation are more impact than the actual lens model.
As for colors and rendering on the scene, I didn't notice huge differences among lenses on the scene to be honest.
I tend to choose lenses for the quality of their rendering, but here, it was not really a factor for me.
And anyway, the lenses I tend to favor for their great rendering are not especially DA* zooms but more the ltds. In particular FA ones and even some F & FA primes. To my taste, my sample of DA50-135 didn't hold a candle to my sample of FA77 while few lens manage the contrast, dynamic range and flare resist of the DA15 or DA35ltd... The DA15, you even see the different at time directly in the view finder. Again the 50-135 doesn't manage to approach them. But for that last part, as a portrait lens, this is likely not the objective.