[onggie]

So I am currently in Japan and the whole time I was wanting to make a visit to Map Camera. As I wanted to travel light, I brought my DA 35 and DA 50. I'm currently sporting a K-3 and found the 50mm way to narrow for what I needed, so I just kept the 35mm on the whole time. While I did a lot of reading as to whether I wanted to invest in a Sigma 35mm Art or the FA 31mm. I weighed up all the pros and cons and then finally got to Map Camera. Let me just say OMG the FA 31mm is incredible and the price I bought it for was great too (nearly half price). For someone who is super amature in photography, I never really could grasp the difference in lens quality. And while I only have the on screen display to see the quality, you can see it already.

I can now see the magic pixie dust of the FA lenses.

[Rondec]

I don't find the DFA70-200 as an especially interresting lens. Performance was the only criteria and the focal range is an easy one. There no bad 70-200 f/2.8. I don't think that lens bring more performance per kg than the competition.

If the 70-200 achieved its performance at 800g then it would be an interresting design and a game changer and I would agree with you.

Not sure about your criteria. The DFA 70-200 is sharp from wide open and performs well throughout its range. Part of my (personal) criteria is that a lens perform well on a K-1, which rules out most of the DA lenses. Most of the FA limiteds are good, but have quite a bit of purple fringing and have weak borders on full frame wide open. The DFA 100 macro fringes quite a bit too, but is remarkably sharp, even wide open.

I will freely admit that I haven't used a lot of the past lenses like the FA * primes and zooms, but for the lenses currently in the Pentax catalog, the DFA 70-200 stands out as one of the better lenses.

[Nicolas06]

Not sure about your criteria. The DFA 70-200 is sharp from wide open and performs well throughout its range. Part of my (personal) criteria is that a lens perform well on a K-1, which rules out most of the DA lenses. Most of the FA limiteds are good, but have quite a bit of purple fringing and have weak borders on full frame wide open. The DFA 100 macro fringes quite a bit too, but is remarkably sharp, even wide open.

I will freely admit that I haven't used a lot of the past lenses like the FA * primes and zooms, but for the lenses currently in the Pentax catalog, the DFA 70-200 stands out as one of the better lenses.

My criteria is as light and small as possible while remaining ergonomic and keeping good enough picture quality.

The DFA*70-200 size is far past the optimal ergonomic size and also far past what is necessary in term of quality to get the shot. As such it far from the best compromize for me, it is overdesigned making it bulkier and more expensive for no reason.

The ideal to cover basically the range would be something like an A7RII (that now sell for similar price as a K1) with a non existing but quite possible to design 50-135 f/2.8-4 The lens wouldn't need to be more than 10-11cm long and the whole wouldn't weight more than 1.1-1.2kg. For when prioritizing dof/quality I'd use the lens in FF mode, and when prioritizing reach, I'd crop to APSC (18MP) or m4/3 (10mp) size.

But actually I'd just more likely find myself satified with two primes like FA77 + F135 and use APSC and that what I have

[IgorZ]

Where are the DA lenses?

They are there. 35 limited made it the top 10...