Originally posted by CarlJF You're difficult to follow... Have you noticed that the Canon and Nikon lenses you gave as references in your first post cost $1800 and $2400 ? But you find that the equivalent $1100 Pentax lens is too costly and isn't even worth renting for 100$ ? And that you hope to find the same level of performance in a 40$ lens ?
Are we to understand that your complain isn't that Pentax doesn't make 2.8 lenses but rather is that Pentax doesn't sell you for $200 what Canon and Nikon sell you for $2000 ?
Not hard to follow at all if you listen instead of trying to assign positions and box me into something easier to attack and write off than listen to.
Here's a start to finish walk through of my thoughts if it's too difficult to follow the thread or OP:
I know exactly what the Canikon glass costs. Where's the Pentax equivalent? It doesn't exist. Pentax has a $1100 option whose specs read the same, but rendering isn't even in the same universe, let alone ballpark. That's not an acceptable alternative, especially for $1100. I don't know who would pay $1100 for flat, kit lens rendering just to get f2.8. If they wanted to sell it as a fast kit lens upgrade for $500, whose images would be indistinguishable from a cheap Sigma of the same price, I'd think about it. But for $1100 I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. BUT, if they wanted to actually offer a revamped FA* 28-70 or redesigned 24-70 that renders as well as it's Canikon competition, I'd absolutely pay $1900 for it, because this focal range at f2.8 is worth investing in IF the lens produces nice images.
I've already found a superior level of rendering performance to the DFA 24-70 from not a $40 lens, but a $25 lens. On a crop sensor, just about any image taken with the F 35-70 looks better than the DFA 24-70, and anyone can go see this for themselves after about ten minutes on Flickr. But what the F lacks is a constant 2.8 (sometimes I shoot indoors without flash, every little bit helps) and more range on the wide end (35mm isn't much to work with on APS)... which brings us to the FA* 28-70 f2.8 which checks all those boxes and, most importantly, maintains great rendering - hence this thread.
This lens is obviously out of production and clean examples are difficult to find. So here I am trying to discover why Pentax hasn't made an updated version of this lens (with nice rendering, not flat, lifeless rendering) or made a dedicated APS lens with the same qualities. Maybe the DA* 16-50 is that lens, but as zjacreman pointed out, the vast majority of the pictures taken with it aren't doing it justice if that's the case.
What's funny to me about this thread and a lot of the reactions to it is that a brand known for its outstanding rendering with the Limited, *, and A/M glass has a bunch of users basically saying "yea who cares if it's lifeless, it's really sharp, you're just too picky". Who here actually bought a Pentax to use lifeless, "but it's sharp" glass?
---------- Post added 01-30-18 at 01:32 PM ----------
Originally posted by zjacreman "Shut up and be grateful that this lens you don't want is half the price of its competitors!" LOL.
Hahhaha didn't even see this before basically saying the exact same thing above.