Originally posted by mbukal I enjoy K1 with silver FA 80-320 / 4,5-5,6
That's was my original choice for a cheap compact telephoto zoom for the K-1, and I even bid on one on ebay. But then I looked at some images from the FA-J 75-300 on pentaxphotogallery.com and was surprised by brightness and vividness of the colors that images from the 75-300 manifested. I looked at FA-J images on flicker and found the same thing: surprisingly good color and contrast for a cheap old lens designed for film cameras. For all their optical deficiencies, the FA-J series lenses produce beautiful, vivid color --- better, as far as I can tell, than any of the other old consumer grade AF zooms from the nineties (with the possible exception of the slower aperture version of the FA 100-300). The main weaknesses of the FA-J series involve wide open sharpness (this 75-300 is particularly weak in this area) and sharpness away from the center (the FA-J lens is particularly weak away from the center in the 200 to 300 range). Since I bought the lens solely for landscape work, I can often work around these limitations. I would not, however, recommend this lens to those wishing to photograph objects (people, critters, statues, etc.) at a distance. For that, the FA 80-320 would probably be a better choice.
Originally posted by niblue As an alternative to the FA-J 75-300 I've had good results using a Sigma APO 70-300.
Probably a fine choice as well, but I prefer Pentax colors.