[Andrea K]

[...wonderful post...]

By the end, I was feeling a strong urge to buy an FA31 by the end of the talk. Perhaps I can justify it to myself one day.

Never mind, you can live also without the FA31








And no, you're not wearing 3d glasses

---

Last edited by Andrea K; 11-25-2019 at 06:26 AM.

[bdery]

well

what is it say they - you keep looking and you might find what you are looking for

I found a FA 77 Limited being sold by a member in the Marketplace at a price I decided I could accept

Black, made in Japan, with the original box, caps and pouch and the pouch has gold lettering

should be here Wednesday

Welcome to the club! We have cookies

[microlight]

My computer also has cookies! Not as tasty as the club's though...

[normhead]

Unique approach to design and evaluation
As they developed the lenses, they were advised by a famous photographer, the late Shoji Otake. The common practice at the time was to use to use computer aided design and evaluate using test charts. They rejected that methodology for the Limited lenses and instead used a painstaking method of human evaluation of prints. This is understandably a very slow way of developing lenses.

"Lenses for the way people take pictures, not for the test charts."

A concept every other Camera company and their followers (and it sounds like half of Pentax) couldn't wrap their head's around. It is still being manufactured by the same archaic process used to achieve that effect, yet here we are 20 years later, still in production. Sometimes everyone else is in error, those who think different are right. It happens.

[aslyfox]

Welcome to the club! We have cookies

no one mentioned any cookies when I posted about acquiring the FA 43 [ post # 8 ]

are they just for the folks with the FA 77 or those who have 2 of the three FA Limiteds

[bdery]

no one mentioned any cookies when I posted about acquiring the FA 43 [ post # 8 ]

are they just for the folks with the FA 77 or those who have 2 of the three FA Limiteds

The jar might have been empty at the time. Don't worry, things will be fine...

[barondla]

Thanks for posting this information. Just added the 43 to complete my 3 amigos collection. It stays on the K-1. I'm glad these lenses won out over the doubters at Pentax and have been such a success. They do render subjects with magic.
Thanks,
barondla

[Sperdynamite]

What a great post! I've sold my K-1 II recently, but not my MZ-S, LX, 43mm, and 31mm. So I've been enjoying shooting my two FA Limiteds on film. Man they really sing in a way I never felt they did on the K-1. I can shoot even the 43 wide open and never want for more sharpness or detail. The bokeh is perfect, and the contrast is just right. Similarly the 31 has a color rendering that reminds me of the Zeiss classic (PK/ZF) lenses I used to enjoy so much. Luckily the FA Limiteds don't have Zeiss price tags!

[bdery]

What a great post! I've sold my K-1 II recently, but not my MZ-S, LX, 43mm, and 31mm. So I've been enjoying shooting my two FA Limiteds on film. Man they really sing in a way I never felt they did on the K-1. I can shoot even the 43 wide open and never want for more sharpness or detail. The bokeh is perfect, and the contrast is just right. Similarly the 31 has a color rendering that reminds me of the Zeiss classic (PK/ZF) lenses I used to enjoy so much. Luckily the FA Limiteds don't have Zeiss price tags!

Interesting that you feel they perform better on film than on the K-1. Maybe it's a matter of resolution? Their optical properties are intrinsic and independent from the sensor/film, but film does not gather light in exactly the same way as a sensor.

[y0chang]

Interesting that you feel they perform better on film than on the K-1. Maybe it's a matter of resolution? Their optical properties are intrinsic and independent from the sensor/film, but film does not gather light in exactly the same way as a sensor.

Digital sensors have micro lenses that gather light at oblique angles. Film lenses are not optimized for these micro lenses means that there is a loss of resolution and vignetting.

Leica has struggled with this issue since the light angles of their rangefinder lenses hit the sensor at crazy angles due to the short registration distance.

LEICA Barnack Berek Blog: THE FUTURE OF SENSOR TECHNOLOGY AT LEICA

Also it was mentioned that the FA limiteds were designed and tweaked by painstakingly examining images that were made on film. This is contrast to the usual computer-assisted optical design method. That means they were never tested for Digital.

[normhead]

Digital sensors have micro lenses that gather light at oblique angles. Film lenses are not optimized for these micro lenses means that there is a loss of resolution and vignetting.

Leica has struggled with this issue since the light angles of their rangefinder lenses hit the sensor at crazy angles due to the short registration distance.

LEICA Barnack Berek Blog: THE FUTURE OF SENSOR TECHNOLOGY AT LEICA

Also it was mentioned that the FA limiteds were designed and tweaked by painstakingly examining images that were made on film. This is contrast to the usual computer-assisted optical design method. That means they were never tested for Digital.

I was thinking the same thing. That doesn't mean that they aren't still better on digital if you are making prints, but most of my images are viewed on a 55" 4k TV. So neither my input device nor my output device was used in the design criteria.

So I wonder if the criteria still hold up. I've never seen any quantifiable data suggesting film and digital sensors have to be different. This is as far as I know an un-researched area of knowledge, at least in terms of publicly available documents. I wonder if anyone will ever again use this design process, or if remnants of this process still linger at Pentax.

The common practice of releasingf specs based on analysis of the design by a computers certainly would suggest not. It would suggest they aren't even doing testing on the actual product, but using numbers of un-known reliability. After all, most of us don't care what the theoretical possibilities are, we are more concerned with the performance of the finished product.

That being said, those of us who use film area lenses have to be sensitive to conditions that might cause purple fringing, which apparently was not an issue on film.

All of my film era lenses purple fringe more than my more modern designs.

[luftfluss]

A concept every other Camera company and their followers (and it sounds like half of Pentax) couldn't wrap their head's around.

Leica, and their followers, frequently make the argument that their lenses are "making pictures" and not test charts.

It is still being manufactured by the same archaic process used to achieve that effect, yet here we are 20 years later, still in production. Sometimes everyone else is in error, those who think different are right. It happens.

More often, everyone is "right", but tribalism precludes people from accepting it.

[aslyfox]

. .. . That means they were never tested for Digital.

I guess that depends on what you mean by " tested ", at least for the FA 77

DA 70mm vs FA 77mm Limited
Comparison: Introduction

Read more at: DA 70mm vs FA 77mm Limited Review - Comparison: Introduction | PentaxForums.com Reviews

[y0chang]

I guess that depends on what you mean by " tested ", at least for the FA 77




Read more at: DA 70mm vs FA 77mm Limited Review - Comparison: Introduction | PentaxForums.com Reviews

Tested by Pentax during the design process of the lens. I love my FA 77mm and FA 31mm...but I think of them as lenses that create unique rendering rather than some number on a test chart, which is what Pentax designed them for.

[aslyfox]

Welcome to the club! We have cookies

The jar might have been empty at the time. Don't worry, things will be fine...

My SMC Pentax-FA 77mm F1.8 arrived today

Your latest acquisition - PentaxForums.com

where are the cookies ?