[Quagga]

Morning all.

I am now 4 days into my ownership of a K5ii with 18-55 kit lens. It's my first Pentax (apart from a 6x7 many years ago), having come from years of Canons and, more recently, Sony. One or two little questions:

Clearly the kit lens is never going to do justice to the camera, so I've been making my eyes bleed and my brain fry attempting to identify my future lens direction. I'm probably going to start with the little Pentax smc DA 40mm f/2.8 Limited. The focal length is spot on for my areas of interest, and I'm not too worried about zoom. Question : am I going to see a marked improvement in sharpness? Or just some minor improvement? What do people generally think of this lens?

Meanwhile, as I say, it's just the kit lens. I've noticed that on zooming, the lens barrel grows and shrinks, and is furthest retracted into the lens body at 35mm. Does this imply in any way that perhaps 35mm is the "best" focal length for the lens? In a similar vein, the MFT program line provides an f/7.1 aperture, so I suppose that's probably the finest aperture the lens offers?

Well we had a spot of patchy sun last weekend, but I can't wait to get out there again with the camera. Incidentally, I found the quality of the few movie clips I took to be really rather good, better than I expected.

Thanks all.

[Na Horuk]

am I going to see a marked improvement in sharpness? Or just some minor improvement? What do people generally think of this lens?

Compared to the 18-55mm? Yes.
The kit lens is best at around 35mm, f7,1, yes, but the 40mm will still outshine it in every respect. The Pentax kit lens is better than the kit lenses some other brands offer, but its still a kit lens. I like it because it is versatile and light, and if you have the WR one, it can be great in bad weather (better to have a WR kit lens than no WR lens at all). But if you want optimal quality, the limiteds or * series are your best friends

[JinDesu]

Morning all.

Meanwhile, as I say, it's just the kit lens. I've noticed that on zooming, the lens barrel grows and shrinks, and is furthest retracted into the lens body at 35mm. Does this imply in any way that perhaps 35mm is the "best" focal length for the lens? In a similar vein, the MFT program line provides an f/7.1 aperture, so I suppose that's probably the finest aperture the lens offers?

Thanks all.

It does not imply that 35mm is the best focal length - it is just coincidental that 35mm is it's best focal length.

The DA 40mm F2.8 will outperform the kit lens sharpness from F2.8 through F7.1 (and likely be as good or better by a small margin at F7.1-F8). It will also outperform the 18-55 in contrast, colour rendition, corner/edge performance, build quality, and focus speed in lower light.

[Primes4ever]

No question, the 40 is superior as outlined in previous posts, also very compact and light. You will then pursue other Limiteds, it is like desserts, you can't stop at one.