Spent a day walking the Key Summit trail (out near Milford Sound) Beautiful 6km~ walk up a hill to get wonderful views.
At the car park there I was with the DA* 16-50, DA* 50-135, and with the M35 f2.8 once more. After a bit of camera roulette, and packing the bag a couple of times whilst the misses was wearing sunscreen, I ended up once again, like I have all holiday, leaving the DA's in the car, attaching the M35 to the ye old K5, throw a polarising filter in the pocket and done.
And it was perfect. There really wasn't a vista where the 35mm wasn't wide enough. And forget about fast glass. The thing was set to f8, and its hyper-focal distance (4.5m, giving me Infinity down to 3m) all day. I merely adjusted the shutter a stop of two depending on what the clouds where doing.
It was a wonderful reminder that despite all the excitement and all the features we crave and carry on about, when it comes down to waking up a hill, less is more, and more then suitable.
The thing swang around my neck all day hitting trees, rocks, getting covered in dust, I might have been more careful with a DA* attached, the M35 gave me that freedom to just enjoy it. And the manual focus glass was just that little bit easy to focus since it was living at f8 all day. I was confident shooting my partner in front of me form the hip knowing it was going to capture the distance necessary.
Anyway I really enjoyed my walk up the hill with the faulting K5 (there are still a load of frames where the sensor seems to have been dancing around, but enough of the nice stuff to keep me happy) and the 80's M35 f2.8, and that's the point I suppose.