I've been playing with the 'macro' feature on my recently acquired f 35-70. So far I'm pretty happy with the results, being that the lens was a cheapie and macro isn't really what I bought it for.

Wow the Ring shot really shows off the sharpness of that lens... Nice

How is it as a regular distance lens?

-gus-

[Bramela]

Nice macro results for that lens. Especially the ring shot. The sharpness of that is awesome.
Very well done!

[Mr Hyde]

I agree, the Ring shot is really nice. Very sharp. Good Job

[dantuyhoa]

Yep ! The ring shot is so good . So much details !

[paden501]

Thanks all for the comments. I have a couple of things to add about the photos:

1.) the ring shot is about a 25% crop of the original. Even in macro setting, the lens wouldn't focus that close to the ring to give the field of view that you see. Also, in both images, I bumped up the color curves and did a smart sharpen.

2.) Every picture that I've ever taken w/ this lens I've also used a 1B filter. The reason is that the 1B 'warms' the colors of the images, especially when using flash, and I do use flash for most of the shots that require this lens.

3.) In response to iGillian about the non-macro image quality of this lens, check out my 'gardens and glass' series of photos (there are 3 posts) or also I have all the same photos on my flickr. Here's the link to the first 'gardens and glass' thread:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/post-your-photos/20499-gardens-glass-phip...servatory.html

I hope to have more mages up from this lens in the next few weeks. I'm out of town on business until March 1, but I have my camera with me so hopefully I'll get time to take some shots.