I recently bought a camera bag full of lenses, filters & flash units from a pawn shop on eBay. It was somewhat difficult to see what was actually in the cache, so there was little interest in bidding. I was high bidder at something like $16.00 IIRC. Anyway, in the lot was a Pentax DA 18-55mm lens. It didn't dawn on me until yesterday that it was DIFFERENT than the "kit lens" that came with my K-2000! The new one had a green ring around it, so.... with a little investigation, I found out that it is supposed to have "better optics," and I discovered that it also has a metal mount. I took a few test shots and it seems to focus much closer than the kit lens. Do any of you have any stories to relay about this lens and any meaningful difference between it and it's kit-lens cousin?
Oh yeah.... also in the very nice leather camera bag was a beautiful JC Penney's 28mm f:2.8 lens (that is remarkably sharp), a Pentax-M 50mm, f:2.0 (pristine) and a JC Penney's 135mm, f:2.8 lens (with non-functioning aperture blades), a Vivitar auto-2X tele-converter and two functioning flash units. For a guy who's always scrounging for a bargain, this was a very satisfying score.
I'm 50mm lens poor! I now have 9 of them, ranging from a Pentax-A 50mm, f:1.2, a DA 50mm, f:1.8, a M-50mm, f:1.4, M-50mm, f:1.7, M-50mm, f:2.0, a Sears MC 50mm, f:1.7 & f:2.0, a Ricoh-P 50mm, f:1.7 .... and some duplicates. So far, the DA f:1.8 I won here on PF seems to be my favorite. The Pentax-A 50mm, f:1.2 is on it's way, so I can't comment on it yet.