[Mistral75]

Pentax-01 Standard Prime 8.5mm f/1.9: "Sharp within the limits of the system"

Pentax-01 Standard Prime 8.5mm f/1.9 (Pentax Q) - Review / Lens Test

Pentax-02 Standard Zoom 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5: "Again, a fine lens within the limits of the Q system"

Pentax-02 Standard Zoom 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 (Pentax Q) - Review / Lens Test

Very good build quality, fast and silent autofocus, heavy distortion, significant chromatic aberrations (Pentax-01 only) -both can be automatically corrected in-camera-, low vignetting, sharp across the image frame even at maximum aperture, peak sharpness reached between f/2.8 and f/4 (where diffraction is already kicking in).

[Andi Lo]

Seems like Klaus loves this system. Kind of gives me hope for it

[johnmflores]

Interesting. There has been some talk that the Q mount is capable of handling a larger sensor. I wonder if the current lenses are as well should one appear???

[liukaitc]

the lens itself is good..
maybe the best iq we can see from a 1/2.3 sensor

[Zygonyx]

It seems to me photozone has not mentionned the internal distorsion correction that is tremendously efficient with the Q, and with some pentax-friendly softwares like Silkypix.
Nor seem they to be aware that this imperfection is impacted a lot as a result of lenses miniaturisation...

[photozone]

We are completely aware of the auto-correction as well as the miniaturization effects.
However, this is meaningless in this scope. The goal of our test is to get an idea about the capabilities of the lens, less so the system. You can auto-correct lens flaws for all kinds of systems (e.g. via DxO) so that's not a new thing anyway.
Distortion correction is also not without side effects - you loose field-of-view as well as corner resolution - so it depends on your priorities whether you'd really like to use it. You may have noticed from the sample images that we took the Q on a hiking trip and this aspect is pretty much meaningless in this scope just to give you an example.
Just to add - Vignetting compensation boosts the sensor noise in the corners. Only CA correction is more or less lossless.
As far as miniaturization impacts on optical quality is concerned - from a user perspective the reasons for quality or the lack thereof are absolutely irrelevant.

best regards

Klaus
Chief Editor
photozone.de

[Zygonyx]

Thank you for your answer, and i am glad to have you on the forum.

I understand your position, nevertheless the Q lenses will not likely be used with other equipment as the Q in making photography or taking videos, so your reviews could be a bit more informative on their use with the dedicated system as far as distorsion is concerned.

[Adam]

Welcome Klaus, great to see you here

[conradj]

Klaus thank you for these tests.

It's great that Klaus's tested the main lenses for this system since it's a relatively stable objective standard that bypasses processed corrections of images that come from the tested lens, plus we all own lenses he's tested and have a feel for how his results translates into our own working methods, and can therefore gleam something abt what the lens in the test would be like in our own use.

It certainly helps make more sense of the images i've seen made by these lenses, in terms of what i'd be able to do with the equipment.

My problem is that for me the decision of whether to go for this system depends a lot on how it compares to compact cameras, which is beyond the scope of Photozone. Like right now the Canon S100 is an interesting choice and i don't really have a feel for how its lens compares to the Q standard zoom across their ranges.

The sensors in these cams i don't worry abt too much since i've lived for years with the Canon A650 and its sensor is abysmal compared to current tech.

... remember when compact camera sensors were a mess of noise even pushed just 1 stop over base ISO? And ever present shadow noise?

[snostorm]

Hi Klaus,

It is great to see you participating here.

Since we seem to have attracted your attention, I'd like to pose a question. . . Since lens tests are dependent on the sensor and internal processor in the body (the platform), and you have mentioned the limitations of the Q system in your evaluations of the Q system lenses, would it not be at least interesting from a scientific standpoint to test a relatively known quantity (a premium K lens that has already been tested on a K-5 for example) to establish a baseline of differences between the K-5 and Q for potential in lens resolution (sensor format differences within a platform) as a reference for future Q lens tests?

This is, of course, a purely selfish request, as I am a Q owner who feels that the IQ potential of the little camera has been prejudged as naturally proportionally inferior because of the sensor's size relative to an APS-C sensor (which is an obvious conclusion), but there has been no real quantitative measure of the differences since there's never been a 1/2.3" interchangeable lens body before where the small sensor's performance could actually be compared to that of other formats in any meaningful way. We now have that body though.

I'm not proposing a full sensor test at all ISO levels, just a test of a single lens with an APS-C body as opposed to the Q. I would think that the Kr would be a likely body to compare to the Q because of similar resolution, but even a test of the best in the platform (K-5) against the Q would be interesting, IMO.

If a similar comparison between a Nikon 1 system body and a D7000 using the same lens could be done, then some conclusions could possibly be drawn concerning the relative resolution potential between the 1's 1" sensor/processor and the Q's 1/2.3" sensor/processor. . .

I'm just an amateur photographer, so I don't know if any of these tests or comparisons would have either any validity or relevance from a scientific standpoint. I just know that I'd be interested to see the results if such a test could yield any relevant information. . .

Scott