Originally posted by StepOne The pricing of this lens was a clear indicator to me that prices can only go up with Pentax (I don't think the price reflects the real world value of the lens). Competition has similar way cheaper 50's. You can tell what you want about micro-crap, measurbate whatever, but the truth is that this is supposed to be entry level lens.
I just stopped buying Pentax, will use what i have so far. Don't think my next will be Pentax though, from what i see.
The canon is an absolute POS but cheap, Nikons new release (which is what entry level users must buy so it works btw) is 229 so this is competitive
the cheap nikon (which was an old design and not compatible with sub d7000 or D90 bodies) is discontinued just like the old F50 was a few years back
the European prices seem very wonky to me, and the lens isn't on the market yet (i do expect them to read marginally higher though since they include VAT and NA price doesn't. VAT accounts for a fair amount of it but there is still something wrong there. it should maybe be $30 euro more than the da35 2.4 al
BTW the F50 1.7 (which almost certainly this is derived from) was a couple hundred dollars more than a decade ago, certainly $250 is reasonable given inflation
If it is built to fall apart every 13 months like the canon with crap performance to boot then yeah it's over priced
Pentax will get your money once, canon gets it every 18 months or so