Originally posted by Mr Spocko Nobody expected it to be "cheap" but £850/$1000 is really pushing things a tad.
I saw it and thought maybe £599 tops, couldn't actually believe the RRP is over £800
2 issues
How many people don't have this range covered? (very few I would think in either zooms or combination of primes) - ie there is little demand for such a lens
If it's such a great focal range imagine Canon releasing a 20-40mm f2.8-f4 L, it would get laughed off the market and forums FF or APS-C.
I'm trying to find the posts from Pentax users saying "please Pentax we need a 20-40mm f2.8-f4 limited zoom" I've yet to find one, but can find plenty of other sensible lens requests
I would see no problem with a 2x zoom (it's probably easier to achieve a high performance design and it'll be smaller/lighter) if it were: a) f2.8 (or even f3.5) fixed aperture and b) had a useful focal length range, perhaps 25-50mm (37-75mm equiv.), 18-36mm (27-54mm equiv.) or 50-100mm(75-150 equiv.).
"Standard" focal lengths exist and are universal for a reason...
As far as I know, Canon "L" lenses are supposed to be cost no object, high performance professional lenses.
Pentax has a similar range, the "DA*", but it's restricted to three lenses, and this probaly means that Pentax ins't targeting the "L" market.
Comparing Pentax "Limited" to Canon "L" doesn't make sense.
Pentax DA "Limited" lenses are small, light, well built and as far as I know no QC issues.
But they're also "slow", noisy, and judging from the tests I have seen in measurements and image tests, most achieve good performance but only a few are really outstanding.
I don't think they're as good as my Contaxes.
R