[RonHendriks1966]

It is!

Is there a testcopy in Europe?

[Rondec]

Ha, according to ephotozine my SMC DA* 200 is higher rated.
Top 26 Best Pentax Lenses 2017

It's really hard to do comparisons. For the lenses I know ePHOTOzine's numbers are quite low. I guess each company has their own implementation. Like many sites, only the new releases have ben tested on the K-1, most having been tested on the K-5. The only cross comparison between the 70-200 and competing lenses is on price, not performance, so its not as good as what I've seen comparing Tamron, Nikon and Canon lenses. It's a complimentary review, I just can't decide what it means.

But just out of interest I checked the Milvus 35 test featured on the front page. 4500 lw/ph tested on a 50.6 MP sensor. Impressive. But the fact that it's tested on a 50.6 MP sensor makes it hard to compare.

Incidentally the numbers of the Milvus 35 are off the charts, but they test it on a 50.6 Canon 5Ds R, so I have no idea what that means in Pentax K-1 numbers.

I've shot with both the 70-200 and the DA *200 and the DFA 70-200 is better with regard to sharpness, purple fringing (my DA *200 fringed pretty badly), wide open performance, and auto focus speed. At f4 they were pretty similar. The only negative with the DFA 70-200 in my experience is the large size, which you deal with for the performance.

But I'm not really sure what we are arguing about. On one hand you have a group of folks who are glad that (among other things) Pentax is developing a set of DFA * primes that are going to have wide apertures and are going to be big. On the other hand, people are upset that these are being developed? Surely Pentax is still working on other lenses -- like a consumer, variable aperture telephoto. It's just that releasing a 70-300 consumer telephoto isn't going to create any buzz at all, isn't going to draw anyone to the brand -- it just isn't a big deal. It still wouldn't be surprising if Pentax announced something like it this fall, with little or no fanfare.

The important thing is that we are given choices, the onus will then be on us to choose wisely for what fits our shooting style best.

[normhead]

And the problem is?

I'm getting g ready for a canoe trip with a 3 clients. I'll be packing my stuff. My Pelican cases have room for the 60-250 or 200, the 28-105 and an old FA-J 18-35 and a couple TCs. and a 50 macro. It's a tight squeeze but I make it fit. There is no room in my cases for bigger lenses, and no desire to carry more weight. I'm already carrying 70 pounds , often for more than a kilometre.on portages. I would buy more compact glass, I won't buy bigger. So in terms of lenses I can justify, bigger isn't better, in my world it simply doesn't exist. It's logistical. Up until the K-1 Pentax with their excellent small lenses were my guys. Now I'm seriously starting to wonder.

But, I can totally solve this problem by selling the K-1 and going back to APS-c so, no sweat off my back one way or the other. The K-1 is with me for now, but I still haven't decided I'm keeping it.

I'm not sure we are having an argument.


What I'm trying to discover is what advantages there are of the 70-200 over the Canon, Nikon Tamron and Sony versions. It's heavier, what does one get for the extra weight? It's a theoretical discussion, I won't carry a lens of that weight, but it's still of interest.

It's hard to think much about the new 50, it's not out. No one has it, what is there to say, except it might be too big for some of us, based on a 3D printer mock up. This is a thread with no real information, probably why it's 100 pages. Once you have a physical item present, there's little to debate.

[pres589]

Having a third party like Tamron to handle the lenses like 70-300`s might be nice so that Pentax focuses on the interesting stuff to draw in new people. That would be nicer, perhaps, than where we are now.

[Kunzite]

Except Tamron has no suitable 70-300mm, only the one launched in 2010.
I trust Pentax' version would be comparable to the 28-105.

[normhead]

Except Tamron has no suitable 70-300mm, only the one launched in 2010.
I trust Pentax' version would be comparable to the 28-105.

I'd love a Pentax 70-300 with 28-105 quality and 1:2 macro. But that being said, I stopped using my Sigma 70-300 because of IQ issues in the long end. It's one of the few lenses that fails even my sharpness standards, and as every one should know, I favour composition as the biggest part of photography with lens sharpness being way down the list. Even still, the Sigma just wasn't good enough anymore. I got it out when I bought my K-1 to see if it was any better on an FF. My conclusion? It was great lens on my *ist and K100D, 6mp cameras, but it has no place in the world of high resolution sensors, unless you can't afford anything better, in which case, it's a great lens.

[northcoastgreg]

I have seen no independent review suggesting the Pentax 70-200 is better than any of those, to make up for it's undeniable increase in weight. Maybe you've seen something I haven't?

They're all very good lenses capable of producing splendid images. However, they're not absolutely identical. Each of them reflects, in subtle ways, the imaging philosophy of their manufacturer. Even under Ricoh's management, Pentax's imaging philosophy remains centered around subjective perceptual evaluations:

There are many ways to assess image quality. PENTAX has traditionally stayed away from the kind of image quality defined solely by excellent numerical assessment. It is probably because we regard sensory evaluation much more highly than most people would imagine.

In the age of advanced technologies, PENTAX still places great importance on human sensibilities, something that is in complete opposition to much of today’s technological advancement. For PENTAX, this is the primary source for attaining exceptional image quality. Achieving this goal requires a large number of actual images capturing different types of subjects, and taken in varying photographic conditions. Among the PENTAX engineers are a group of photo enthusiasts specializing in such fields as portraiture, landscape and astronomical photography. Every weekend, they take test models out into the field, and shoot photographs without attracting people’s attention to the models that are still under development. In fact, this has become routine work for them....

Monday is the day to assess the images captured over the previous weekend by the team, using the test models. The image-processing team members take the results into account to improve noise-reduction and imaging performance, and then they go out on photo sessions again on the following weekend. For the development of the PENTAX K-1, they spent an enormous amount of time on this process.

And:

Today, a camera is a cluster of high technologies, which continue to advance day by day. PENTAX believes, however, that, no matter how advanced technologies may become, image quality is always something perceived by the human eye, and is the product of human sensibility.

I've been impressed with the images I've seen shot with the DFA* 70-200. They seem to have comparable sharpness to images shot with the Nikon, Canon, and Tamron, but with the rendering and colors Pentax is traditionally known for. Now what if Pentax, in order to achieve comparable sharpness to the competition and preserve Pentax rendering, must allow the DFA* lenses to be larger? Making a high performance lens as small as possible probably requires even greater dependence on computer aided design to solve the difficult challenges involved. But computers can't be programmed to achieve non-numerical, qualitative assessment goals. So if Pentax wants to include non-numerical assessments in their development of imaging technologies, perhaps making the lens larger provides greater opportunity for fine tuning based on perceptual value assessments?

Something along these lines may have happened with Olympus high-end glass when they moved from 4/3rds SLRs to m43 mirrorless. Just compare their top of the line SLR lenses, the so-called SHG lenses, with their m43 PRO glass. The SHG lenses are massive --- nearly the size of pro FF glass, despite being designed for a sensor almost four times smaller (the Zuiko 35-100 f2 is heavier than either the Nikon or Canon 70-200s!). Olympus PRO glass, in comparison, is smaller and significantly lighter. So what's the difference between the huge SHG lenses and the relatively smaller PRO lenses? Well, while there's no significant difference in sharpness between these two series of lenses, the SHG lenses do render better. There's a subtle beauty to images produced by SHG glass that's absent in the more dry and clinical rendering of the PRO glass. So maybe the size of the Pentax DFA* glass is the inevitable consequences of combining high performance while at the same time preserving Pentax rendering? Just a thought.

[biz-engineer]

There is no room in my cases for bigger lenses

Fast primes or not , that is the question. I recently gotten myself a Samyang 85 f1.4, it's great to produce bokeh (no need to wait for Ricoh to make their own). Then I played a bit with it to see if it could also be of use for landscape or street photos... very disappointed: the DoF is such that I can't make any use that f1.4, and when stopped down within the f5.6 to f11 range, it is not any sharper than the DFA28-105, but the 28-105 is versatile and smaller. I can only conclude that those fast primes have rather limited applications, and I think making good use of a fast 50mm is not so easy. I'd see why a DFA*85 1.4 would sell, especially to some people who want something smaller than a DFA70-200 for photographying people. I'd also see where a fast wide angle prime would sell to people who bought a K1 for astro photography. But I don't see where a DFA50 1.4 would sell well.

[goldenarrow]

northcoastgreg,
Where did you get those Pentax testing quotes from? I don't see it in the thread. That is a very interesting process, I am sure other companies do the same but it still sounds like Pentax lens designers are very concerned with preserving the "subjective" qualities of rendering that Pentax is famous for. I would like to read the whole article if that is possible???

[Kunzite]

From here:
Challengers | PENTAX K-1 Special site | RICOH IMAGING

[thibs]

Fast primes or not , that is the question. I recently gotten myself a Samyang 85 f1.4, it's great to produce bokeh (no need to wait for Ricoh to make their own). Then I played a bit with it to see if it could also be of use for landscape or street photos... very disappointed: the DoF is such that I can't make any use that f1.4, and when stopped down within the f5.6 to f11 range, it is not any sharper than the DFA28-105, but the 28-105 is versatile and smaller. I can only conclude that those fast primes have rather limited applications, and I think making good use of a fast 50mm is not so easy. I'd see why a DFA*85 1.4 would sell, especially to some people who want something smaller than a DFA70-200 for photographying people. I'd also see where a fast wide angle prime would sell to people who bought a K1 for astro photography. But I don't see where a DFA50 1.4 would sell well.

You concluded way to fast.
That behaviour is because the samyang is a classic design and not an very (over?) corrected design as recent Sigmas.

The Samyang most probably has high field curvature (along others) which for this type of lens is perfectly adequate (cheap portrait lens).

Generalize just on a single lens is, unfortunate to say the least. You should know better IMO.

[biz-engineer]

Generalize just on a single lens is, unfortunate to say the least. You should know better IMO.

Sure , I haven't tried many f1.4 lenses. For field curvature, I don't know. For DoF, to me it looks like the hyperfocal distance is such that large aperture isn't useful for other than portraiture or producing bokeh.

[photoptimist]

Fast primes or not , that is the question. I recently gotten myself a Samyang 85 f1.4, it's great to produce bokeh (no need to wait for Ricoh to make their own). Then I played a bit with it to see if it could also be of use for landscape or street photos... very disappointed: the DoF is such that I can't make any use that f1.4, and when stopped down within the f5.6 to f11 range, it is not any sharper than the DFA28-105, but the 28-105 is versatile and smaller. I can only conclude that those fast primes have rather limited applications, and I think making good use of a fast 50mm is not so easy. I'd see why a DFA*85 1.4 would sell, especially to some people who want something smaller than a DFA70-200 for photographying people. I'd also see where a fast wide angle prime would sell to people who bought a K1 for astro photography. But I don't see where a DFA50 1.4 would sell well.

If stopped down to f/5.6 or smaller, almost all decent lenses will perform identically. But it's almost inevitable that a wide-open zoom or wide-open slow prime will have worse sharpness than a fast prime open to the same f-stop. And if one does want a shallow DoF, large bokeh, or extremely blurred OOF areas, then the zoom or a slower prime becomes useless (unless you do reverse focus stacking).

Both types of lenses are versatile in their own way. The DFA28-105 is clearly versatile in focal length but the f/1.4 prime lens is versatile in DoF/bokeh/OOF. That said, it is certainly true that the kinds of images that benefit from the extremes of the f-stop range offered by a fast prime are much more limited than the kinds of images that benefit from the extremes in a zoom's range.

That makes f/1.4 lenses niche lenses. And yet I'd think that a fair fraction of photographers would be intrigued by the possibilities (and challenges) of narrow DoF images and many would certainly enjoy sharper images in the f/2 to f/4 aperture ranges where zooms and slow primes are just a tad soft wide open. They can see the attraction of DoF versatility even if they don't use narrow DoF on that many shots.

Weight.... well that's clearly a show-stopper for some. I rarely use my 70-200/2.8 because it is a beast to carry. Yet it's also clear that a fair number of photographers (i.e., anyone that uses 70-200/2.8 or 24-70/2.8) don't mind heavy high-performance lenses.

[Pål Jensen]

Actually, fast lenses are mainly designed for use in low light.....-

[normhead]

Actually, fast lenses are mainly designed for use in low light.....-

Actually it's rather insane that folks refuse to invent other uses for them. FOr DOF there just isn't that much different.

But it still interesting that people push the notion that a fast lens a ƒ4 is better than an ƒ4 lens at ƒ4. That's something that just sounds like a fairy tale to me. MY investigation turned up one case where it was true and one case where it wasn't. That's hardly proof of concept.