Originally posted by Smolk I thought the optics were not the main concern, at least not initially, but the failing SDM motor was. Everyone always seemed to ay it was a little step up from the 16-45mm, and a big one up from the kit lens.
The original 16-50 is a bit of mixed bag. I have had three copies.
The negatives:
- Soft and glowy at 2.8 except for the center
- Purple fringing problems at wide apertures
- SDM (do I need to say more?)
- De-centering issues. 2 out of 3 copies I have seen were de-centered.
- Over-priced. Maybe in 2007 it's pricing was reasonable. But $1000 today is not reasonable given its performance.
Positives:
- It's the only weather-sealed fast normal zoom available
- Stopped down and focused correctly it does have a bit of magic in terms of rendering, color, micro-contrast, etc
- From what I recall it has pretty nice sun-stars stopped down.
Given its poor performance wide-open I would recommend the 16-85 over the current 16-50.
I'm really looking forward to the new PLM version. I expect it to address all the deficiencies of the original lens and I'm glad that Ricoh has been able to update it comprehensively.