Everything happens!
Today I had the pleasure of toying around with the mythical, always soon to come, DA*60-250f4 SDM !!
It was there, quietly waiting for me and snugly attached to a K20 at Paris Photoshow...
Since there were not a lot of people (it was early in the afternoon), I could play with it for some time (actually, I went back 4 times after playing with some other toys from different manufacturers).
So the good thing is that it does exists and will probably be released early next year... that's a very encouraging thought: last time I had seen it, it was in a sealed glass cabinet, and had been so for two years...
Build quality is on par with the other DA*: very high, solid and tight.
It is a big fella, even more when zooming in as it extends quite a bit at the long end but balance was OK with the K20. The 50-135 feels like a dwarf lens next to it!
AF was decently fast and the AF's throw looks shorter than on the 50-135...
Unfortunately, I have the feeling (well, at least I hope) that it was a very early prototype because it was "functionally limited" if I may use such a politically correct wording.
AF had a strong tendency to hunt before acquiring focus and when it did, I just could not get a sharp shot: heavy fuzziness and strange halos around highlights at all settings...
Also, the zoom seemed to have a problem: going from 200mm to 250mm almost didn't change the framing.
Strangely enough, that didn't really alarm me: results are so bad it can only be because it's an early prototype that has been bumped around in all recent photoshows.
It's still a pity that the Pentax guys at the booth did not care to calibrate it better because quite a lot of people who tried it went back thinking that Pentax cameras were not so good.
I played with other cameras (K-M with 16-50, k20 with DA300 and 50-135) and all were focusing fine, tending to prove that the problem was with the sample of the 60-250 but still, I wish they payed a bit more attention to this before displaying the lens.
I signaled the "problems" to a nice hostess but she really didn't care that much... she was probably not even from Pentax I guess...
Anyway, it's coming, can't wait to see the tests!