Originally posted by biz-engineer Since we start seeing new DFA lenses I was wondering what would be the minimum FF setup and related budget. I guess a basic setup would cost about $6000 ? How much to money to save ? How do we deal with the APSC to FF upgrade?
I think you've already gotten a feel for what this Pentax community is like. Many of us already have FF capable lenses. All we want is a camera body to mount them on. So, in many cases the cost of moving to FF is nothing more than the body (which may be a lot). Typically, I think amateur/enthusiasts which account for the major of users would need 1 - 5 primes plus 1 or 2 zooms. For primes, consider the FA Limited lenses plus either the 50mm or 100mm macro. There isn't much on the zoom front. The 28-70 f/4 is nice and I like my 28-105 f/3.2 on APS. The primes may already be in our bags. It's the zooms that will be a killer. The used market is an incredible place to find excellent lenses if you know what you're looking for.
After the enthusiasts comes the enthusiasts with special applications. A common one is macro mentioned above. If you need way wicked amounts of telephoto reach then I would recommend against super long focal lengths. Just get a u4/3 body with an adapter if you can handle the manual controls. The smaller sensor will effectively increase the reach of your FF lenses by 2x with excellent results.
Professional photographers who are using a different system like Nikon will have to start over from scratch. They will probably want to stock up on multiple Trinities of zooms and primes. The sky's the limit in that case!
Personally, for me, I have a small collection of Pentax primes and a three FA zooms. I don't know how well these lenses will perform on the FF body but I'll take a patient approach. Let's try them first and see how they fare. Then I will ask myself how much of an IQ jump I get with a different lens and if that jump in IQ is worth the extra $$.