Originally posted by brainwave I just saw that the 28-105 lens is the only D-FA lens not welcome in Ricoh's own
Best Photo Contest. Why the special treatment to this lens if its that excellent?
They may just have forgotten it.
More likely they are wanting to promote certain lenses and exclude "kit lenses" in general.
I don't think any lens was excluded because it wasn't deemed good enough. Pentax doesn't make lenses that are that bad.
Have you checked the used market in India? Maybe you can source a lens locally?
N. B., I would not worry about "colour rendition" unless you don't want to perform any post processing. After some white balancing it will be very hard to recognise lenses by their colour rendition, in particular if one cannot compare images (i.e. has no reference).
P.S.: Be careful with APS-C lenses being sold as working on FF. A few do but most (like the DA Limiteds) will give you bad IQ near the edges unless stopped down. You can of course use such lenses using your camera's crop mode but if you want to use the full sensor, limit your choice to proper FF lenses or the few exceptions among the APS-C lenses.