Originally posted by Hawkfan Yes. I checked and have the M version. This one is the A. I agree. I mean $20 for any old A, K or M lens is great. I thought I was scoring the deal of the century. My body isn't too doing too bad, but boy the eyesight thing....sheesh. Luckily I don't embarrass easily! I'm looking at trying to find a black KX to go with my standard silver top version so it's all good.
I would try out the A 50 f2 before getting rid of it... I think you might find it an improvement over the M version. The coatings seem to have improved and you have, of course, the A setting to use all your camera program modes. For $20 I think it might be worth playing around with it!
I know very well what it is like to have a very restricted money to spend on camera gear... pretty much everything I have bought up to about a year ago has been by selling something else. Early on I lucked into a set of A lenses that came with an A3000 for very little money, so selling these (including an A 135 f2.8) bought me a DA 35 2.4 (which was selling for over 180 dollars at the time) as my first and only new lens purchase - and that really improved my pictures (before that I had the kit 18-55 lens and a bunch of really cheap manual focus lenses). From the A lenses set, I also kept the SMC-A 70-210mm f4 which I still have today (and it still delivers great images).
I sold some more of my music equipment (from my single days...) and have what I consider a good setup now, even if I don't have everything I want - I still have more than I really need, and definitely much more than my limited talent is able to make us of.
I guess what I want to say is that Pentax is probably the right place for hobbyist photographers to get great image quality for a low cost. I can understand why professionals with money to spend, would choose a different system that gives them more modern bells and whistles, but Pentax can give you really great image quality and not cost you an arm and a leg...