Originally posted by savoche
... In a situation where you NEED WR you don't want to swap lenses...!
That's my reasoning too. Even though I have the Sigma, I've still always been rather loathe to swap lenses anywhere "not safe". (To those who don't know: the Sigma has a protector element on top of the sensor. If you take off the lens, you can't physically reach the sensor/mirror/shutter before you remove that element. ) In a situation that calls for WR body and lens, yeah, I wouldn't like to swap lenses either. Thanks.
That only adds to my reasoning to get the 18-135mm. Other things that I figure in is, that I already have a 200mm lens (even though it's legacy). There's not much when you specifically need something between 136mm and 199mm. And with the K-30's features, the legacy lenses become even more useful. In a pinch, I think getting the body + 18-55mm kit would be enough. I have 28, 50, 135 and 200 focal lengths covered in legacy glass and what I could tell from a small search around fleaBay, the Pentax 35-80mm is *very* cheap (not that much for quality, but cheap :) (It is listed as AF lens, but I don't know if that lens' AF works with the K-30 body - I'm just guessing it will.)
Originally posted by savoche
Besides, I'd much rather have a 55-300 for reach, even though it is not WR. It really is a better lens than the 50-200.
Thanks. That's one of my bigger fails right now - I don't much know about Pentax. I've never held a Pentax digital camera in hand even. I know squat about the lenses, so all info like this helps. I'll look into that 55-300. (It would be better, even for reach only.) That would be long enough to warrant a place alongside the 18-135mm also, unlike the 50-200mm at least if you ask me. 200mm ain't THAT much longer than 135mm, but 300mm is. I currently have a 70-300mm for my Sigma, and even though my main lens for that is the 28-200mm, the 300mm is enough longer and enough better for macro (and was CHEAP as all h*ll) to warrant its place among my gear.
My grandfather had a Pentax film-body when I was.. err. 5? or so. That's my only Pentax experience to date if you don't count the few lenses I have (and none of them are really Pentax, just K-mount).
Ideally, I'd like to have something in the mid range, say 20-ish/30-ish to 100mm (maybe 135mm) that would be FAST AF-wise and compact enough to be the number one on-the-go lens. Anything below 20mm and AF is pretty much a gimmick, since you have DoF to share, anything above - say - 200mm and at least I better have time and/or tripod to shoot and thus a MF lens would do fine. But in the mid-range, where most of my action shots are from, I would need FAST AF, durability, WR and great low-ISO performance from the body wouldn't hurt either.
This all sounds so exactly like the K-30 + 18-135mm kit that I have hard time to find anything to compare to - there just isn't anything with the K-30's features. I was *that* close to buying a K-5 last year when I first started to have enough of the Sigma, but the price bag then was a definitive no-no. (I think it was around ~1500€ for body only locally.) And the K-5 doesn't have focus peaking, which I've come to like *very* much. I haven't used the K-01 at all, so I can't compare really, but the Sony's implementation is top-notch, it *really* helps focusing manually.