Received the lens yesterday, unboxed it and ran some tests.
I cannot afford the time to compile the results at the moment,
but these are observations based on thorough testing (an engineer by training).
1. The lens is insanely big, it dwarfs the D-FA 25mm. It looks even bigger than the 645z body.
You will have a hard time finding a space in your bag or taking this up to mountains.
2. For its size, it almost feels light.
3. The build quality is excellent.
4. The front protrudes at the wide end, but not a lot.
5. The hood comes off like conventional lenses.
6. The lens doesn't vignette with a thin B+W screw-in filter and wide angle Lee adapter ring stacked.
7. Optical Performance
- Chromatic aberrations are well controlled (far better than the D-FA 25mm).
- Field curvature is well controlled as well (far less noticeable than the D-FA 25mm or FA 25mm).
- At the wide end (28mm), it suffers from mild filed curvature, I recommend carefully taking multiple shots with slightly different focus settings and studying them.
- The lens design appears to be optimized at around 35mm.
- Superb image quality from 30 to 45mm.
- At around 35mm, even f/5.6 seems to offer superb corner to corner sharpness.
- Other than around 35mm, the lens is sharp from corner to corner from f/7.1-f/9.0.
- The D-FA 25mm is wider and sharper than the zoom at the wide end (28mm), but it also has more chromatic aberrations and noticeable field curvature.
- The A 35mm comes close, but the zoom outperforms the prime in every aspect.
- The FA 45-85mm has a narrower view angle than the DA 28-45mm at 45mm, and the DA 28-45mm offers almost identical image quality.
To sum up, the DA 28-45mm delivers great IQ in most of its focal range, but does not replace the D-FA or DA 25mm.
It outperforms both A 35mm and FA 35mm by a margin, and offers similar or slightly better IQ than the FA 45-85mm.
Kudos to Pentax for producing a great piece of glass, but the weight and size will limit its usage and put your tripods and
bags to the test.
Additional pics : when mounted
Last edited by harklee; 09-11-2014 at 06:21 PM.
Reason: fix grammar / add pics