Originally posted by td186 fast lens trying not to go above $350...auto focus is a must
You'll either get a good quality fast lens or an autofocus one for that price, getting both would require a lucky used deal. In my opinion 35mm or wider is must on APSC indoors so you are looking in the right range.
EDIT: I would second Adam's suggestion actually, that's a great range and speed.
Take a day and put your kit lens zoom on 35mm focal length then tape it in place and only adjust the focus after that. If it really pisses you off to have to keep moving to recompose rather than just adjusting the zoom (you do a lot more cropping with primes which costs you image quality) you need a wide zoom which will cost you speed, otherwise you can expect that the prime will be much faster and have better image quality (uncropped) than your zoom.
Also consider that wide open most really fast primes will focus on a persons nose and not a whole hell of a lot more, very narrow depth of field. One of the strengths of the K5 was that it does high ISO so well that you can use the mid range on a fast lens and get good depth of field and still be fast.
Keep in mind that with an A series manual focus lens you still get the little green light in the viewfinder telling you when you have it in focus, this is the same focus judgement it would use for the AF lens so all you cost yourself is a little speed while you focus, though with practice I know people that focus just as fast and usually more accurately than the Pentax AF. For a little more focus speed there is also the catch in focus (or whatever its called) feature which will apparently automatically take the pic when you get the focus right but I like to do that part myself so I can control the exact moment of it better so I've never tried it.
Last edited by PPPPPP42; 06-06-2012 at 10:33 AM.