Originally posted by Murdoughnut Greetings all -
Greetings and welcome.
Quote: I haven't decided on a lens yet and was looking for suggestions. I'd like to start with something fairly inexpensive at first (I have a cat receiving chemo treatments right now which is draining my wallet).
Naturally I'd like to be able to take walk around photos of family, pets, etc. - but I'll also be taking a lot of sports photos - triathlon specifically. I'm a private pilot and will also be taking a lot of aerial photos, and around the airport shots, including aircraft taking off and landing.
For sports, the 50-200 might be fine; the 55-300 would be similar but longer.
But for aerial photography and shots of airplanes on the ground, I would think you'd want to go wider than 50mm.
So I'm going to make two suggestions.
First, clmonk has suggested the 18-250, either from Pentax or Tamron. As clmonk said, they're the same lens (I've owned the Tamron in the past, sold it, and then bought the Pentax last year). Quite a decent lens, really better than it deserves to be given the extraordinary zoom range. When I purchased the lens for the second time recently I bought the Pentax because at the time it was cheaper; that was probably a mistake, because the Tamron's warranty is much better. Sigma also makes an 18-250 lens that is supposed to be very good, perhaps even better, but it's more expensive. And that's the problem with these lenses: They all cost somewhere in the $500 range. Perhaps more than you want to spend now.
So my second suggestion is that you consider the Sigma 17-70 f/2.8-4.5 DC Macro. This is a terrific all-purpose lens - a much better lens in my opinion than the 18-55 kit lens. (Note: the new kit lens is WR "weather resistant"; the Sigma 17-70 is not. But otherwise....) THe Sigma 17-70 is not as long as the 18-250, obviously, but it's much faster at the wide end (f/2.8) and it's also got a macro functionality that works pretty well. Another advantage is that this lens is a good bit less expensive - although it deserves to cost more than it does. You can get it for
$320 at photo4less.com, an online vendor that I've used and found to be reliable and easy to deal with. They are also known as sigma4less.com, and their prices on Sigma lenses in particular are usually lower than anybody else's.
I own both of these lenses and like them both very much. Actually, I think Pentax should put the 18-250 on the K-7 as a kit lens, at least as an option. I haven't used a kit lens in years but I would wager that in the 18-55 range the 18-250 is as good as the kit lenses and then of course you have all that telephoto capability to boot.
The Pentax 16-45 f/4 is a lovely lens and underpriced (around $350), but has no telephoto reach. The Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 is a great zoom lens with a constant f/2.8 effective aperture but it's more expensive ($450) than the Sigma 17-70 and also lacks that wide angle range. Remember that 28mm on a Pentax DSLR is very close to normal, just a wee bit on the wide side of normal. The term "wide angle" should be reserved for focal lengths like 24, 21, 18, etc. I have owned and used both of these lenses, too.
Good luck - and be careful. You'll see a lot of jokes here about "LBA" (lens buying addiction). Trust me, it's a genuine disease and there's no known cure short of divorce.
Will