[Pentaxor]

just got this very nice lens this week. so first my initial evaluation.

sorry, I could not provide a picture of the lens itself as I was so excited to put it to test immediately. rest assured that I would take a picture of it as soon as I can.

ok the lens had arrived wednesday. it has arrived via USPS and as usual had to pay 12% of B.C.'s government's debt to it's inhabitants. it came in a package where the original box is nicely secured inside surrounded by thick airchain wrap (very nice).

lens came with hood, front and rear caps, manuals, warranty card and a soft case. lens however doesn't have serial number, but who cares with a lens manufacturer like that would be willing to replace it. and besides they all came from the same plant as far as I'm concerned. the construction is very similar to that of the Samyang and also there is a prnit indicating it was made in Korea, definitely Samyang.

close inspection, lens is kinda weighty and is a big 'ol chunk of glass at 72mm. lens doesn't appear to have a special coating in it as well, unlike the SMC Pentax. barrel feels solid and focus ring seems a bit tight but got loosened up a bit by frequent rotation. though I think I might got used to it. it's auto-aperture btw. lens hood is not that really good IMO, but useful however. another kinda irritating thing is that when the lens is mounted, the aperture ring is too small and rear of the barrel is too big making it difficult to turn the aperture ring. I just set it up to "A" instead. auto-aperture works just fine.

now, time to do some experimentation and observation. the lens display quite some flare. it also displays some CA under strong contrasts at wide open. focusing is very tricky IMO, as compared to shooting with my 1.2 which I'm more comfortable of using even at wide open, maybe due to much smooth barrel movement. I find shooting at wide open (1.4) is a bit tougher due to a much tighter feel and thin DOF. on most occasions, I find myself looking for focus reference across the image as center focus is quite difficult especially without a spit-prism. the lens is bright though.

catch-in focus does work but tricky due to thin DOF. used the lens shooting LV magnified mode up to x10 which I found helpful especially under lowlight and dark areas.

now for the sample. shot with in-camera jpeg setting. I made some custom image adjustments as well inorder to try out the K-7's new fine sharpness 2 option. I deliberately boosted the fine sharpness as well as the contrast in this picture. decreased the saturation a lil bit since I was shooting under tungsten lighting/lowlight. I shot this at f1.4 and boosted the sensitivity at ISO 1600.






as a summary for now,

the result appear fitting to that of a portraiture lens. very nice sharpness at wide open, and very smooth OOF background and very good control of HIGH ISO noise with this lens eventhough with boosted contrast and sharpness. colors appear natural and real life. from what I see, this is it's specialty, shooting at wider apertures. I would advise that this lens shouldn't be used past f2.8 as that would clearly nullify it's true purpose as a bright and lowlight lens.


in the coming nights, I'll be doing more tests. I'll be shooting more of it to see how it does when doing street photography. as for now, I'm very satisfied with the results.

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