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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-20-2019, 03:19 PM
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But you're comparing what the price of the DFA 70-200/2.8 is now, which is significantly lower than its MSRP (which was $2299). When the f4 version is released, it will be at an MSRP price, which is nearly always somewhat, or perhaps even significantly, higher than the price of older lenses.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-20-2019, 02:31 PM
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Why won't it be in the league of the Canon? Because it's not a star lens? The DFA 150-450 is very much in the league of the Canon 100-400 L, but the DFA zoom is not a star lens either. Don't be fooled by the fact that the DFA 70-200/4 won't be a star lens. That doesn't mean it won't be as good as the Nikon, Canon and Sony versions. And it will likely be priced accordingly.
If you're looking for a cheaper DFA telephoto zoom, hold off for the DFA 70-300, which I would guess will be priced somewhere between $600 and $800.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-08-2019, 01:18 PM
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The word is that there will be an effort to make 70-200 f4 as compact and light as possible without serious sacrifices to optimal or build quality. I suspect that the reason why this lens has taken priority over a 70-300 and wide-angle zooms (which I would contend the lineup needs more) is that Pentax has been getting complaints about the size and weight of DA* 70-200, which is the heaviest such lens ever made. I would guess 700g myself.
Unfortunately, not cheaper. But it will be lighter. And it will, by Pentax's own standards, be an FF lens (Pentax does not regard the 60-250 as an FF lens, and it is unlikely they'd ever endorse removing a part of the lens to make it so).
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-03-2019, 05:14 PM
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This opinion has been voiced before, but I've never found it compelling. For many people, phones make terrible cameras. I was in Yellowstone in early September, and over and over again I found people struggling to take images with their phones. I would be waiting at some vista to get access to the best spot, and it would sometimes take people several minutes to get in an image with their darn smartphones. The fact that you don't have tactile buttons that manipulated without looking at them can make smartphones difficult to use in broad daylight simply because it can be hard to see the screen. With a real camera (i.e., a device design solely for photography, rather than a jack-of-all-trade, master-of-none device like a smartphone), it's very easy to get what you want out of it. I would step up to the vista point and in ten, fifteen seconds I would get the images I wanted. No fiddling with touch screens or any of that kind of nonsense.
Then there's the wildlife issue. At Yellowstone, people went insane over wildlife. They wanted to see wild animals and take pictures of them. A mangy buffalo walking along the side of the road could back-up traffic for miles. Cell phone cameras are very non-optimal for wildlife shots, because for all practical purposes, you can't put a long zoom lens on one of these devices and keep them small, compact, and pocketable. I saw a lot of bridge cameras at Yellowstone. And compacts with protruding lenses. That's what's needed for wildlife, even among cameras for mere sight-seers.
Then there's the issue of sheer quality. You go out to national parks and other scenic places in the west, you'll often run into quite a few landscape photographers. Go to Maroon Bells in the autumn, and at dawn there can be a close to a hundred photographers, almost all of them with APS-C or FF cameras on tripods, set up around the lake. Some of these photographers are quite competitive. If other landscape photographers are shooting FF with professional glass, they'll feel obligated to do likewise. Cell phones just don't cut it for serious landscape photography. You go out early in the morning to an iconic spot, and you may see quite a few ILC's, mostly on tripods, but very few cell phone cameras. For those who want to produce the kind of landscape images you see in magazines such as Outdoor Photography, you need a camera that produces raw files with copious amounts of dynamic range. There's no way to get around it.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-31-2019, 03:09 PM
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But you don't need f4 for landscape. The problem with the f4 zoom is it will likely cost over $1,300. For those of us who don't need the f4, that's a heavy premium to pay just to have a nice zoom in that focal range.
This strikes me as nineties thinking. Yes, in the nineties 70-300's, and slow aperture zoom lenses in general, weren't that good. But that was a quarter century ago. Times are different now. There's some pretty good 70-300's on the market, and Pentax has shown no indication that they're going to make crap glass for the K-1. The DFA 28-105, despite its slow aperture, is a darn good lens. Why shouldn't the 70-300 be just as good as well, at more than half the cost and maybe even lighter in weight as well than the 70-200/4? Pentax has already shown, not merely the DFA 28-105, but with the DA 16-85 and the DA 55-300 PLM, that slow variable aperture lenses can be nearly as good as considerably more expensive constant aperture zooms.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-28-2019, 07:51 AM
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I agree. When the 70-300 comes out, the Pentax DFA line-up will have four telephoto zooms, two standard zooms, and one wide-angle zoom. And here I was under the impression that one of the great advantages of FF was on the wide angle side of things. Hard to believe that by how this DFA line-up is shaping up. Even the prime line-up is tilted toward the normal and telephoto side of things, with nothing wide than 31mm.
This is not to suggest that a DFA 70-200 f4 won't be a great addition to the line-up. I just have questions as to whether it should have been given priority to a slow aperture 70-300 and a slow aperture wide angle zoom. The size, weight and cost of the current wide angle and telephoto zooms in the DFA line-up has forced quite a few K-1 users to rely on inferior legacy glass.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-26-2019, 06:26 PM
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The Nikon 70-200 f4 weighs 30 ounces; the Sony 70-200 f4 weighs 29.6 ounces; the Tokina 70-200 f4 weighs 31.7 ounces. In other words, the typical 70-200 f4 zoom lens comes in at nearly twice the weight of the DFA 28-105 (15.5 ounces). Hardly a lightweight counterpart! It will only be lightweight in comparison with the DFA* 70-200 f2.8.
The roadmap says it will be available in the spring. Despite all the hand-wringing about lens delays with Ricoh-Pentax, I'd say there's a pretty good chance we'll see it in the spring. It's the star lenses that get delayed. This is not a star lens, so better chance of not getting delayed.
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