| Author: | | Senior Member Registered: January, 2011 Posts: 258 | | Review Date: February 23, 2012 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Small, sharp | | Cons: | Not sharp enough for prime (some zooms are better), PF | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 9
Value: 9
Camera Used: K200D
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This is a test between one M 28 2.8 version 2(the same lens optically as the A28 2.8) and my DA 16-45. If we are talking about pure resolution without mentioning the CAs of the DA lens I think that the will have only one plus against the zoom(which is not one of the best zooms after all...) the only plus is the size. So in my opinion if you can get it cheaply the A28 2.8 is good lens, if you must pay too much for it better go for a zoom like this one. I must find one sigma 17-70 to check too, I'm guessing the prime will have hard time!
PS I'll show some field shots soon!
| | | | | | | Forum Member Registered: April, 2009 Location: Treviso (Italy) Posts: 87 | | Review Date: August 8, 2011 | Recommended | Price: $40.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Dimension, building, sharp | | Cons: | colors | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 6
Handling: 9
Value: 9
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Excellent manual focus lens. Little, well built and sharp.
But with quite cold colors imho.
| | | | | New Member Registered: February, 2010 Posts: 3 | | Review Date: July 20, 2011 | Recommended
| Rating: 8 |
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Good solid lens. Nice bokeh and fairly sharp. If you can pick up a copy for a reasonable price you won't be sorry.
| | | | | Site Supporter Registered: January, 2008 Location: Brampton, ON, Canada Posts: 2,456
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: April 12, 2011 | Recommended
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Small, reasonably fast, useful FL | | Cons: | A bit prone to contrast loss | |
Useful - not quite a "normal" FL replacement on digital, but not bad.
I had my copy for a number of years (10 at least), and it was a good, well travelled performer (Paperbag now has it) .
Build quality is excellent, and the manual focusing is a treat.
Optically, as others have mentioned, the rendering is very neutral. Sharpness is adequate.
My one recommendation is to purchase a collapsible rubber hood to prevent contrast loss and flare.
| | | | | | | Junior Member Registered: March, 2009 Location: EU Posts: 32 | | Review Date: November 29, 2010 | Recommended | Price: $70.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | enough sharp when stopped down, good colors, small | | Cons: | not sharp corners wide open | | Sharpness: 8
Handling: 9
Value: 8
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Quite good quality build, standard 49 mm filter, good colors, sharp when stopped down 4-5,6 and more. At f2,8 decently sharp in the center but corners are fuzzy. In comparison to the Vivitar 28/2,8 Pentax loses.
| | | | | Pentaxian Registered: March, 2008 Location: Quebec city, Canada Posts: 9,363 | | Review Date: October 22, 2010 | Recommended | Price: $80.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Well built, good exposure, even and neutral results | | Cons: | Lacks some punch when compared to other primes | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 7
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 9
Value: 8
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I got this lens a bit by chance, after getting the DA21 LTD (to which it obviously gets compared).
The build quality is great, with a better feel than the A50 f1,4. Metal barrel, smooth focus (short throw, like most wide primes). Good weigth and size, too, though the DA21 got me spoiled. It's also larger than the Takumar bayonet 28 mm, and a bit heavier.
Image quality is very good, with sharp, even results across the frame. Even wide open it's usable, even though it improves when stopped down (obviously). It's bright enough that manual focus is easy.
The limitation of this lens is that, when I compare it with my DA21, it lacks punch when comparing images straight out of the camera. The DA21 has much more saturated and contrasty outputs, but then again it's one of the main perks of that lens, so that's not a fair comparison. The A28's results are very neutral and should react well to post-processing. Taken by itself the images are not lacking, but when compared the difference shows.
Comparing with the Tak bayonet 28 mm, I'd say both have similar colour renderings, but the A28 is better wide open.
In short it's a good lens, very well made. It just lacks the magic feeling of the limiteds.
| | | | | Senior Member Registered: January, 2009 Posts: 173 | | Review Date: June 26, 2010 | Recommended | Price: $55.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Cheap, sharp, has A setting. | | Cons: | Lacks contrast and saturation | |
Got this lens on eBay in minty condition as a replacement for my 28mm SMC Takumar. The build quality of the A series lenses is a bit disappointing to me, but this lens actually handles really well. The lens is very sharp in the center even at f2.8, some sharpness fall off at the edges. Little to no vignetting, CAs are almost non-existent. Distortions are very low too. However, when shotting yesterday in the direction of the sun (without a hood) the contrast and saturation was rather low. When shooting away from the sun this thing excels. For the $55 I've paid for it this lens is great. I think it outperforms my SMC Takumar 28mm f3.5 in all areas.
| | | | | | | | Review Date: December 17, 2009 | Recommended
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Enough sharp, good bokeh | | Cons: | Not so good image corners due to 5.6 | |
Just got this lens from e-bay. Using it with GX20.
1. It is good (not great) walk around lens on aps-c (42mm), but could be used also for landscape photo closed down to 2-3 steps.
2. It is little bit soft and cs wide open, but good for close portraits shots. Closing it down to 2 stops makes it sharp and usefull for street photography.
3. It is strongly depends on focus precision, even closed, so I use nikon`s K3 focusing screen (rebuilded by our chineese friends) and using microprisms ring have enough precised manual focus.
4. Contrast is good from wide open.
5. Bokeh is smooth and looks well for my first view.
| | | | | New Member Registered: October, 2008 Location: London / Southampton Posts: 1 | | Review Date: February 4, 2009 | Recommended | Price: $90.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Beautiful construction, good image quality | | Cons: | | |
Got this lens for £40 at a local shop.
This is by far my most used lens for street and architectural photography. The lens does display some minor purple fringing that the edges when wide open, but this disappears completely by f/4. Likewise the edges are less sharp and display some vignetting at f/2.8, but this rapidly clears up as the lens is stopped down.
The imges produced are not the most puchy or exciting but i feel it produces very 'real', accurate images. One of it's best features is the lack of distortion; horizons and edges are truly straight!
My copy is wonderfully constructed, the focus ring is a joy to use especially as the full focal range is acheived with only a 90-degree twist of the ring.
| | | | | | | | Review Date: April 6, 2008 | Recommended | Price: $100.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | good build quality and image quality is good | | Cons: | | |
I think someone summed this lens quality as "blah". I can under stand this because I have not found a wide angle lens to knock me off my feet in image quality either.
That said, this is as good as or better than everything I have used in the 17-35mm range (that would be the Tamron SP17-35, Tamron Adptall 17mm, Vivitar 19mm, Tokina 20-35mm, Sigma 15-30mm and Canon EF 24mm). Expect to get better quality when looking at 50mm and longer lenses, but for a wide angle that you can pop in your pocket, this one does the trick.
This is one of my favorite travel lenses and I have taken some great images with this lens on both film and digital.
| | | | | Veteran Member Registered: November, 2006 Location: Belgrade Posts: 656 | | Review Date: March 2, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $80.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Small, very well built, very good image quality | | Cons: | Minor vignetting and loss of contrast only wide open | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 7
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 9
Value: 8
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This lens is often underrated and overlooked for the reasons I can not understand. It is indeed a very good lens!
Sharing the build quality with other M and A series lenses it is a pleasure to use. Optically it is very good at all apertures between f/4 and f/16 in all respects. The very important quality is that there is no practical difference between center and corner sharpness and contrast at that aperture range providing uniform and pleasing results throughout the frame. Also, barrel distortion typical for all wide-angle lenses is usually not noticeable or if noticeable it is far from distracting.
At f/2.8 there is very slight loss of sharpness and contrast, but still almost uniform across the frame. This characteristics makes it really hard to spot minor quality loss at f/2.8 since within a single frame one does not have multiple points of reference with clearly variable quality to compare, so with most subjects (apart from test charts) it will most likely remain unnoticed. However, on uniformly lit surfaces slight vignetting may become noticeable, but gets greatly reduced at f/4 and disappears entirely by f/5.6. Finally, at f/22 (as with any other lens) diffraction becomes noticeable slightly reducing edge sharpness.
Recommended.
(Note: opinion based on use with Pentax *istDS.)
| | | | | New Member Registered: February, 2019 Posts: 15
5 users found this helpful
| | Review Date: September 5, 2019 | Recommended | Price: $40.00
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | Small, light, does what it does | | Cons: | Tends to attract dust and haze. Plas-sticky | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 7
Value: 7
Camera Used: Film
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I've had one through the years on film cameras, so I'm not getting confused between the actual lens performance and a digital processor plus sensor then a heap of on-camera picture quality adjustment software systems, followed by an online editing software suite to get my images.
It's a really nice lens, but it tends to lack the solid metal feel of the "M" series version. Quite a few "A" series lenses have plastic parts inside and outside. They also wear out faster, developing wobbles and wear in most of the moving parts. That's kind of acceptable when you realise they are decades old. What you also have to keep in mind is that servicing an old "A" Series lens can be risky as some parts can break more easily than the better-built "M" lenses.
I think a lot of people have good and bad views on this lens because they are not realising that a lens can look internally clean, while being a mess inside when it comes to wide angle designs. A lot of people assume they can simply "look into" a lens and see haze and dust; you cannot, especially with a wide angle that tends to have small diameter and highly magnifying optics. You need to carefully shine an LED light through it - never looking directly at the light beam - to see the real muck and haze inside. As with most sub-50mm lenses, it's not the easiest of lenses to clean out. And Pentax seem to have made these with glass that tends to fog and that is hard to clean up. Get a dirty one and you will have bad images, so seek guarantees from your seller and make sure you can return it if it's full of blue foggy haze or masses of dust. Dust tends to cluster on the lens system around the aperture blades; caused by wear on their movement through the decades. Get a clean one and it will be 8, 9 or 10/10 for image quality.
As with all lenses it is sharpest for most of the images across the centre-to-corners at f5.6 to f11. And it performs very similar to the "M" Series version in most situations. Outside of that range this lens stays sharp with only minor softening; pretty much what any sane mind would find 100% acceptable.
Easy to work (yep, you simply turn the rings) this is a great lens. It's such a pity so many sellers force buyers to fork out a small fortune on auction sites, and it's more of a pity some buyers fork out that much cash. $40-ish is a reasonable price. Over that and you are clearly rolling in cash and may as well save a bit more and buy a Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon.
| | | | | Forum Member Registered: August, 2013 Posts: 83
4 users found this helpful
| | Review Date: August 2, 2013 | Recommended | Price: $90.00
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | Not very expensive, well built, small, A mode | | Cons: | Not as sharp as expected | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 9
Value: 8
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A few shots
Pentax K-5 - 1/80sec - F4.0 - ISO 100 - Auto white balance - spot meter - tripod
Now a few pics with 1, 2, 3 extension tubes with different settings. The lens was not reverse mounted. The quality may not be the best since I have not a macro rail to fine focus . The full size pics are on flickr.
In the next pic the lens was reverse mounted on 2 extension tubes. The subject it's a Dionaea Muscipula sensor more or less the size of a Human hair.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xz1pics/sets/72157634903950036/
Enjoy
| | | | | New Member Registered: January, 2011 Posts: 1
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: January 20, 2011 | Recommended | Price: $70.00
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | 42mm on DSLR, A-setting, nice when stopped down, small | | Cons: | overall build, loose focus ring, bit hard to focus accurately | |
I have bought this lens due to two reasons. Firstly I wanted to try A lens (after two M lenses I already had). Secondly I wanted to get as close to 50mm on DSLD (K20D) as I can without buying more expensive and harder to get 35mm lens.
I was already spoiled with M50/1.7 and M75-150/4 so when it arrived I was less than thrilled with overall quality of A28/2.8. It doesn't feel as sturdy as M50/1.7. Moreover focusing ring works in some uneven manner (bit loose at 0.7m, at least my one) and it just breaks loose while I press the shutter so it is possible to accidentally turn it then. Also it is not as sharp as my both M lenses... In fact due to loose focusing ring and not-so-sharp images at first I thought that I have got damaged lens.
I am overall pleased with performance I got however. It's small. It is 42mm on DSLR, which renders really nice view. It gives nice colors and details (if you won't miss focus) too. The A-setting (along with exposure compensation) allows to get accurate exposition in vast majority of shots which really makes quite a difference from "slower to operate" M lenses. Additionally at f2.8 you can take some hand-held photos in dim light quite easily. And it has not so bad bokeh too.
All in all this is my choice for general walk-around lens for now.
evening:
low light, high iso:
 | | | | | Site Supporter Registered: February, 2010 Location: Salt Lake City, UT Posts: 1,914 | | Review Date: July 30, 2010 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | compact, sharp, useful for reverse macro | | Cons: | plastic build elements, focus ring can come loose | |
This really is a nice little lens for budget shooting. it's sharp, it's snappy, it's compact. It's color rendition is fine, and 28mm is a useful focal length, being somewhat wide on APS-C. It's also a full frame lens.
It's lack of auto focus means that I'm unlikely to put this in the camera bag, let alone on the camera, and will shoot with my DA* 16-50 instead.
I picked up my copy to reverse mount for macro, and for that, it's focal length is great.
If you're looking for a budget way to try out faster glass, this is a great start. They're common and cheap.
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