| Author: | | Inactive Account Registered: September, 2008 Location: Singapore Posts: 1 | | Review Date: October 26, 2008 | Recommended | Price: $95.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | sharp, good contrast | | Cons: | focussing sluggish | |
I just acquired this lense and I would say it quite surprise me upon seing how sharp it is....well, not so sharp actually but compared to the kit lense, it is..and gives good contrast too....my lens is a silver one.
Only complain is focusing is sluggish and putting the hood will take time as it is screwed to the front end and putting up filter is messy affair..
other than that..im happy with the overal sharpness,contrast and the cheap price..
| | | | | | | Senior Member Registered: August, 2008 Location: UK Posts: 237
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: October 1, 2008 | Recommended
| Rating: 6 |
| Pros: | Very cheap, quite sharp stopped down. | | Cons: | Slack focus ring in MF, not wide enough on APS-C. | |
Its construction is soild enough for a kit lens, if a bit plastic-tastic. At least the mount is metal. The front element wobbles a tiny bit. The stop-down lever is not the smoothest. The diaphragm is a six-bladed type. Weight is 300 grams.
The zoom ring is fairly smooth and not too sticky, rather stiffer around the 28mm and 80mm ranges. Autofocus is quite snappy, but manual focus is very bad - due to the short focus throw, and loose focus ring that has virtually no resistance.
Image quality is on a par with the SMC Pentax-DA 18-55 3.5-5.6 AL, its APS-C DSLR equivalent. While predicatably soft wide open, and prone to chromatic aberration, I have found that the 28-80 can sometimes outperform the 18-55 at around f/11, at least where sharpness is concerned. Contrast can be a bit higher on the 28-80 too.
There's certainly no problem with vignetting with this lens when a 1.5x crop factor is involved. Also, the 28mm end serves as a convenient "standard" focal length if you've no other equivalent lens.
Not a brilliant lens by anyone's standards, but cheap and easy to find, especially when included with an MZ/ZX type SLR found often on eBay. It doesn't get used much, but it's a keeper nonetheless. It's useful as a beginner or backup lens.
| | | | | | | | Review Date: April 6, 2008 | Not Recommended
| Rating: 4 |
| Pros: | light, low cost zoom | | Cons: | not very sharp | |
This isn't a bad lens, but it isn't a very good one either. When I purchased it, the third party lenses I tried that cost less were much worst; however, this one did not live up to my expectations.
Later I got a Tokina AT-X 28-70mm f/2.8 lens which I was really impressed with.
| | | | | Forum Member Registered: January, 2007 Location: Yorkshire, England Posts: 80 | | Review Date: June 14, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $100.00
| Rating: 6 |
| Pros: | Cheap, Lightweight, decent zoom range | | Cons: | | |
I have used this lens on both film and digital cameras and I have never been let down by it, but at the same time never been overly inspired by it either.
It is quite compact and is very light, and the zoom range makes it a versatile everyday budget lens suitable for family days out when you don't want to take a selection of lenses, especially with the digital range for the candid shots.
Focusing is quick and sharp, colour rendition is pretty good also, it is best used above F.4 for sharpness.
I find manual focus quite difficult to use because the focusing ring moves too easily, I much prefer the stiffer, smoother focusing you find on the A and M series lenses.
| | | | | | | | | | Review Date: May 19, 2007 | Recommended
| Rating: 5 |
| Pros: | Cheap, light weight, decent performance for a budget lens. | | Cons: | cheap, light weight, decent perfformance for a cheap lens. | |
Somewhere along the line, cheap 28-80mm lenses went from decent f3.5-4.5 zooms the cheapo f3.5-5.6 models, this is one of them. My wife likes this lens because it gives much better performance on a small sensor DSLR than it did on film where vignetting and corner softness were issues. The APS sized sensor has effectively left that fuzzy edge far behind.
It is light weight, the construction is not exactly confidence building, this is plastic that looks and feels like plastic. It does have a metal lens mount (something other manufacturers didn't all include on their lenses from that era). If, like my wife, you like candid photography, this lens (with an effecctive focal range of 42mm to 120mm on a DSLR) can make for a very good choice in good light.
It is normally available used for less than $30 and is a good buy at this level. The 28-70mm f4 lens is a better choice but costs more and sometimes develops problems with lens elements separating (apparently).
Ira
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