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Senior Member Registered: October, 2007 Location: Thach, Alabama Posts: 169 | | Review Date: November 17, 2007 | Recommended
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Compact and inexpensive. Silky smooth focus. | | Cons: | Slightly soft at widest aperture. This makes it great for soft focus portraits. | |
I got this lens with my K1000 Film camera back in 1978 or 79. It has performed flawlessly for all these years and is still one of the sharpest and best in my lens box. If you are looking for an inexpensive portrait or walk about lens this one will fill the bill. I use it a lot for low light long exposures at night as well. Sharp enough to allow lots of cropping.
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Forum Member Registered: June, 2007 Location: Belgium Posts: 96 | | Review Date: June 21, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $25.00
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | sharpness stopped down, size | | Cons: | sharpness wide open, there are faster alternatives | |
A nice little lens, if you can get it for a decent price and don't have a 50mm yet, go for it.
Wide open it isn't quite as good as its more expensive 1.7 and 1.4 siblings, but it's definitly acceptable.
Stopped down this lens really shines. At f8 it's razor sharp.
Very compact, nice if you don't want to get too much attention to yourself.
Very good value for the money, just like most Pentax SMC primes.
Tom
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Inactive Account Registered: February, 2007 Location: Atlanta, GA USA Posts: 4 | | Review Date: April 20, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Compact, inexpensive, well built | | Cons: | Nowhere close to the 50mm f1.4 in quality | |
Came with MX back in early 1980's. Since supplanted by the FA 50mm f1.4.
Sharpness 8
bokeh 7
Color 7
Handling 8
Build 8
Distortion 8
Aberations 8
Value 9
Good for a kit lens then and for a "budget" lens now.
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Site Supporter Registered: March, 2007 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 486 | | Review Date: March 12, 2007 | Recommended
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Relatively fast, especiaily for the price. Widely available. | | Cons: | It's pretty soft when wide open. | |
I got this lens pretty much for free off Craigslist. I bought someone's old K1000 kit and I sold off the items that I didn't want. In the end, I actually made all of my money back and I got to keep this lens.
I have the f/1.7 version of this lens though, so I don't really use the f/2 version very often. It's nice to have when I want a 50mm lens on both my DSLR and film SLR cameras though.
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Veteran Member Registered: February, 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 1,774 | | Review Date: February 19, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $60.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | compact, smooth focus, decent sharpness | | Cons: | could be sharper. | |
I bought this with a Pentax ME for $60. Great lens. Its usually the lens I almost always carry around although it sees a fair bit of competition from my XR Rikenon 50mm f2.
Can be easily obtained and works great on film and dslr. Great for low light and the focus is butter smooth!
Like the others said, the slightly softness wide open can be your best asset!
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Senior Member Registered: December, 2006 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 143 | | Review Date: February 14, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $22.00
| Rating: 5 |
| Pros: | Inexpensive. | | Cons: | Hard to focus. | |
Average 80's era lens. Don't really feel its F2 speed makes it any better than the kit DA18-55 or kit DA50-200 when you factor in the tradeoff of manual focus and metering.
However, sometimes when shooting portraits, the softness at F2 is an asset.
Recommended as a $20 lens. You can't lose. I'm asking myself if the extra half stop for a 50mm f1.7 is worth paying $50-60? No, it's not.
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New Member Registered: January, 2007 Location: Canada Posts: 5 | | Review Date: February 7, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $20.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Metal, small, robust, focus ring is so smooth! | | Cons: | not shart on the edge | |
Bought it for about 18$US, the metal was chipped, but the glass was perfect.
I call it my "battle" lens, the one use in extreme conditions. It is also the fastest lens that I have :-(
The edge of the image is not as sharp as my other lenses, but it might be due to the rough time it had in the past.
But I don't think I could live without it.
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Veteran Member Registered: September, 2006 Location: Bertram Texas Posts: 584 | | Review Date: February 7, 2007 | Recommended
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Small, cheap, readily available, easy focus, good build, multi-coated, usable with DSLRs, too! | | Cons: | Wide open is f/2, DSLRs require some menu changes to work with this lens. | |
This lens came as the kit lens with my father's K1000, and I have been using it with my new K100D, it's darn sharp, and easy to focus, and being a prime, you don't have to worry about zooming in. Nice bokeh. Small, too.  Only con might be the adjustments one has to make in a DSLR's menu to use this lens.  | |
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Administrator
Site Webmaster Registered: September, 2006 Location: Arizona Posts: 51,594 | | Review Date: January 8, 2007 | Recommended | Price: $35.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Solid construction, very compact, inexpensive | | Cons: | Relatively slow | |
This well-built metal lens served as a nice and compact kit lens for manual Pentax SLR bodies.
I found it to take great pictures at all aperture, and I prefer it over the A version because of its metal body (the A-series version is mostly made of plastic).
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Inactive Account Registered: December, 2006 Location: Boise, Idaho Posts: 27 | | Review Date: January 8, 2007 | Not Recommended | Price: $30.00
| Rating: 3 |
| Pros: | Lightweight and cheap. | | Cons: | Poor performance wide open and doesn't pick up until stopped down to at least f/5.6. Double ugly bokeh. | |
The SMC-M 50mm f/2 lens is equal in poor performance to my SMC-A 50mm f/2 (see my review of the 50mm f/2 SMC-A lens.
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Veteran Member Registered: September, 2006 Posts: 5,697 | | Review Date: January 8, 2007 | Recommended
| Rating: 10 |
| Pros: | exellent in low light conditions | | Cons: | none that I've found | |
I believe that it was the kit lens on the 35+ year old Pentax MV that my mom bought shortly after my birth.
I recently started playing around with it on my K100D, in every weather and lighting condition imaginable. And it's always taken exceptional quality photographs.
It now spends more time on my camera than the rest of my lenses put together.
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