New Member Registered: January, 2007 Location: Portland Oregon USA Posts: 7 3 users found this helpful | Review Date: October 19, 2010 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 9 |
Pros: | Smooth focus, excellent build, good sharpness | Cons: | Heavy and very long | | The lens has very little CA, even when used with a digital APS sized sensor. It is heavy but balances very well on the K10D and K20D. Subjectively its sharpness and micro-contrast seem very good, certainly as good as any other lens covering this (admittedly limited) range.When used on a DSLR it gives a focal range of about 115 - 225mm
The focus has the typical creamy Takumar feel, the lens does not appear to suffer unduly from flare, and even when used on non-Pentax bodies - I use mine both on Pentax K mount SLR / DSLR bodies with the Pentax K-M42 adapter (and with a proprietary adapter on my Panasonic Lumix L-1 where the x2 crop factor makes it a 150 - 300mm) it performs very well.
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Loyal Site Supportaxian Registered: September, 2013 Location: Texas Posts: 503 2 users found this helpful | Review Date: December 12, 2013 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 5 |
Pros: | Suprisingly sharp, little CA. | Cons: | Slow, long and bulky. | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 4
Value: 5
| | I wasn't expecting much from an old zoom lens. I was totally surprised with the sharpness and low CA. It is as sharp as modern inexpensive zooms and has less CA than some moderately priced lenses. However...on the down side, this thing is very slow, and although it has "one-touch" zoom and focus, it's very long and bulky. Stick two 4/150 Taks (without hoods) end-to-end and you'll about equal the length of this thing.
My first instinct is to not recommend this thing to anyone because it's so slow and bulky...but it actually takes great photos, better than any other vintage zoom I've used.
If you pick one up cheap and you want to shoot outdoors and you don't mind the bulk, go for it! Otherwise you might want to leave it for the collectors.
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Junior Member Registered: November, 2012 Location: East Coast, Canada Posts: 26 | Review Date: May 1, 2016 | Recommended | Price: $20.00
| Rating: 9 |
Pros: | IQ, cost, build quality | Cons: | Somewhat limited zoom range, long and cumbersome | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 7
Value: 10
Camera Used: K20D
| | I bought this lens from Ebay on a whim and because of the super cheap price tag. I wasn't expecting a whole lot from a zoom lens of this vintage but boy was I wrong!
This lens is awesome despite the couple of cons listed above which are easily dealt with in practice.
I use this lens mostly handheld with good results, images are quite useable wide open but stopped down to 5.6 or 8 are razor sharp.
Bottom line if you can snag one of these cheaply you won't regret it!
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