| Latest Review Posted | HD Pentax-D FA* 50mm F1.4 SDM AW
I have now had this lens for over two years and it has been a part of my travel and hike kit, for most of my travels.
IQ-wise, this lens is probably the best 50mm lens that money can buy. Amazing results. Very few lenses can be routinely used wide open like this one can (at the right places, that is). Especially in PP it is clear how little, hardly any, aberrations there are and how sharp this lens is. It is very easy to get technically good quality pictures with this lens.
The lens however has one weird behaviour, which is probably not an problem for majority of photographers. I live in a cold climate and spend extended times out in the wild, and this lens is my only lens which actually stops working in cold. This has happened to me even when it is not extremely cold, hardly even -20C (-4F). I have several modern lenses (e.g. DFA 15-30 and DFA 21) and none of my other lenses does this. (Actually the DFA 15-30 did that once, when I shot astro landscape in -35C (+ some windchill) overnight, but that is rather extreme, and it only failed after hours and hours of use.)
For my use case, this basically means that DFA 1.4/50 is a lens for summer hikes and not for winter. The lens let me down a few times in the cold, so I know this is not a one-time thing but keeps on occurring every time I go out with the lens in winter. It is however to be noted that shorter stays outdoors, do not make the lens fail, but you have to be outside for hours for that to happen. This is why... |
