| Latest Review Posted | SMC Pentax-M 24-50mm F4
I bought this by mistake, I thought I was bidding on the Pentax-A version.
It's not as bad as all that, though. I've seen a sharpness of "3" and this lens is not a sharpness score of "3". On the other hand, it's not that great either. Best performance is at the long end of the focal range, 50 mm. Barrel distortion, vignetting, softness, and lateral CA get progressively worse as you move towards 24 mm. Stopping down improves the vignetting, but doesn't do as much to clean up the image quality as you might have expected. Also, although my copy is very clean, I notice a distinct green color cast.
Most of the IQ issues can be fixed pretty easily in post processing. All that's left is some residual mushiness around the peripheral of the 35 mm frame, which alas is not fixable by stopping down. When you consider that this is a manual focus lens with no electronic coupling to the camera, it all adds up to a lot of bother for fairly mediocre images.
It would be a pretty easy pass, if it wasn't for the fact that cheap, wide-standard options starting below 28 mm on Pentax FF are limited, 24-50 is a pretty fun zoom range to work with, and the lens does handle very nicely. But let's be realistic - you probably want to hold out for the Pentax-A or the FA versions. |
