| Latest Review Posted | SMC Pentax-A 50mm F1.7
This lens would easily be a 9 if it had a better aperture ring. I had two Auto Sears (made by Ricoh) lenses with plastic aperture rings and they both felt really great in use. But the one on the A 50 1.7 just gets lose with time and eventually breaks.
The other minus is that the M 50 1.7 has a certain "magic" to it wide open, that might be down to the M era coatings (my other M lenses have the same - even the much-unloved M 200 f4). It's hard to explain - the colors are not super-saturated but they are just so beautiful. The M 50 1.7 wasn't "dreamy" in any way - quite sharp in fact wide open!
And it wasn't just my M 50 1.7 being a better than average copy... I had another M 50 1.7 at one point and it was exactly as good, there was simply no difference between the pictures from both of them wide open (or otherwise).
I eventually sold my copy, but kept the M, and bought an F version of the 50 1.7 design when a good deal came along.
But for those who don't have the M 50 1.7 for comparison, don't let my comparison with the M 50 1.7 fool you. Maybe the M 50 1.7 has an extra 1% over the copy that I had of the A 50 1.7 - maybe other copies are better.
For my copies of the A 50 1.7, the characteristics are as follows:
Positive
-Reasonably sharp at full aperture (better than 50 1.4 designs by Pentax)
-Extremely sharp from f2 and smaller (same for all Pentax 50 1.7 designs)
-Great Colors and rendering
-Very good bokeh (not as good as 1.4 design... |
