| Latest Review Posted | SMC Pentax-A 24-50mm F4
This is the first vintage zoom that I've bought, and although I've had great experiences with some vintage primes, I wasn't expecting miracles from an old zoom. I was interested in a zoom that would double as both a wide lens for full frame when hiking, and a walk-around zoom for shooting video on the micro-four-thirds GX80. Because native m43 lenses apply digital sharpening in-camera to video (which cannot be switched off), adapted lenses are essential to avoid a nasty video look.
The lens works great on the gx80, the 2:1 Crop factor removes the weak corners and sides and the 4K video and stills are sharp corner to corner even when wide open. It's pretty much stuck to my GX85 for daytime shooting. There are a couple of handling issues: the front element rotates, which is not ideal for use with polarising filters, and the focus drifts out when zooming. The focal range is equivalent to roughly 50-100mm, which is quite useful.
On Full Frame, it's not as positive. The corners and sides are very soft, and do not really get much better at f8 or f11. It's better at the longer end, but never marvellous. On the plus side, the colours are typically great Pentax.
I haven't got an APS-C camera to check if the worst of the sides and corners is cropped out, but I'd imagine that there is still some weakness visible, particularly at the wide end. |
