| Review of: SMC Pentax-D FA 100mm F2.8 Macro WR by pixel r0n1n on Fri December 3, 2010 | Rating: 10 | View more reviews | |
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I am not such a technical photographer yet, and will limit this review to how I felt using it. All the previous reviews describe the lens quite precisely on build, feel and focus accuracy.
I got the lens a few days before a recent trip to China and one of its lesser known villages near Whenzhou city. In other words, my experience with a true macro has been limited only to the DA 35Ltd. I bought the lens since I was so pleased with the 35's ability to close focus which is usually my all rounder go to lens. I thought, for travel, it would be great to have a medium telephoto that would close focus as well if needed. It certainly did not disappoint. So, I've used it mostly as a med telephoto with some close ups on subjects.
It was hard at first to get used to the focal length, but found that the distance needed for my style of photography made me less of an intrusion, or at least attract less attention to myself from the subject. I found it useful to prefocus manually if you are changing subject with a large distance difference. If you let the camera do it, it will travel throughout the focus range which is quite long for this lens. It may miss the mark completely or go the wrong way all the way to the end before coming back in the right distance, in which case you may lose the moment.
Being caught in some rainy weather, I was not worried about the lens while shooting. After returning to a dry place, I found some moisture still stuck in the distance scale window after rotating the focus ring. So, I would advise to check it if you ever shoot in rainy/wet conditions. Wouldn't want fungus to develop because of trapped moisture.
The images it renders on my k-7 are true to Pentax form, beautifully contrasted, tack sharp, and a joy to manual focus when needed.
Here are a few examples.
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