| Review of: SMC Pentax-DA 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 ED AL [IF] by sewerynthegreat on Sun June 18, 2017 | Rating: 9 | View more reviews | |
Views: 257158
Reviews: 50
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Really good lens, for what it is i.e. super-zoom. Mine copy is sharp, at 18mm even wide open (but wit some aberrations), after ~30mm needs to be stooped down two steps to get best results. At 250mm soft to f8, best for f11-13
In range 18-55 much better then kit DA18-55, less aberrations, better sharpness and in general faster. Where kit at 55mm is f5.6 this lens is f4.5 up to 70mm.
Sadly you might need some post processing software to get rid of vignetting and distortion at 18mm.
f3.5 to around 22mm
f4 to around 35mm
f4.5 to 70mm
f5.6 to 170mm
Lens has obvious limitations it is soft at 250mm, at f11 is better but mainly in centre of an image (which is usually main scope off the telephoto) happily for 200mm and f8 it is really decent.
Bokeh is not so bad, lens can imitate macro capability pretty well which can be seen on attached image.
While it is really good for range 18-70mm everything above is simply added value so if you can buy it for around 250$ it is really worth considering. It is perfect lens for sunny day or holidays very versatile, definitely worth buying if versatility is most important factor.
18 centre
18 extreme
70mm
100mm
200mm
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-DA 50mm F1.8 by sewerynthegreat on Sat December 17, 2016 | Rating: 8 | View more reviews | |
Views: 429836
Reviews: 74
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Image quality is practically identical to Pentax A 50mm 1.7. I the image centre DA at f1.8 is as sharp as A at 1.7 but in the corners of the image DA is sharper.
Bokeh as well as bokeh rings looks similar but photos from A are slightly better.
When full open images are soft but acceptable, good news is that steeping it down to 2.0 helps to remove soapy blur and slightly increases sharpness. At 2.2 it starts to be really sharp.
Auto focus is not to accurate, you can easily focus not exactly on object of your interest which happened few times during the test.
Focusing is the biggest problem it might happen that image taken with 2.0 can be sharper then one taken at 2.8… In general lens is sharp and there is no big difference between it and A1.7 sadly performance is limited by focusing system which is very inaccurate. I cannot say is it fault of SAFOX X auto-focus system, lens or both but it fails to deliver as good images as optics of the DA are capable of...
Pentax A 50mm F1.7 (at F1.7)
Pentax-DA 50mm F1.8 (at F1.8)
Pentax A 50mm F1.7 (at F1.7)
Pentax-DA 50mm F1.8 (at F1.8)
Pentax-DA 50mm F1.8 (at F2.2)
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-DA L 18-50mm F4-5.6 DC WR RE by sewerynthegreat on Sun November 27, 2016 | Rating: 9 | View more reviews | |
Views: 74175
Reviews: 20
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For its price lens is good, light, small and relatively sharp also wide open (but still slow).
From my initial tests it looked like this lens might been sharper then my favourite Pentax F 35-70.
Further tests reviled that it is sadly not as sharp but close. (DAL is sometimes sharper wide open) Auto focus is silent reasonably fast but not super accurate ( Pentax AF).
Small, light and cheap. Great lens to carry with you in case of emergency i.e. bad weather conditions :)
Limitations are obvious, it is rather slow and doesn't seem to be very rugged, auto focus is average some photos are clearly not in focus, sharpness is OK.
Stating that it is super sharp is not true but it is decently sharp and very sharp as for cheap kit. Lens can produce very good images and is worth buying especially instead of old kit which is bigger less sharp gives more aberrations and have slower and louder AF.
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL by sewerynthegreat on Sat October 4, 2014 | Rating: 3 | View more reviews | |
Views: 170155
Reviews: 97
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I got this lens with my K-500 but I haven’t used it much since last weekend when encouraged by lack of any other "wide" angle lens I decided to give it a try.
And I am super disappointed, lens is awful!
I rated it 3 and I am not exaggerating it is sooooooooo bad... I just lost a lots of respect to Pentax when I tried this lens it is just so bad I cant imagine any one would want to give it for free not to mention to sell it.
To prove how bad it is below 100% crop
centre of the image
corner of the image (not the corner itself just slightly aside from centre)
This is one of my better pictures taken with this lens, when there is slightly less light lens gives even worse IQ.
At f7-8 and 18mm only centre of image is not super soft rest of picture is very soft and ugly pictures are literally useless and can be compared at best to quality of pictures taken by smartphone...
Seriously I can’t say anything good about it.
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-F 35-135mm F3.5-4.5 by sewerynthegreat on Tue July 22, 2014 | Rating: 9 | View more reviews | |
Views: 135384
Reviews: 20
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I have compared this lens with previously used by me FA 28-200 both comparable cheap walk around lenses.
Wide open both lenses are useful only when lack of sharpness is going to be better then using high ISO in other words both are very soft.
F 35-135 beats FA in sharpness at faster apertures but, F suffers from CA. After stepping FA down to f/7-f/8 sharpness is comparable but CA are almost non existent in FA.
In general I have chose to keep F 35-135, I managed to take good photos with FA but was always forced to go or with slow shutter speed or with high ISO...or to go with soft images :)
With F 35-135 you can expect it to be sharp at 35mm from f/4, at 65 from f/4.5, at 135 from f/5.6-f6,.3.
As long as you are mainly interested in the centre of the picture it will be ok if not You will have to step it down to f/8. In other words this lens is faster then FA and offers good image quality.
For the price of 90$ it is good lens.
left F 35-135 right FA 28-200
65mm
135mm
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| Review of: Takumar 135mm F2.5 Bayonet by sewerynthegreat on Thu June 26, 2014 | Rating: 9 | View more reviews | |
Views: 270398
Reviews: 70
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Very nice lens, fast, sharp and reasonably cheap, image quality is very nice colours are very natural.
Lens lacks any coating so shooting into the sun results in flare and very low contrast, but it can be fixed by using longer hood.
At f2.5 lens is soft but very useful in low light. Gets sharp at f4 and very sharp at f5.6.
Lens is fully manual and lacks coating there for requires some effort to take good shot.
Very sharp, fast and useful lens.
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-F 35-70mm F3.5-4.5 by sewerynthegreat on Tue June 24, 2014 | Rating: 10 | View more reviews | |
Views: 389410
Reviews: 101
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I just got it and I am really astonished.
As for zoom lens it is very sharp, even wide open!
Lens is sharp not prime sharp but almost as good.
I am just discovering prime lenses quality and was recently amazed by Pentax A 50/1.7 image quality. This lens is not as fast but offers almost as good image quality and is more versatile. So now it is my first choice for day walk around lens. Also much better then Kit lens.
Main complains are: lens has a bit too narrow field of view and, is only 35-70mm.
Great lens, cheap, light, sharp and reasonably fast, with good macro mode.
At 35mm
At 70mm
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-A 28mm F2.8 by sewerynthegreat on Tue June 24, 2014 | Rating: 9 | View more reviews | |
Views: 318755
Reviews: 63
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Quite soft wide open, starts to be sharp after f3.5, very sharp after f5.0.
Unsurprisingly sharper then kit lens but not as sharp as expected from prime lens, don’t get me wrong it is sharp but unfortunately not as sharp as Pentax A 50/1.7.
Thanks to A setting easy to use.
As for its price it is a great lens, sharp and reasonably fast. Very useful in indoors shooting when 50mm is too long.
For less than 80$ it is worth buying.
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-A 50mm F1.7 by sewerynthegreat on Tue June 3, 2014 | Rating: 10 | View more reviews | |
Views: 567644
Reviews: 143
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Overall great lens for small price.
Soft at f1.7, sharper at f2, razor sharp after f5.
Great lens when there is not too much light, unfortunatelly offers to narrow field of view (75mm) quite difficult to shot indoors like at family parties etc.
At f2 you will be able to take photos with literally four times smaller ISO then when using for example kit lens.
Not to versatile but much sharper than any zoom.
It is worth to pay more and get A instead of M, exposure automation makes life much simpler.
Grate build quality, great value for the price, highly recommended.
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-FA J 75-300mm F4.5-5.8 AL by sewerynthegreat on Mon June 2, 2014 | Rating: 8 | View more reviews | |
Views: 126800
Reviews: 23
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I bought mine for around 90$. I wasn’t expecting much but I was positively surprised.
For its price it is good lens. It is better then Pentax F 100-300mm and offers decent IQ.
Bit soft at 300mm when full open, gets decent sharp when stopped down to f7.1. Best results from f8-10.
Overall results are comparable but bit worse than my Sigma 75-300mm F4-5.6 DL.
It is great lens for sunny day, for taking photos of planes in day light when you can step it down to f10 it is good choice. If you want to take some shots of birds in cloudy day, when you may need more light or faster shouter speed it might be to slow and soft.
Unsurprisingly the biggest issue is aberration especially when full open, but much less than in Pentax F 100-300mm better or at least equal to Sigma 75-300mm F4-5.6 DL.
Autofocus works quite viciously but is Ok, mount is plastic but overall it is good lens for its price and for 300mm zoom.
300mm
300mm F10 ISO 1600 ( sharp but to slow to take photo of a bird in shadow)
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-FA 28-200mm F3.8-5.6 AL [IF] by sewerynthegreat on Thu April 17, 2014 | Rating: 9 | View more reviews | |
Views: 155967
Reviews: 20
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I was looking for versatile lens. First I was anxious about this lens, it is quite old zoom designed for SLR and for brief moment I was even considering purchase of almost twice the price used Sigma 18-200mm. At the end I went with Pentax and I don’t regret it.
Lens is quite big and heavy but also very well made and quite nice looking attached to camera.
First I compared it to kit 18-55 lens and I was surprised that effects for around 28mm was almost identical in every aspect (I was expecting 28-200 to be worse).
At FL 28mm and wide open it is a soft, it starts to be sharp at 5.6 and gets best results for 7.1-8.
I took few pictures with 200mm FL and was also surprised. Despite the fact that at full open picture came a bit soapy stepping it down a bit made it clear and sharp. Much sharper and cleaner than I expected.
At 200mm wide open 5.6 it is a bit soft, it starts to be sharp at 7.1 best results from 8-12.
So, as for zoom with such zoom range it is reasonably sharp. But don’t expect it to be prime sharp :)
The biggest issue with this lens is that there is a bit of purple fringing and lens can flare easily. Also it needs to be stopped down.
As general purpose zoom lens it is good especially for its price I got mine in almost mint condition with hood for around 110$.
So if you are looking for cheap versatile day lens and you don’t need wide angle it is worth considering.
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| Review of: SMC Pentax-F 100-300mm F4.5-5.6 by sewerynthegreat on Thu April 17, 2014 | Rating: 7 | View more reviews | |
Views: 124104
Reviews: 20
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First thing you can notice it is its size, specifically length which makes it unhandy.
Lens feels solid build but at the price of mass which is quite high but not much more than other 300mm zooms.
As for IQ my lens suffered from huge lack of sharpness in corners and noticeable purple fringing.
At full zoom I was able to make really good sharp pictures after stepping down to F13 but mainly of close objects from 5 to 15 m like birds on trees, decent quality pictures of high contrast, not moving objects laying further then 50m.
But failed miserably to take pictures of flying aircrafts. Camera had huge problems with focusing on plane no matter in which mode. Pictures were almost always very soft. I managed to take sharper pictures with much more details with my Pentax F 80-200mm lens at 200mm F8-10.
As far as I know it might depend from camera to camera and even it doesn’t work for me it might work well with other cameras.
So from my experience I can recommend it only if you can check it before buying or if it is cheap and, mainly to close shots of wild nature in very good light.
Some pictures at 300mm F13
  
300mm F11
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