Hi everybody, This is my first post here after joining this list for a year or so. I have the K 18mm f/3.5 which was passed down to me by my father. From this list, this seems to be a rare and highly regarded and hardly mentioned. From my experience, at f/3.5 corners are soft and is prone to fringing. Corners improve at f/5.6 but fringing still present at high contrast edges. The fringing is gone by f/8. The lens is heavy and well built and the aperture ring along with the other K lens I own the 150mm turn smoothly with a soft click, much better than the loud click of the M 50mm f/1.7. A metal ring surrounding the rear element has come off partly and the aperture blades are normal at times, sticky at others. I have tried the lens on a *ist D at a IT Show together with the FAJ 18-35 at f/3.5 and f/4 respectively. The 18mm was softer than the 18-35mm and there was more CA on the 18mm. The 18-35mm at full aperture was softer at 18mm than at 35mm. I would welcome comments from users of the K 18mm and would like to know how the K/A 15mm works on the *ist D.
I also have the M 35mm f/2.8, M 50mm f/1.7 and K 150mm f/4, 2 Kiron zooms, 1 Sigma fish-eye,1 Tamron mirror lens, 1 Kiron prime, 1 Tokina prime, a MX, ME, Ricoh XR-7, a National flash, a Metz hammerhead flash, a boxful of 52mm filters and a Rollei slide projector. There were also many boxes of slides which consists mostly of buildings of Sinagpore in the 70s, Japan in the same period of time taken when he was working in a travel agency and Hong Kong and Malaysia taken during family trips .My father bought the MX with 35mm, 50mm and 150mm in 1977-78 and shot actively in clubs and outings till the early 90s, probably due to work and family. In the early 70s, he owned a Nikkormat with 50mm f/2 lens but switched to Pentax for unknown reasons. He also purchased a Olympus Om-40 with 28mm and 35-70mm second hand, though it is no longer in working condition. In 2001, he bought a Pentax Z-1 new from a shop which claimed that it was ordered by a customer 10 years ago but never collected and a Tamron 28-200 XR for my use. I won a Canon Ixus V2 with a picture I took of our National Day celebration in 2002. >From young, I saw my father mixing silica gel in the corridor until he purchased a dry box. I come from Singapore and started taking photography seriously when I was in junior college at 17, which I think is equivalent to High School in the US. I take pictures of family and friends at family events, local celebrities at public appearances and local buildings. I am in the army as a technician. I am often the photographer for major events and will be entering university in July. Thanks for reading my lengthy post. Regards, Oh Cheng Yu
