Hello again, Today I've shot 30 pictures, about half of those with A50/1.4 and the other half with FA-J 18-35. The results from A50/1.4 are fully comparable to the results from F50/1.7, not better, not worse - so for the time being I will keep F50 in my bag (I'll rather have F50/1.7 in the EXIF than "A-series") and save some grams too.
FA-J 18-35 is another story. As focal length decreases so does the quality. At 35mm some of the shots are actually quite good but I don't have any at around 18mm. Probably I can still make a passable A5 print from them, but they definively lack the qualities of the pictures produced by both fixed 50s. I haven't compared them with anything comparable so it may be quite normal behaviour (it's certainly harder to make a wide lens than normal/short tele), but the difference is substantial. While I enjoy peeping (!) at pixels (!) from those fixed 50s I can't say this about shots from 18-35, especially from the wide end. My istDs seems to share my opinion, because it doesn't autofocus properly at wide end (manually focused images are much sharper). It looks that I have two options - either buy a fast, fixed wide (AKA the expensive option) or stick with film and M28/3.5 which is what I'll probably do (Did I say that I also enjoy peeping at the slides with the help of an magnifying glass? ;-). This is the final part of my observations. Hopefully they weren't too boring and too Engrish... Cheers, Peter -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
