I had one for quite a while and found it an excellent performer overall. What I never really liked about it was the somewhat loose, wobbly feel of the focusing ring and resulting imprecision when focusing manually, particularly for settings near infinity. It was always hard to make a small adjustment... just taking my fingers off the ring at distances near infinity would move the focus setting.
It has a little less light falloff at corner and edges than the DA*50-135, but in all other respects the DA* zoom out-performs it IMO ... except on size of course. The DA* zoom is a bulky thing, particularly when fitted with its lens hood, ameliorated to a degree only by the fact that its all internal focus and zoom design means it never changes length or rotates the front element. I like that. Godfrey On Feb 24, 2008, at 8:13 AM, Steve Desjardins wrote: > It's really too bad that the FA 135 2.8 isn't available any more. > With > the DX format, it's a sharp, fast and light telephoto. I never used > this lens much with film, but it suddenly, uh, fills the same place in > my heart as that FA 200 2.8 I used to covet so much. It's odd that it > rarely gets mentioned since it's probably just as good or better than > the high end of the new DA* 50-135 2.8. Of course, I guess that "not > available" part does put a damper on its popularity. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
