Unless you need the weather sealing, you could also look for a Tamron 18-250. When I was putting my kit together I got one so that I'd always have a lens of the focal lengths I most needed available. It was the lens that lived on my camera body, so that if something came up, I could get the shot, right now, and not have to fumble with changing lenses. I gave up a bit of IQ, but it did better at 250 than using my FA31 and cropping.
As my collection of primes grew I used it less and less. The funny thing is I eventually realized that for a lot of work it is sharp enough. While my views on clarity have been examined to painful detail, it is not the only element by which a photo should be judged, and it's often better to give up a little bit of sharpness rather than miss the entire shot. For what it's worth, my picture that made it into Augenblick last may was shot with my 18-250 on my K100Ds and cropped down to about 3 Megapixels. On Jan 28, 2011, at 8:07 AM, Darren Addy wrote: > On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Peter McIntosh <peter...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Oh - totally uninformed banter also most welcome... :-) > > Good, because I'm FULL of totally uninformed banter - just ask my wife. > > No personal experience, but in my opinion lenses like this are > designed for people who are allergic to changing lenses. In exchange > for that "convenience" you give up speed AND optical quality (there > must be a compromise in IQ for that kind of a focal length range. I > suppose it depends on your priorities and pocketbook. The one rating > on Amazon gives it 4 stars, and the reviewer prefers primes for IQ > over convenience. It might be good for taking into a harsh environment > (like Burning Man or something) where you purposely do not want to be > changing lenses for sensor-protection reasons. But other than that, I > just don't think I'd even want a lens of this range - unless perhaps i > was buying it IN PLACE of the kit lens. > I'm as snobby about primes as the next guy, and probably the guy after that. I have found, however, that there are a lot of cases where using a zoom will get me a better picture. The most critical situation is where I need to be stationary, and my subject is moving around a lot. The IQ that I lose by using a zoom is more than gained by not having to crop. Super zooms can have good enough quality, it depends on the lens and the situation. At the moment, I only use three zooms on anything approaching a regular basis: 16-50, 18-250 and 50-500. I'd love to have a 28-75 for aikido and band photography, and a 50-135 for band photography and even some portrait sessions. -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com sent from i4est -- 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.
