I've done some testing and decided that my FA 28-80 was completely decentered to the point of being unusable, especially over 50mm. I'm guessing its likely the sloppiness in the barrel....bad, bad, bad design and construction... I have to stop down to f13 to get a usable image that has ok sharpness across the frame. I'm going to retire this one. For a basically free lens I can't really complain. Its been on my camera pretty full time for a while now and I'm guessing I've just knocked it around too much or something. I tend to be pretty hard on gear and carry a camera pretty much full time, so it get exposed to the elements on a daily basis. What I'm getting at is that I'm about to switch to just fully using primes. I may get a 55-300 as that would be useful and I think I still want a 16-45 for city walk around shots and street.
I have a 12-24 that I should be fixing soon, and hopefully won't need sent off for realignment. I got the aperture on my M 28mm 3.5 working again and am finding it a joy to use. It still needs sent off for a serious cleaning, but even with some dust and a bit of haze it is still giving nice sharp contrasty images stopped down. I think I might find another nice copy since they go for so cheap. I have an A50 1.7 that is razor sharp and an M 50 1.4 that is right up there with it, but I prefer the contrasty rendering of the A lens for landscape personally. If I could get an 18 and a 24mm prime for a reasonable price, I could have an all prime setup with my 12-24 for wide angles. Unfortunately 18 and 24mm lenses aren't plentiful or cheap for pentax. So I will have to use a zoom to fill in some gaps there until I can get rich and afford a 21 ltd. Ok, sorry this is turning into a long ramble. My question is that how do I deal with constant dust accumulating in my primes? Is this something that's just to be expected and I should look at sending lenses out every few years for cleanings? I have a nice tamron 60-300 sp that I eventually retired due to it becoming a dust pump and it has loads of internal dust just after using it to shoot flowers for a few months. Maybe the seals aren't very good in the lens anymore...too bad, it was a sharp zoom that is unlikely worth the cost of cleaning. I try to keep just keep my normal walk around lenses down to a minimum for this reason. Hence why I was using the cheap fa 28-80 for a while because I rather dislike the old 18-55 lens I have. I'll just be down to a 28mm and a 50mm for a while it looks like, so I'm trying to think about how I can better take care of my lenses or maybe if I should just start accepting that they are going to get dirty with constant use. I know a lot of you shoot in the outdoors and I hate lens swapping outside in the dusty air, but when you shoot outside all the time its kind of unavoidable. Especially with primes. I use a rocket blower a lot and wet clean the sensor as needed. My lack of a gear budget at the moment is really crimping my style. I seriously need to get some focal lengths available again. :( -- 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.
