I have gone through two 16-45s and the floppy lens barrel kills them every time and causes misalignment. I think it has awful build quality, but that's me. The 17-70 in either pentax or sigma flavor would be worth looking at if you have to go the precision route. You could replace a 16-45 I think for what they would want to fix it. I have the DA 17-70 and I think it is very comparable IQ wise to the 16-45. I really don't see much difference between the two. The 16-45 might be ever slightly sharper in the middle but that's about it. At f8 they both look pretty identical.
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