Re: Pentax M 24-35mm f4 (actually an f/3.5)

[Joe Wilensky]

I had this lens for about a year and a half (picked up via eBay, Buy-It-Now, $200) in truly mint condition. It has a wonderfully solid feel, and the two-touch zoom approach seems made for a lens like this. Images were beautiful, although I never fully put it through its paces (such as testing it for distortion, performance at full aperture, etc.). I sold it soon after getting an SMC-M 35/2 and during a time when I sold the few manual-focus zooms I had. It is a very short zoom range and is more like a lens that lets you make cropping adjustments in the finder, or you can think of it as a 35mm, 30mm, or 28mm lens that lets you pull back to 24mm when you need it.

Like many zooms, I found I was using it at either extreme of the focal range, either treating it like a 35mm that could pull back a bit or like a 24mm that could crop a bit if the view was too wide. But it's wonderfully compact, perhaps the smallest zoom Pentax ever made, and a great travel lens.

There are two of them at KEH right now, at $300 and $310 for an excellent and excellent plus example, respectively. From what I remember, it shows up fairly rarely on eBay, but at prices closer to $200-$250.

Joe

How rare is this particular zoom?
I've got the A 35-70 F4, and third party
zooms that handle 70 to 300, and am thinking
about buying this particular M series lens
to "round out the zooms".

Is it seen regularly on Ebay?

Comments as to quality?

Thanks,
Lon

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Joe Wilensky
Staff Writer
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