But Pentax has had 28-105's for a long time. FA 28-105 f/4-5.6, 28-105 f/4-5.6 (IF) and now the f/3.2-4.5. I don't understand you here.
Aside from some Tamron rebadged zooms, the choice of true Pentax FA zooms are quite limited when compared to C, N & M. They have many good quality consumer zooms (I don't mean those truely low quality lenses), but Pentax was stuck with FA28-105/4.5-5.6, and now the FA20-35/4 & FA24-90/3.5-4.5. Still, the choice is rather limited.
My FA 135 f/2.8 is built like a tank, I'm sure that it can stand the attack of missiles. It's a full metal construction. I also like the build quality of my FA 28 f/2.8 and FA 50 f/1.7. They feels very solid with great mechanics. I like the build quality of my FA 28-105 f/3.2-4.5. It's much more solid than my FA 28-70 f/4 was. So, FA lenses are *not* cheaply built - except from some consumer zooms.
I can assure you the FA135/2.8 was not built like a tank. The focus ring feels truely bad, so to the FA100/2.8. These lenses have metal shells and quite ok, but it's no Nikkor AF lenses (similar lenses).
The FA* 80-200 f/2.8 is more expensive than the competition, but the other lenses are not. In fact, some are even less expensive. The FA* 28-70 f/2.8 is the least expensive 28-70 f/2.8 on the market from a major manufacturer, and the FA 28-105 f/3.2-4.5 AL (IF) is less expensive than Nikon AF 28-105 f/3.5-4.5. The 50 f/1.4 is the least expensive 50 f/1.4 on the market, same with is true for the legendary FA 100 f/2.8 Macro.Well, they were when I checked Cyberphoto (http//www.cyberphoto.se).
If I remember correctly, most FA* lenses were more expensive than Nikkor AF and similar to EOS equivalent. The FA*80-200 and FA*28-70 were selling like US$16xx & US$12xx respectively. The FA*200/2.8 costed US$12xx too. The only truely affordable * lens was FA*24/2, and the FA*85 & FA*300/4.5 were selling at US$8xx. If you take into the account that EOS lenses had much better AF ability, the FA* lenses were overpriced indeed. Some of these lenses are cheaper these days, but at the same time, every manufacturers have moved forward and produced updated versions while Pentax is still selling the new old stocks at the lower but still not quite competitive price tags.
But the entry level lenses are very plastic with no distance information scale. Canon even has plastic prime lenses with plastic lens mounts (like the 50 f/1.8). Now, all Pentax prime lenses has higher quality than that.
But one EF50/1.8 doesn't represent the whole system. In fact, this 50mm is the only poorly built prime lens in the whole EOS line.
this has never happened to any of my MZ-bodies.
Because the whole thing is plastic, except the mount. They are ok for so long as you don't mount some rather heavy lenses on it and handle it rough. For heavy lenses, Z-1, Z-1p & MZ-S are the only choices.
The more I use my MZ-5n, the more I like it. It's a beautiful camera.
A well designed camera, but not without its own problem.
regards, Alan Chan
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