I'm curious if other owners of FA* lenses have had the same problems as you, Pal.I have the FA*24 and the FA*300/f4.5 and I had the FA*85, and with moderate usage there have been no problems with any of them yet. However I agree that the construction of the windows is everything but convincing. The windows of ordinary F and FA lenses are better, but I much prefer the open "window" construction of K, M and limited lenses or no window at all (A series)... Gernerally I think that a lot of Pentax lenses have excellent to superb built quality, even a lot of ordinary FA prime (zoom) lenses are good (OK), only some consumer zoom lenses are crap. The Pentax lenses that I had or have and like least for the way they are built are the
A35-135/f3.5-4.5 (A one touch zoom whose mechanics easily collapses) and the
FA28-80 (To amuse myself I recently acquired one with 30% of the filter thread missing and with defective power zoom motor)
But even very well built lenses can develop a sticky/slow diaphragm - as far as I know that is the most common lens problem, and not with Pentax only...
Arnold
