> From: Andre Langevin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >Some of the M lenses are very good. The M 135/3.5 is very sharp and > >contrast. The M40/2.8 performs very well. The M50 1.4 and 1.7 are > >very fine optics as well. I wouldn't condemn the M series. Some of > >them are very nice lenses.
My original condemnation was not so much that they were bad, but that the K and A lenses that came before and after them were usually better. > The M20/4 is unique, so small... and does most of what you expect > from a super WA. I'm not sure I'd be happy with "most of what I expect from a super WA". I've got a Sigma 14/3.5 in Nikon mount that I bought because it was a couple hundred dollars cheaper than a Sigma 14/2.8 and a thousand dollars cheaper than a Nikkor 14/2.8. Wide open, it is simply not sharp enough. > > M28/3.5, another great travel lens as is M100/2.8. > I'm increasingly hearing the description "travel lens" to mean a lens that trades some optical performace for light weight and perhaps lower cost. Is this the normal useage of this phrase? Perhaps it also implies that if the lens gets stolen or destroyed you won't be losing a treasure? Certainly there is virtue in a smaller, lighter lens but it seems to me that the smallest, lightest lens possible is not always an ideal solution. >From what I can see, NO 20mm prime is really that big and heavy. Given the size of the 105/2.8 SMC Takumar, I can't believe that the K 105 is "big". The M100 is a bit smaller, but not all that much from what I remember. M28/2.8 is certainly small, but I don't find the K30/2.8 to feel much bigger in actual use. Perhaps I'm less sensitive to absolute weight issues than hiker-types. > M24/35 zoom is great. Pentax has studied an aspherical version of > the lens (2 versions on the US patent pages, the last being almost > identical to the lens we know, but I doubt it would include an > aspherical element (7th from front) as distorsion is high at 24mm and > the aspherical element was said to correct distorsion at precisely > the wide end. A lot of modern lenses with aspherics still distort at the wide ends. Presumably they'd distort worse without, or be bigger and more expensive to make non-aspheric technology perform as well. I find the M24-35 not bad, quite useable stopped down. It does distort more than a prime would. The zoom range isn't that large, especially by modern standards, but it is smaller and more convenient than carrying three primes. For its day, this lens was quite an accomplishment, and from what I've heard most more modern 24-50s are actually worse. DJE
