Adding to (mostly agreeing with) what Bob has said: > A 20/2.8 - excellent, well built, easy to handle
Agreed. A superb ultra wide angle. > A 24/2.8 - excellent but some very obvious fall-off wide open Very well built, but I never used it much, and I no longer have one. > A* 85/1.4 - quite large, can intimidate subjects, superb optically, > excellent to handle, well built Agreed. My favorite 85. > A 100/2.8 macro - superb in every way; a real pleasure to use Agreed. A joy to use. > A* 135/1.8 - same as the A* 85/1.4, but perhaps slightly less easy to > handle because of its size Agreed. A sweet lens in all respects (if you like 135's). > A* 300/4 - compact, very well built, easy to handle. Some people tell > me that other 300s are better optically, but I never had cause for > complaint. Agreed. I also use the sharper F 300/4.5, but I still like and use the A* 300/4 - it's still the nicest compact 300 there is. > A 35-105/3.5 very well built and optically very good, but large > and heavy so not particularly easy to use. I guess I'm easy to please with the "large and heavy" aspect of lenses, because this doesn't bother me at all - <g>. The only thing that makes this lens - for me - less than easy to use is its two-touch focus and zoom rings (which other lens designs use, too) - I prefer one-touch zooms, as a rule (even if certain two-touch zooms, such as the A 28-135/4, do get used a lot here). > I've never used an A 35-70, but I have handled some. They are not > as well built as the others I've used, and had quite a plasticky > feel. In general it felt to me like a grade below the A 35-105. > But - and this matters - it is much smaller and seemed a lot > easier to handle, as well as being more discreet Agreed. Definitely not as well built in its feel as the other lenses mentioned here, but it does seem at least adequate. Quite a good lens, optically (except for a little too much barrel distortion at 35mm) and a surprisingly nice "macro" function (better than most so-called "macro zooms"). It does make (thanks partly to its good macro function, as well as its light weight) a pretty good traveling lens (despite its somewhat limited range. > A 70-210/4 another very well built lens, with excellent optical > quality and very easy to use Agreed. My favorite "small" 80-ish-to-200-ish zoom lens (my favorite in the "large category is the manual focus Tokina AT-X 80-200/2.8). > Another zoom which is worth looking out for is the A 28-135/4. I > never used one, but again I've played with one and it is very well > made - as good as any of the others. It is almost exactly the same > size and weight as my Contax 28-85 lens - so it's big and heavy. > But it's manageable, and it seems like a pretty good lens if > you're only using one body, and I would like to have owned one. The A 28-135/4 is my most-used wide-to-tele zoom lens. It is indeed heavy, but that's due partly to its very solid construction. (I'd love it even more if it were a one-touch zoom - <g>.) > Remember that some of the A lenses are the same as their M > counterparts. At least according to Cecchi these are the same as > the M: > 28/2.8 > 35/2 > 35/2.8 > 50/1.7 > 50/2 > 100/2.8 > 100/4 macro > 24-50/4 > A* 300/4 In my opinion, some of the A lenses are just ever so slightly less nice to use (for physical feel) than their M predecessors. I would not be surprised to find that there might have been just a bit of "skimping" done when specifying the mechanical details of many of the M-to-A "upgrades". This is not always true, however - certainly the A* 300/4 is just as well built as is the M* 300/4. But, when handling some of the 50's, model-for-model, for example, the M 50's seem physically better constructed than do the A 50's (in my opinion), even if the A lenses are sometimes optically improved (in my opinion). I'll mention my thoughts on some of the other A lenses in another post. Fred
