I am evaluating this zoom and wondering if anyone out there has one and cares to share your feelings about it.
I bought this lens a few years ago, later sold it. It's a good performer, not on par with the best primes through that focal length range, but very good nonetheless.
A few years ago I spent a few nights up in Michigan's upper peninsula, and work mostly out of a kit consisting of an LX, the A 28-135, Vivitar Series 1 19-35, Tokina 100-300 f4 (constant aperture) and A 50 f1.4. I did break into the Pz-1p, and various other lenses ranging from a Sigma 14mm f 3.5 to the Pentax A* 400 f2.8, and F 18-28 fisheye zoom. But the bulk of the work was done with the A 28-135 f4.
Some samples with this lens -
http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/sf.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee03.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee02.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee33.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee34.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee36.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee50.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee06.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee07.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee11.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee12.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee13.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee14.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee15.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee16.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee51.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee21.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee22.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee09.htm http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/skanee/skanee27.htm
The only quibble I had with the lens design was that the macro function was at the wide end (kinda defeats the purpose of focusing closer) and it was easy to accidentally slip the lens out of normal shooting but not into macro, which would just result in unsharp images (but not so unsharp as to look incorrect in the finder.)
I sold off the Vivitar, the A 28-135, and the Tokina. A large part of my intent with this kit was to have lenses that all used the same filter size (these all used 77mm filters.) these days I would use the FA 20-35, FA 28-105 pz, and Sigma 70-200 f2.8 or FA 80-320 to cover the same range.
HTH -
MCC
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Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
www.markcassino.com
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