>I like to ask owners or the ones who experience both lenses for opinion >about image quality (not MF handling and build quality) comparing to price >difference. > >I am doing street photography with available light. I am going to buy MZ-5n >and now thinking about the lens and I like to know more about those. > >So far I have read that SMC-A 50/1.4 is very good. >How is it with SMC-FA 50/1.4 ?
All Pentax 50/1.4 since the SMC-M series should share the same design so their optical performance should be identical. At wide open, the 50/1.4 performs poorly. Personally I consider it not usable at wide open. Performance is great since f4. 50/1.7 and 43/1.9 perform much better at wide open (not because the latter are particluar good, but the 50/1.4 is too poor at wide open). The 50/1.4 and 43/1.9 have nice bokeh which the 50/1.7 does not have. The 43/1.9 has better colour reproduction while the 50/1.7 has the worst. In terms of sharpness, I don't see the 43/1.9 is any better than the 50/1.4 when they do their best (I have not done any formal test however). One important point is that the SMC PENTAX-A 50/1.7 has very poor built quality and I recommend to avoid it. I have the 43/1.9 and tried the FA50/1.4, the FA50/1.4 seemed to AF slower than the 43/1.9 which is not particular fast either. regards, Alan Chan _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
