> I have rarely seen the k-mount version of the 55/1.8 or 55/2 on ebay or > anywhere else. Is this lens a dog (comment at stan's site seemed like > it) or just produced very little ?
The K 55/1.8 (and the K 55/2 is exactly the same, except for some extra baffling to cut the aperture a bit) is definitely ~not~ a dog. My experience (although this is with just one sample) is that the K 55/1.8 is not a particularly strong performer at wider apertures, but is very sharp at mid-apertures and smaller. That is, it is soft at f/1.8 to f/4, and it gets somewhat better at f/5.6, but then at f/8 and above - all of a sudden - it is tack-sharp. These critters do show up on eBay from time to time - no, not as frequently as the ***RARE*** (<big grin>) M 40/2.8 pancake lens - but they certainly are not as common as the various 50mm K-mounts are. (Actually, I just saw one on eBay, with the auction ending just a day or two ago.) Don't forget that occurrence on eBay may not always be related to how many lenses were produced - it is also possible that many users just keep holding onto theirs, right? Of course, there was indeed some "competition" for the 55mm models from the 50mm models which were being sold concurrently. Fred - 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 .
