Christine Nielsen wrote on Sat, 11 Jun 2011 08:49:30 -0700 > Hello all, > > Curious if anyone has tried or been tempted by this one? > > I'll be traveling to Barcelona in a couple of weeks, and am > experiencing a pre-trip enablement crisis of sorts. Last summer, I > packed light for our summer vacation, with only one 17-70 lens, and I > kind of regretted it. So, this summer, my original plan was to bring > along my k-7, the sigma 17-70 lens, the pentax 50-135, and 50/1.4. > But, I wonder how much patience I'll have for lens-swapping & > lens-schlepping on the family vaca, and maybe the 18-135 (for day), > plus the 50/1.4 (evening wear) is a better solution. Then again, why > own the lovely 50-135, and not bring it? OTOH, I bet the 18-135 is a > fine substitute for the sigma, though not as fast by a stop. > > My dilemma gets down to the question of the "travel" lens... assuming > you are not on photo safari, does it make sense to have a super-zoom > for travel, and leave the super-nice lens at home? Security, packing > light, ease of use all factor in... but, also image quality... what > say you? >>
I have a copy of this lens - bought it used for a good price as I wanted a WR travel zoom. I found it to be very sharp in the center of the image but a bit weak in the corners, and the IQ drops off at the long end as you might expect. I think that the Photozone review is too harsh, at least for my copy. All said, it's fine for my intended purpose but certainly below Pentax's DA 50-135 in IQ. If you're taking snaps it will be fine; for critical work where edge-to-edge sharpness is needed it probably is not what you are looking for. Regards, Jim __________________________________________________________________________________________ "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
