On Oct 4, 2011, at 12:28 PM, Bruce Walker wrote: > On 11-10-04 3:05 PM, Boris Liberman wrote: >> Hi! >> >> Picked up the medium size (as opposed to little) bugger from the post office >> today. Few immediate impressions: >> >> 1. Sorry, Paul (Stenquist), SDM is slower than screw-driven AF. It is >> completely silent (as in no sound that I can hear) but it is slower and >> under few tungsten lamps it did hunt a bit. > > I don't mind that tradeoff, but I don't shoot action.
I hadn't noticed speed differences SDM to screwdrive. I suspect that it has more to do with the focal length, lighting conditions, lens construction etc. The silent focus is usually good. Sometimes though, especially when it's wide, I don't notice that my camera had been left on manual focus, and that the 16-50 isn't actually focusing. Oops. I got one of my best photos that way, when the camera was focused on the classic bugatti in the background rather than the Veyron that I thought I was shooting. > > >> >> 2. Double cam lens barrel sucks. Totally does not inspire any confidence. I'm not sure what you were talking about. > > If this helps, I've had mine since August 2008, and it's still 100% fine. > Been used a lot, especially for art gallery openings along with a flash. It's > perfect for close quarters indoors, but it gets bumped and manhandled. > > It's solid, dude. > > >> >> 3. 16 mm is wide in a way that I forgotten. This is good. > > Perfect for classic car meets where they're all parked in parallel rows and > sight-lines are crappy. One of my big motivations for getting the lens was that all I had wider than 31 were my kit lens, 18-250 and sigma 20/1.8. I use mine at the wide end a lot. > > >> >> 4. Albeit slower than screw driven, AF is accurate. No issues with infinity >> or close focus. >> >> 5. Hood is solid, better than other hoods on other f2.8 zoom lenses I had or >> have. > > I have trouble getting mine on sometimes. Seems to snag on me, but once on > it's solid. Sometimes mine gets knocked past the mount in storage position, but it seems fine. > > >> >> 6. IQ is there. Fully open it is fully useable. > > At both ends of zoom range too. I have no complaints about the sharpness of the lens. Or pretty much anything else. It does yeoman work, on the K-5 is fast enough for most reasonable lighting situations and is a good useful zoom range. It doesn't make my heart go pitter pat like the 77, but it's the lens that my K-5 is usually wearing. > > >> >> A question. My sample has slightly uneven rotation of zoom ring whereas in >> the middle (around 24-28 mm) it gets a bit harder to rotate. And when I >> rotate it, it produces a strange sound, as if some kind of air is being >> sucked or whatever. Am I right to assume that it has to do with WR mechanism >> which makes this lens a bit more air tight than its non-WR counterparts? > > When zooming in (ie tele) from 16mm, at about 28mm mine changes feel. I > assume it's a gear shift just there. Don't notice anything zooming wide. No > sound. I had never really noticed that before. I noticed that the length of the barrel changes a lot more quickly right about there. > > >> >> All in all - it was a good purchase. I plan to make this lens my work-horse. It should fulfill that role admirably. >> >> Boris > > Great choice, Boris. You'll love it. > > -bmw > > -- > 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. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- 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.
