On 25 September 2012 04:06, Darren Addy <[email protected]> wrote: > Regarding the $2000 Pentax-A* 135mm f1.8. Some say it is one of the 4 > or 5 best lenses Pentax has ever made, but I would love to see a > comparison between it and the K 135mm f2.5 (or the same optics in the > S-M-C Takumar 135mm f2.5 (version 2). *That* is a stellar lens (albeit > without "A" functionality) that is a FRACTION of the weight and cost.
Having owned the Pentax-A* 135mm f1.8 and the K 135mm f2.5 concurrently along side the V Lanthar 125/2.5 I can confidently say that the Lanthar was better than the f1.8 wide open and the f1.8 at any aperture did not perform as well as the Lanthar. And at f1.8 the contrast and resolution was so poor that it was little point using it at that stop. The K2.5 was a nice lens but even stopped down had inferior resolution to the other lenses. I think that the Pentax-A* 135mm f1.8's legendary status is more to do with its relative rarity than its actual real world performance. I only still own the Lanthar, I couldn't justify retaining the other two lenses. -- Rob Studdert (Digital Image Studio) Tel: +61-418-166-870 UTC +10 Hours Gmail, eBay, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Picasa: distudio -- 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.
