> I found a nice one for about 160 can (100 US) in Montreal in 1998. > I saw afterwards, as I discovered eBay, that it could be had for > less over there. But they don't seem to come by often...
They do show up on eBay more often than you (or, at least, I) might think, considering the lens was produced by Pentax for only a year or two. > I do like it because of its fixed f/4 aperture (easier when you go by > the sunny f/16 rule) and its macro mode (1:4 if I remember). I must > admit I've never really used it. I probably did a few photos the day > I bought it. I've heard it's good in its class. I'll give it a real > try this summer. It A 35-70/4 ~is~ a good little lens. all in all, probably better than many people would have thought (and I know that it did pleasantly surprise me). Mechanically, I wish it had more metal and less plastic (it is not as "solid" feeling as some of its contemporaneous A zooms), but I guess the plastic does have the advantage of keeping its weight down. It does have a bit of barrel distortion at its wide end, but optically is pretty good overall. But, the big surprise is its "macro" function: Unlike a lot of the so-called "macro zoom" lenses, where the "macro" feature was probably engineered in the marketing department, the "macro" (or close-focus) function in the 35-70/4 is ~really~ quite good (and is at the ~long~ end of the zoom range, unlike a lot of other "macro zoom" lenses, where the "macro" function occurs at the short end of the FL range. I do have a small number of specimen photos of the A 35-70/4 in the Lens Gallery - the first URL below, for the Lens Gallery proper, is probably still no good, but the second URL, which is for the Lens Gallery mirror, probably still works: http://gemma.geo.uaic.ro/~vdonisa/lensgal.html http://phred.org/pentax/lensgal/ 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 .
