On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Rob Brigham wrote: > The FA50 1.4 is lovely. Had no use for that focal length before, but > with the 1.5 factor it(or the 43) was a must. My unhappiness with the > 77 has nothing to do with the picture quality, just that my favourite > lens now has a focal length that it of little use to me.
Surprised I haven't heard more bitching about this loss of full lens functionality when we've heard so much bitching about loss of K/M metering functionality. It seems particularly odd to me since Pentax is not well provided with ultra-wides. (K 18 if you can find one, 15/3.5 is also hard to find and not cheap. That leaves K/M 20/4--very hard to find--and A/FA 20/2.8, plus the 20-35 FA and 18-35 FA J zooms. Less than half of these are A lenses). Do Pentax folks not shoot wider than 35mm effective focal length?? Now I know the reasons that Pentax didn't produce a full-frame sensor (they actually have the experience of why not to, with the MZ-D!) but the 1.5x crop thing is really messing up my lens line-up since I bought the lenses I had for their specific angles of view. Given the lenses that WERE in my bag (20,28/1.4,50/1.4,85/1.8,180) I have lost my wider apertures and cannot exactly replace some lenses. I have in fact replaced ALL the lenses in my pro bag, primarily with zooms, to compensate--cost me more than the digital camera. Same thing is currently messing with the nice Pentax system that I handed over to my girlfriend. Most of it is K/M stuff and will ultimately have to be replaced for *istD use. One of us has to find the money for a 20/2.8 FA (does it still exist? B&H is out of stock) or a 20-35/4.0 FA to give back what the K30/2.8 provided. Nothing really is going to be able to replace the M24-35 (was there a 16-?? FA J zoom due out? does it have a reasonable aperture?). DJE
