Walk around lens

Sort of depends on what your requirements/preferences for a good "walk-around lens" are. Currently, as I've posted probably five times already this week, if I had to choose only ONE lens to keep with me all the time, it'd be my Pentax DA 55-300 F4-5.8. No, it's not a really "fast" lens. And of course it's autofocus, but you can also focus manually with it. I've never used the manual focus feature on it, so I have no idea how "smooth" that is. I know only that it works like a charm as an autofocus lens, and I used it in a dark theater with just dim stage lights last fall, shooting at the full 7FPS the K-5 offers, in the continuous AF mode, following dancers, and got almost every shot in perfect focus.

For a lens that sells for less than $400 and gives APS-C users an effective zoom of 83-450 mm (and holds F4.5 all the way to 200/300-effective), that's NOT a bad deal!

And you'd STILL be shooting with A PENTAX lens -- not a Tamron! This lens actually helped me decide to FOREGO my agonizing over spending $$$$$ for the F4 300 or the DA* 60-250. Would they be better? Sure. Would they be that many TIMES better? I seriously doubt it.

Someone posted some shots he took of a raccoon yesterday with this lens. He shot them with manual focus because he was having trouble getting good AF with limbs around the raccoon interfering with the AF. You should SEE the bokeh behind the coon! You'd think the pics were shot with a $1,500 lens!!!
Jeff
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May the Blessings Be.