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Great walk-around lens for street.

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Smasher

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Beautiful little lens. Very compact, sharp when stopped down to f4.5 and beyond. A little soft at the edges wide open, but nice background bokeh with close-up subjects. A little barrel distortion and vignetting, but it adds to the character of the lens.

21mm is a great FL for street and general use (somewhere around 31mm -- a nice compromise between the more traditional 28mm and 35mm FLs). This with the 70mm Limited makes a surprisingly versatile and complete travel kit, especially for urban settings.

The more I use it the more I like it; it just keeps growing on me. At this point it's the default lens on my K-5.
 
I love mine:great lens for street style as you note, and I find it very good for photographing cars as well. Lots of personality for general use.
 
Smasher said:
Beautiful little lens. Very compact, sharp when stopped down to f4.5 and beyond. A little soft at the edges wide open, but nice background bokeh with close-up subjects. A little barrel distortion and vignetting, but it adds to the character of the lens.
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Very fair review. I love mine too. However, it's poor value, since for roughly the same price you can get a Ricoh GR, a fabulous pure street camera with a very sharp f/2.8 lens. Carrying the GR around is even easier than carrying a spare lens as it slips easily into a pocket.

I use my GR either on its own (when I want to be really discrete), or in conjunction with my Pentax K-5II.
 
Smasher said:
Beautiful little lens. Very compact, sharp when stopped down to f4.5 and beyond. A little soft at the edges wide open, but nice background bokeh with close-up subjects. A little barrel distortion and vignetting, but it adds to the character of the lens.

21mm is a great FL for street and general use (somewhere around 31mm -- a nice compromise between the more traditional 28mm and 35mm FLs). This with the 70mm Limited makes a surprisingly versatile and complete travel kit, especially for urban settings.

The more I use it the more I like it; it just keeps growing on me. At this point it's the default lens on my K-5.
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I quite agree. I bought this lens when I saw it for a good price but never thought I'd use it as much as I do. My street photography has really improved (I think!) due to that lens being on my K5 II so often now. Its small size is great and IQ-wise it's quite okay for my purposes. The focal length is great and really makes me want to have Pentax release an FF so that I can use it with my 31mm Ltd. That package will be quite a bit bigger though...

Cheers,

Fred
 
Model Mike said:
Smasher said:
Beautiful little lens. Very compact, sharp when stopped down to f4.5 and beyond. A little soft at the edges wide open, but nice background bokeh with close-up subjects. A little barrel distortion and vignetting, but it adds to the character of the lens.
Click to expand...
Very fair review. I love mine too. However, it's poor value, since for roughly the same price you can get a Ricoh GR, a fabulous pure street camera with a very sharp f/2.8 lens. Carrying the GR around is even easier than carrying a spare lens as it slips easily into a pocket.

I use my GR either on its own (when I want to be really discrete), or in conjunction with my Pentax K-5II.
Click to expand...
 
kitsios_spyros said:
Mike this GR seems a very component competitor to the DA21. I have only seen Nikon A in my town but not GR, but they must be almost the same size. Ever since I think that a good and relative cheap replacement to the tree amigos would be
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Hi Spyros, if not a GR, then yes the Nikon A offers similar capabilities. There is a comparison here:

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www.ephotozine.com

Personally I love the GR - it's become my 'goto' camera for street photography.
kitsios_spyros said:
GR + DA40XS + DA70
and if XS was bought with a K-01, that would be a cheap set without many lens changes
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Yes exactly, consider the GR as an extra lens which just happens to have a sensor pre-attached :-)

--

Mike
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rc-soar

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Mine was bought secondhand at a very substantial discount over new. That's one solution. (A small simple screw drive lens doesn't have all that much that can go wrong with it, as far as I can see, and I'm pretty sure that my like new copy will continue to be trouble free.)

The Ricoh GR is an appealing camera in many ways, though. A version with a slightly longer lens might get even me to accept the lack of viewfinder in exchange for small size and excellent optics/IQ
 
My first Limited lens, and the most useful. Match with the DA40 or DA70 and you have a versatile and compact 2 lens kit.
 
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