Pentax K-50 image comparisons

porty wrote:

Thanks, guys.

Re the lens, I think it's just the kit 18-55. I understand it's not as good as the 18-135?

I have the kit 18-55 (the early version, bought in 2005 bundled with Ist-DS).

It is a good lens, It was my most  used lens until I bought my K30 in 2014.

The K30 is same camera as K50.

It bundled with the DA 18-135, which is effectively a better lens, very sharp in the center, but the borders are soft at both ends unless you stop the aperture down. Which actually is not an issue in most scenes, unless you pixel peep. The main trump of DA 18-135 is that it offers a very large focal range, from true wide angle to real telephoto, while maintaining good enough IQ in a very compact form factor.

I have bought since a lot of high end primes (see my gear list), and I also still have film era lenses, but the DA 18-135 is my most used lens.

I also used a Spotmatic and other Pentax gear in the film era.

IMO, the DA 18-55 is a good lens, which can deliver very sharp pictures when stopped down around f8. It has distorsion and corner fallof at the wide end, but this is easily corrected, either automatically in-camera for jpegs, or in PP by using lens profiles.

I dont understand the people who bash kit lenses, they are quite good, and, on modern DSLR (any brand), they deliver better IQ than high en glass on 24x36 film era cameras.

The only limitation of these kit lenses are the small maximum aperture, thus allowing less bokeh and requiring higher ISOs in dim light (but K50 is good at ISO 1600 and quite usable until ISO 6400), and the limited focal range (18-55 APS-C field of view corresponds to 27-83 in 24x36).

If you are on a budget, DA 18-55 + DA 50-200 makes a very cheap two zooms kit and covers a quite wide focal range with acceptable IQ and sharpness.

Of course dont expect the kind of outstanding sharpness or rendering you can get from high end glass.

But I want to warn you  about manual focusing on APS-C DSLRs.

The Pentax pentaprism viewfinders are bright and very good, but 16MP is much more delails than what film delivered, and thus it requires very precise focus.

The viewfinders image in APS-C is twice smaller than in 24x36 (that is optics laws), and the viewfinder screen is optimized for AF, there is no split image stigmometer any more.

Thus MF is much more demanding that it was when using film camera SLR. I tried many ways of MF, I also have the Pentax eye magnifier lens, but I always get better results when using AF, which is very efficient, fast and generally very accurate (once you have calibrated it if needed).