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Shopping ebay for cheap Pentax lenses

Started Jun 30, 2018 | Discussions thread
John McMillin Contributing Member • Posts: 738
Re: Shopping ebay for cheap Pentax lenses

I can assemble a perfectly good lightweight lens kit from Pentax F-series autofocus film-era lenses. The 35-75/3.5-4.5 looks sharp at every length and aperture I've tested... and whoa! The K-1's crop feature gives me 112mm on 16 MP, too. The same benefit comes with the 80-200, a slow (f4.5-6.7) telezoom that's tiny, almost toylike, with 49mm filter thread and (surprisingly) internal zooming. Together, the two weigh less than a pound. These lenses are commonly found on for less than $50 each.

Funny- there's so much love and affection given the old manual focus K-mount lenses, it tends too overshadow the first-gen AF lenses like these. They had plastic construction and unattractive gray design, but they still get the job done. Put it this way: I'd rather have a two-pound K-1 with a quarter-pound F lens than a 1.5 pound K3 with a one-pound DA lens. I've tried it both ways, and the K-1 lens combo is much better balanced and less obtrusive.

 John McMillin's gear list:John McMillin's gear list
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX8 Pentax K-1 Pentax smc DA* 50-135mm F2.8 ED (IF) SDM Sigma 12-24mm F4.5-5.6 EX DG Aspherical HSM +5 more
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