A day with the FA 50 1.4 and K1

I was able to spend some time in the house, in the yard, and out by Lake Superior testing out this lens. Mostly I like it. It's quite sharp. Even at 1.4 it shows enough detail, but the depth of field is very thin and you lose contrast. The specular highlights wide open are good demonstrations of complex coma too.

These are processed in Lightroom. I also tried Iridient Developer, which so far has the best color of any raw processor I've tried with the K1. Takes away any hint of a color cast. But I have a used up demo so I wont show those watermarked images.

All the photos can be seen at full size on Smugmug... http://juneauphotographs.com/Photography/K1-tests/

Edit: Smugmug looks like it stripped the aperture info... so I'll add it above the photos.

F 1.4

F1.4

F 1.4

F2

F2

F2.5

F4.5

F4.5

F6.3

Nice series, John. Love the colors. The 50 1.4 has always been a favorite lens of mine, though I think it's been under appreciated. Seeing how it performs with the K1, and its relatively low price, it definitely should be one of the first lenses you buy if the K1 is your first Pentax.

Ned

I love the Marilyn photo.

jkrumm wrote:

These are processed in Lightroom. I also tried Iridient Developer, which so far has the best color of any raw processor I've tried with the K1. Takes away any hint of a color cast. But I have a used up demo so I wont show those watermarked images.

But did you shoot DNG and use a Lightroom Embedded profile? I find the colour is excellent when shot this way with my K-3.

Good show John. I was pleasantly surprised when I put that lens on the k-1. The focal length was really wrong for me on a crop sensor. It is a great focal length on full frame and it performs really nicely as you have demonstrated here!