First outing with the D FA 21mm Limited

1. @f3.5



2. @3.5



3. @f2.4



4. @f5.6



5. @f5.6



6. @f5.6



7. @f5.6



8. @f5.0

F A B

all excellent but do you find it massively better than the original considering the price of this version.

Love the light on the brickwork in 5

Super pics! I imagined at first Rhubarb Home would have retired actors walking around (Monty Python style) muttering "rhubarb, rhubarb" all day long! In fact, I see that it's an interesting shop with tempting goodies to browse through. Nice location - a cousin of mine lived there for many years.

Thanks for the comments - it really was just a quick wander around to give it a first try-out.

That building with the nice brickwork (thanks Peter) that now houses Rhubarb Home, makes a great subject and tests the sharpness of lenses. When the shop was being refurbished a few years ago they discovered a decorative tile pattern of a Ship (I think) on the wall, which dates back to when it was a Pub - must be well over 50 years ago as my earliest memory of it was as an electrical appliance shop.

Interestingly enough Antony there are quite a few people wandering around Malvern mumbling "rhubarb, rhubarb" most of the time

Joe - not sure if you mean a comparison against the DA21? But that is of course APS-C only! I've always been a big fan of the FA20mm f2.8 - but just on todays outing I will be parting with that one

my bad , i tthought it was a direct replacement

Must feel strange to have Pentax lenses that are more like scalpels these days.

These look stunning on my phone display, perfect punchy colours.

How much of the quality of these photos is due to the lens, how much to the camera - and how much to a photographer who seems to be able to get the best from any lens?

Steve

I hadn't realised that this lens was available already. You got some very nice shots there with punchy colours, and they look plenty sharp. How does the lens feel in use? Like the other FA Limiteds or different?

The lens definitely fits in beautifully with the other FA Limited lenses, they've done a great job keeping the styling, look and feel. The only thing that makes it look a little different is the lack of an aperture ring.

It is quite a big lens (compared to the FA20 or A20) but it feels nicely weighted and balanced on the K1, the AF sounds different (being DC) - it's fairly quiet, quite fast and locks very quickly (I've not noticed any "hunting" as yet).

I did think that the colours were a little on the cool side (I've adjusted them through increasing the whites and messing about with highlight/shadow) so I've added a bit of punch - but it was quite a harsh lighting day, with some deep shadows and bright areas.

The close focus ability is the real joy of this lens for me, to capture the detail and interest of a foreground subject with a lovely smooth OOF background is what I'm after. My FA 20mm f2.8 is reasonably good lens for this but doesn't focus close enough a lot of the time (25cm v 18cm - it does make a difference!).

The lens is sharp, no doubt - f5.6 seems great for sharpness and detail, I don't know where diffraction will start to kick in yet but from the subjects I've shot so far I've not needed to go smaller than f5.6 anyway.
This shot is cropped and straightened, but I think it shows the level of detail that it can capture:


I haven't found enough subjects yet to show the beauty of the lens wide open - but the close up of the leaf says enough for me to be confident that I'll be using it at maximum aperture a lot.

There are a few more images in the mini Flickr album...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/62460860@N05/albums/72157720103909293

including an unprocessed image at full size if anyone wants to pixel peep, or even download and improve on my attempts

Excellent set, looks like you're going to enjoy using that lens! The colours and sharpness really stand out, expecially in nr. 5 for me.

Nr. 7 almost looks a bit like HDR, did you do something in partiular to bring out the detail in the tree on the right hand side?

Thanks Richard - I've tried HDR via LR plugins in the past and most of them look too false for me. My technique starts with bringing up the shadows and dropping down the highlights, I can then adjust the contrast and whites/blacks to try to make it look more "natural" again. I haven't done any extra in this shot

A few images of the Lens (and it's siblings)...

What a pretty set

The glass itself doesn't look too much bigger so it'll be interesting to see how Ricoh might refresh the older lenses with new mounts and AF motors.