is the 18-55 a MACRO lens?

Hi all.
I have a couple of old film cameras (ME and MX) with an array of lenses from 20mm to 500mm.
I've been waiting to move to digital hoping a 24x36mm CCD sensor was about to be offered, but I lost hope.
I am now considering a K100D and my question is: the standard lens has a MACRO capability?
No mention of it in the specs.
Thank you,
F

Hello Frenk,

No this lens does not have a macro facility, but it can focus down to 25cm from the lens, so you can get in reasonably close to an item.

Reasonably close, but you can get practically the same image with the 50-200 set at 200 at 1.1m (and better image quality in my opinion).

All your old glass should be usable on the K100D and K10D so I don't think you have to worry much about getting new lenses (unless you want AF, which I must say is wonderful).

I have an A50F1.7 which I use on my K10D and the quality is superb.

The K100D is ~£300 with 18-55 which is very good but the K100D Super will be available soon and has a couple of useful additional features for future lenses and for easier CCD cleaning.

The macro setting on many zoom lenses is misleading as few focus closer than 1:4 magnification ( a quarter life size). Macro means 1:1 or life size images. This can be achieved with one of the Pentax macro lenses, either the 50mm or the 100mm.

The 18-55mm kit lens does focus very close however, and is a very useful general purpose lens.

Macro lenses is an area where Pentax compatibility helps as you can buy on older manual focus lens and give macro a try without spending lots of cash. I'm using an old K-mount 55mm F2.8 Vivitiar macro with 1:1 capability and it's been getting decent results with my DS:

I'm trying to figure out what that is. Looks like the pins on bottom of a CPU...

This was taken on a Pentax DS, with the 18-55mm lens, just cropped it a little.





I like the lens. Good all-rounder, for me anyway.

the 18-55 is highly underrated, unless you get a bad sample it's actually an alright performer.

I second niblue's comment on second hand macros, I use a Tamron 90mm F2.5 with the matched 2x flat field converter to get 1:1 macro at 180mm. That extra focal length comes in VERY handy for "in the wild" critter shots where you can't get as close as you'd like.

[quote="Tyr"]Correct!

That's quite good!
Thanks everybody for the clarifying comments.
I can find the K100d very cheap in the US so I think I'll get it with the 18-55 lens.
Thanks again

Now I want to know what CPU

That is impossible to figure out from that particular shot.

been a while since I saw one upside down, but I'm going to go with something roughly Pentium MMX/Pentium II class (though obviously not a Pentium II itself since that was slot 1 only). Socket 7 or 370. May very well be quite wrong though.