KA mount recommendations

Hi

I'm looking for a range of good value KA mount lenses to go with my K10D.

I would value your recommendations. As for focal length... I'm interested in anything up to 300mm.

I will be using my camera for:
Sports photography (sailing and amateur football)
Portrait (family and friends)
Macro (fungi and insects)
Landscape

Just about everything!

Can you also include what price bracket I could expect to pay?

Many thanks from an enthusiastic beginner.

Simon

Wow you ask a lot my friend, The list is endless

What sort of price range are you looking at and are you looking at only Pentax branded lenses or third party as well.

My personal choice would be
Sports= pentax DA 55-300
Portrait= Pentax FA 50mm f1.4
Macro= Pentax D FA 100mm f2.8
Landscape= Pentax DA*16-50 f2.8 or the 21mm ltd

But there will be many different opinions to this.

The term KA, or Ka, or A-series, refers to manual-focus lenses with an A setting on the aperture ring - necessary if you want to control aperture from the body.

I would suggest you have a look at Stan's site for recommendations, and pick the focal lengths that appeal to you.

http://stans-photography.info/

Most Ka lenses were pretty good, but avoid non-SMC lenses if you want to avoid flare.

If you can bear to do without the A setting, you will have a lot more choice (and lower prices) among the M-series lenses. Most A-series lenses are optically identical to the M-series.

The best arbiter of second-hand prices, and the best source of lenses, is Ebay.

Perhaps the most popular A-series lens was the A 50mm 1.7. It is excellent, but prone to failure of the aperture ring spring, so don't pay too much for one. The 70-210 zoom is good. The 50mm and 100mm macros are good, too.

Good luck

G

I'm interested in both Pentax and third party lenses. I've never been a brand snob with anything I've done, however I do like quality!

Price range, starting as low as possible, up to £400 if it's worth it! Maybe more... I am married so that does have a bearing!!!

I will have to prioritise and I'm not expecting to have a huge collection of lenses over night.

Could you just clarify whether you do mean Ka lenses, or just any lens that fits your camera?

G

Sorry George I forgot to mention that in my last post yes I do mean Ka.

Would I see much benefit from this over the M series lenses?

Yes, if you have the choice of the same lens in K or KA mount then KA is the way forward.

The Pentax DSLRs lack the physical aperture ring coupler of the older SLRs, which means they cannot detect the position of the aperture ring on the lens.

This means that lenses without the A series contacts can only be used in stop down metering mode, or on Av auto locked wide open. This in itself takes some getting used to but isn't too bad, however the K10D in particular doesn't like metering in stop down mode. You can compensate for its ideosyncracies once you get used to it, but it takes a lot of getting used to and is a hassle.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy an M series lens for a good price if it was a focal length I particularly wanted, but the A lenses make it a lot easier.


There is one important caveat when buying third party KA lenses. Some are designed to fit the Ricoh version of the KA mount, which has an extra lug. This extra lug can become jammed on Pentax KAF mounts, requiring professional help to remove the lens.

That's difficult with a £400 budget, so you've got to economise somewhere.

Sports photography: if this is only going to be casual, more for fun than anything else, then a budget zoom like the Tamron 70-300mm would be OK and would save a lot of money. Otherwise you will want to invest more in a faster & better telephoto.

Portraits and still life (and macro if used with extension tubes or reversing ring): a used Pentax-A 50mm F1.7 off eBay if you could cope with manual focusing (another great money saver), otherwise a new Pentax-FA 50mm F1.4.

Landscape and general photography: Pentax 16-45mm, or even just stick with the 18-55mm kit lens for the time being. If you fancy extreme wide angle: Sigma 10-20mm.

Hmmmm... that is just about everything.

You want auto-aperture but how about auto-focus? That makes a big difference, since there aren't too many bargains in the AF world. I'll assume you do want AF.

I'll furthermore assume you have the kit lens with your K10D.

So you mean £400 per lens or total? If total you are going to have to pick which of your four subject areas mean the most to you. Here are two recommendations

The first at £330 will tick three of the boxes: the Pentax DA 35 f/2.8 Limited Macro. This lens is a Limited and will spoil you for anything of lesser build quality. It is nice and small and very versatile. The 35mm focal length is near normal so it works for portraits. The maximum aperture will gain you a distinct advantage over the kit. The macro is extremely useful, though you have to get awfully close so it's not best for bugs. Amazing rendering for flowers! And the lens will also do you for landscapes. Use the kit if you need to go wide.

Then, save up £160 more so you can get the DA 55-300mm, which will cover your outdoor sports tasks.

The second idea is to get that DA 55-300mm now along with an FA 50mm f/1.4. That would be exactly your budget. This gets you an even faster lens for thin DOF portraits, should that be your thing. What you will miss out on is macro. The cheapest way to fill that gap is to get a reversing ring for the 50mm, as suggested above.

If that is too fiddly, grab a manual focus version of the Vivitar 100mm f/3.5 macro. It's a plastic lens with rather good Cosina optics. Should be able to find one under £100.

Hi

The £400 was really a maximum for a single lens but where possible I want to avoid spending any where near that if I can.

Auto focus I would love to have but is not essential. I am quite happy to go with manual focus as long as the quality/price is right (something I was used to with my old OM1).

An example of what I've have in mind for a manual focus lens is a Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm v3, (but open to other suggestions).

For an auto focus wide angle lens I'm considering a Sigma 10-20mm.

As I mentioned previously I don't envisage building a collection of lenses over night but hope to enjoy doing so over a period of time.

Simon

Well, at first glance that puts a different complexion on things. A maximum of £400 in each of your four target areas of interest seems a lot better than £400 between them. But that's not really so, because the leap from very good to excellent lenses comes at quite a premium.

In the sports category, for example, you can't do better than sticking with my suggestion above, the DA 55-300mm for £230. A better lens with similar versatility, the DA* 60-250 f/4 will set you back £900 -- a huge premium.

Some call that a landscape lens but I don't. It is great for urban shots, interiors and that "large object in the foreground adding contrast to a big scene in the background" type shot. Me, I think the DA 16-45 is a more versatile landscape lens since it covers a more useful focal range with less distortion. But maybe that's because I'm not fixated on "large object in the foreground etc. etc." compositions.

For macro nothing beats a Vivitar Series 1 105mm (aka Lester Dine aka Kiron). It's quite fast at f/2.5 and incredibly sharp. The amount of control it gives you for macro shots is stunning. The price for this lens keeps edging up... likely £250.

You can use the same for portraits in combination with your fast 50. But of course you'll want an FA77 at some point. It's inevitable.

I had the Series 1 70-210mm V3 but sold it when I managed to get a mint copy of THIS lens.
It cost me £70 delivered to Spain (non mint ones got for a lot less if you can find one on Ebay as not many people know the lens) plus another £50 for a PKA adaptall 2 mount. I sold the Vivitar for about the same.
IMO it knocks the Series 1 sideways and is my most used lens.

For Macro I use a Vivitar 100mm f2.8 MF which was made by Kiron and is basically the 105mm before its makeover into the Series 1 and although very heavy is a beautiful lens to use.

Hi Mike P

Can the Tamron that you write about communicate with the camera as though it was an A type lens or does it have to operate as a M lens?

I assume that it is more readily available due to the adaptall mount?

Simon

There are 2 types of adaptall 2 Pentax mount that work with the K mount bodies, the PK and the PK/A.
With the PK mount the lens acts the same as the M mount and with the PK/A it acts as a A lens.
The PK/A is quite scarce now but they are on Ebay now and then and go for around £50/60, a normal PK mount goes for around £10.

The nice thing about this mount system though is that there are a few more lenses out there as they made the mount for Canon, Pentax, Minolta/Sony, Olympus, Nikon and even Leica.

Also you can move the mount around on to other lenses, I have the 70-210mm, Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro, 35-80mm f2.8, 17mm and the 2X adaptall 2 teleconverter and all work great with the PK/A mount.

One of my favorite lenses is the Sigma 70 - 200mm f2.8 EX, you see these on eBay for around the £300.00 - £350.00 (just over half price) mark. Probably one of the best affordable sports lenses there is. Rear focusing so it focuses in the blink on an eye and the large aperture means it focuses in low light. The current version will focus down to 1 meter which makes it a semi half life size macro (1:2) the older versions which are the ones usually on eBay only focus down to 1.5 Meters, but some of the Sigma sites reckon they have sacrificed a little image quality to get the closer focusing. (lens design is all about compromises)

It makes a superb portrait lenses with the large aperture and long focal length getting the background out of focus is easy, and you can set the DOF by zooming on the fly (the more you zoom the less DOF you get).

The EX build quality is very good - highly recommended.