Opinions on two lenses

hi there l am looking for opinions on the following lenses.
Smc da 50-200 f4-5.6
Smc fa 28-200 f3.8-5.6

Are there any issues i should look for or beware of?
Is there any reason to discount either of them?
Thanks

am going to be getting a k10d before the weekend so the lens is so my son can use the k100d which was why i was looking at the 28-200 but was looking for other options.

50-200 ED WR
50-200 DAL ED
Would either of these be a good budget buy?

Ah! - my son (age 12) has also inherited my K100D, which he mostly uses with the kit lens. I find that he often wants to take photographs of things (mostly our pets) indoors in the worst possible lighting conditions, which makes providing him with cheap low light lens options is a struggle!

I have the 50-200 ED WR lens - despite all that I wrote above(!) - and am very happy with it. If you can find one at a decent price, I think it performs more than adequately, is nicely put together and has the advantage of being very compact.

The advantages over the DAL lens, which I think is optically identical, will be that it comes with a lens hood (keeps your son's fingers from smearing all over the lens!), has quick shift focus, which means you can make manual adjustments to the focus even when the lens is in autofocus mode (very helpful) and has a metal mount. Oh - and the WR lens looks nicer too!

PS - the WR is weather resistant which is not an issue with the K100D, but useful if you borrow it for the K10D!

Optical they are the same but the WR has newer coating and is weather resistance, so with the WR lens and the K10D combined you can walk in the rain without worries.

oops you named the DAL version.
That one is the light weight version and doesn't have a hood and quick-shift. It also has a plastic lens mount rather than a metal one.

I thought that as no one else has come forward I should write something about FA28-200. For some reason, and I can't imagine why, I seem to own two of these and I can't remember the last time I actually used either.

It is a big heavy lens. It has 72mm threads on the front. Closed up its not dissimilar in size to a DA*16-50 and I've always felt that was a bit of a monster.

Its a fairly old design lens and rumour has that it is Pentax re-badge and SMC coated, version of a Tamron or Tonkia lens. It is a full field lens so I guess it should in theory have a sweet spot when used on an APSC DSLR. However my feeling is, though, that its performance is mediocre compared with a modern DSLR lens. It does allow manual adjustment of the aperture which you don't get on DA lenses.

It has a two trombone zoom mechanism, well used ones can suffer from zoom creep and the zoom mechanism is a bit stiff on mine. It does have internal focusing so the front does not rotate with focus movement (which is the thing I hate about the Tamron 70-300 where trying to fit the hood can force the focus drive train :evil. It is from an era before quick-shift focus and the focus movement is only around 20-30 degrees so manual focusing is a bit of a pain.

I think the biggest issue though is is its zoom range. 28mm on a FF camera is about the same as an 18mm on an APSC but 28mm on a APSC is like 42mm. I just don't think its wide enough to make a useful range on on an APSC DSLR.

If you can get a good one (no creeping) cheap though it might be worth having but I think in your place I would be going for a DA 55-300 (much better, I think, than the 50-200) and dumping the 70-300.

Glyn

Yeah get yourself a DA55-300 and give your son the Tamron

cheers- help much appreciated

Get your son a smc Pentax-a 50mm f1.7 and teach him how to manual focus. The results will be worth it.
Regards