Time to start collecting...

Yay, I have my camera at last..
Im now the proud owner of a K20D bought third hand (I think)
The only lens I have is the kit lens 18-55
As it is xmas soon, I plan on getting a couple of lenses, and they will have to be old glass as I cant afford even the DA-L series.
For those of you more experienced than me, what would you recommend for a beginner to start to build up a collection of lenses.

Things I want to shoot..

Landscapes
Water droplets - cliched, but I have always wanted to have a go!
Want to try some depth of field stuff
Garden insects..

Im thinking maybe a 50mm f1.4 or 1.7
And maybe some extension tubes for the macro stuff

If anyone can point me to some lenses I should look at, Id be grateful as Im finding the naming/lettering scheme a bit confusing to say the least. I have been using the wikipedia link to try and get a handle on what type of lenses I think they might be, but Im still learning and its not that clear sometimes..

Im also looking for an external flash as I know I will need one for the water droplets...

I would use the kit lens for the landscapes, and even the DOF stuff for now.
If you can find a cheap 50mm then go for it. Preferably at least a A lens rather than an M.

Look for a Macro lens - you can get the Tamron 90mm in various incarnations for a good price. Easier to use imho than tubes.
It does not have to be a special "digital" version.

I'm going to be the odd one out here, but I've never really seen the appeal of a 50mm lens on APS-C sensor digital. They do have uses for extremely low light levels, but I just find the field of view too narrow for my uses.

If you want what I consider the ultimate landscape lens then look for the SMC Pentax (or SMC Pentax-M) 28mm f3.5. These two are possibly the finest 28mm lenses Pentax made, very sharp all the way through the aperture range and with very little distortion, which means you can feed images to a photo stitching program and make panoramas with gigantic fields of view if the original images aren't wide enough. The SMC Pentax (sometimes called "K Series") is rarer as they were only made from 1975-77, the M series version is slightly more common. Both are much, much better than the M 28mm f2.8 which is a completely different lens.

I've the Tamron 90 - fantastic lens - but to get you going in macro just reversing a prime lens (that 50mm you're going to get) will work well and just cost you a fiver for the reversing ring.

Other than that go the official websites for Pentax, Tamron & Sigma and you'll be able to find the definitions for the terminology used by those manufacturers.

Id go with Gwyn's suggestions and that of Frogfish - a nice inexpensive macro is the way to go, or a 50 mm with some extension tubes..

Also, keep your eye out for used DA 50-200 or DA-L 55-300, for your budget fine additions....You might find that Samsung GX owners offloading their Samsung versions of the DA 50-200, so you could pick up one cheaply....generally considered to be very good.

Enjoy your new camera

What lettering am I looking for on older lenses for autofocus?

The D series lenses are out of my price range, but on the older lenses from the 70s or 80's, are any of them autofocus?
A = automatic apperture
F = autofocus
FA = These lenses are designed with use for full-frame film SLR cameras?

Im resigned to manual lenses for the moment based on price, but it would be nice to pick up an auto lens if I saw one at a reasonable price. Purely because manual anything introduces another layer of potential error into the photo taking process. Id hate to get a good shot and find it was just ever so slightly out of focus..

Are the DA lenses the only automatic lenses for DSLR's?

ANY lens will work, check out this site for lens info.

Enable catch in focus for manual lenses until your confident in focusing. Any of the 50mm lenses will give good results and above all enjoy!

Any F or FA lens will autofocus. Both also have an A on the aperture ring.

The manual lenses are M, K and A. The latter has the A on the aperture ring so that the camera can expose without using the green button or stopping down.



Hope this helps

It did - thanks
Searching for PENTAX-FA SMC seems to bring up zooms and no primes At least I know what to keep an eye out for now though, hopefully something will come up..

I guess I will have an opinion on that when I have had the camera for a couple of days, Im presuming that if I zoom out on the kit lens, it will give me a similar (55mm)field of view to the 50mm prime, so I will know if I like it..

You might be right, it just seemed to me that there are alot of signatures where people seem to have a 50mm lens listed..

Things I want to shoot..

Landscapes
Water droplets - cliched, but I have always wanted to have a go!
Want to try some depth of field stuff
Garden insects..

Hello Mmacleod

First and foremost, I am no expert so if I contradict anyone else it may be worth taking their advice over mine

Here's what I use, they work for me but are not nessarilly the best option for me or anyone else for that matter.

1. Landscapes -

Kit lens, surprisingly good - best I believe at 24mm around f8 - don't discount this too early but mine is a little vulnerable to flare - more so than my other lenses - use of hand, newspaper and the lens hood may be required to help avoid flare.

Vivitar 28mm f2.8 (serial no starts with 28 so it's a komine) great, cheap, mf lens - not at its best shooting into bright light (mind you what is?) but it gives some great results and has a nice wide depth of field.

Sigma 50mm f2.8 ex dg macro - I often just put this lens on and go out with no other so that I can experiment - works well pretty much all of the time - not great for making the most of forground interest though

Sigma 70-300 apo dg macro - copies seem to vary - mine is not great after about 220mm in terms of sharpness so I tend to use it at 200mm or below - f11 is also best - at 70mm it really is good - I use this to isolate parts of landscapes such as castles etc

2. Water droplets

Sigma 50mm ex dg macro - I have only mucked around with this subject but not that often

3. Depth of field stuff

This can be a little confusing - f2.8 for example should give you a narrower depth of field that say f8, however f8 on say a 28mm lens will give a much wider depth of field than f8 on a 400mm lens - you may already know this but it would seem that the wider the lens the wider the depth of field and conversley the longer the lens the more shallow the depth of field will be at any given apeture - if I am wrong let me know and I will tell myself off

My suggestion would be to have a play around with whatever lens you get and enjoy the results.

Just to make matters more interesting - the distance between your camera and the subject will also vary the depth of field as will the distance between your subject and a background from which you want to isolate it - it's fun playing with this.

4. Garden Insects

This varies on the insect, time of day etc.

I use the sigma 70-300, mentioned above, in macro mode (a swith usable only between 200 and 300mm - not true macro it is only half macro not full 1:1 but it gives you a working distnace of about 1.5 feet or thereabouts - useful for bees etc

For insects earlier in the morning (many get faster as the day gets warmer and they warm up) or insects that don't fly off or leg it too regularly then the 50mm sigma is ok but you have to be very close (a lens characteristic) - a 90mm or longer dedicated macro lens would be better though.

Whilst the 70-300 is by no means perfect it is very versatile - I love it but it can't keep pace with my ancient mf m42 tokina 300mm prime lens at the 300mm end.

Hope the above helps.

My experience is that you don't have to stick with convention - ie if you have not got a perfect lens for the job just use what you have (actually this probably is convention :blush

Another thing seems to be the nearer 'perfect' for a job that a lens is the more specialised and restricted it will also be

At the end of the day it is all about what suits you best - many people prefer the versatility of a superzoom such as a 18-250 against the much less versatile prime lenses which generally have better image quality - it's a question of taste - I actually think both have their place

If you want to check out my flickr page but bear in mind the one spider shot (sigma 50mm) is not great on there as the way flickr displays the photo in terms of size I should have put a crop version up to show the real detail (there is a lot of it that flickr post does not do it justice)- my fault but I am still a flickr rookie

Also, when looking at second hand lenses - a good manual focus lens can cost many times lens than an equivalent af version - shop carefully and you can obtain many bargains.

Regards



Stu.

I suspect it's to do with portraits. A 50mm lens on crop sensor digital isn't far off the field of view of the classic 85mm portrait lens on 35mm film, and the fast aperture allows you a lot of control over depth of field. Don't get me wrong, I have a few 50mm (and a rather nice SMC Pentax 55mm) but they stay on the film cameras as I don't tend to do portraits. I much prefer wild rugged countryside with as few people as possible!

There are a number of primes in the FA range: 20, 28, 35, 50 (1.4 & 1.7 & Macro), 85 soft and 135
adding a start gives you more choice in exchange for a kidney: 24, 85, 200, 300, 400 (FA*)
And if you want to part ex a liver: FA Limited 31, 43 and 77

Good luck with your search

I would use your camera for a while, and then when you feel the need for a new lens check out the EXIF data for your images and see which focal length you use most. I believe there is a program which will do that automatically for you but I do not know the name. On the basis of the exif, you'll know which lens to go for.

For older manual focus glass, stick with primes. There are a few good zooms about but the primes will generally be better. The principal problem with older manual primes is that anything wider than 28mm gets expensive.

Finally, beware LBA (lens buying addiction). It kills. Your bank account that is!

Best wishes, Kris.

Kris - it's called Exposure Plot. A windows program it runs well on my Mac using Crossover.