Zoom lens recommendations

Hi there - my guess is you must be coming from one of the Panasonic FZ cameras? I came from FZ20 (5MP with lovely 12X zoom lens) but am surprised at what you are finding with the K20D. Even my 6MP K200D blew the FZ20 away.

The bridge camera will by default have settings which provide much more "pop" out of the camera: more highly saturated and more highly sharpened - but the results even from the kit lens with the dSLR really should be superior - much smoother, more natural and if you do a bit of work on the computer, much more detail too.

Pentax in particular tend to go for fairly natural looks out of the camera, leaving the images with plenty of flexibility for post processing on the computer. But if that isn't to your liking, you could begin by using the camera in "vibrant" mode, and perhaps up the sharpness setting a notch or two as well. You may prefer those results and the resulting reduced time spent on the computer!

As for telezooms, the Pentax 55-300 is probably the most cost effective telezoom you can get - not ridiculously pricey, and holds its quality even at the longer lengths. Control over fringing is vastly superior to my old FZ20 too, and I would have no doubt that the results would be better than your bridge camera.

Another lens that is sharp and can be found cheaper is the Tamron 70-300. This does come with more purple fringing on occasion, but can be dealt with in post-processing on occasions when it is particularly bad.

Either of the lenses above are "better" performers than the 50-200, although if you buy the WR version of the latter, you have a much smaller lens that is also weather sealed so an ideal accompaniment to your K20D body if you'd like to take it out in all weathers without worrying.

Welcome to the forum Fabson, I can sympathise with you here; because I can only hold my K20 single handed, shake is an issue. I have used both the Tammy 70 -300 and the Pentax 55-300 extensively, I sold the Tammy. The Pentax is by far the better lens in terms of IQ and handling. I believe there is now a "L" version which may save you a few quid if money is realy tight. But in any case go for the Pentax.Both lenses work with the SR, it`s in body.

Davex

Any lens you can attach to your camera is compatible with the shake reduction (SR) system, even the 50+ year old Takumar screw thread lenses (with an adapter).

Image quality can be heavily influenced by the zoom ratio and I prefer not to buy zooms with a ratio greater than 3 or 4. That is, divide the zooms longest focal length by its shortest to determine the ratio. EG: 55-200mm has approx. 4:1 zoom ratio, 50-500mm has a ratio of 10:1.

Some of the older zooms are very good, the FA 80-320 is excellent up to about 260mm, IQ falls off a bit towards the long end.

With a limited budget, you are more or less limited to these older lenses anyway but as others have said, Tamron & Sigma lenses can be found at reasonable prices and I'm surer you'll find something that will suit you.

Finally, if you are not getting usable IQ from your kit lens I suspect you are not getting close enough to your subject. The Pentax kit lens is one of the best amongst all manufacturers and if you are able to fill the frame with your subject, you should be able to make perfectly good prints up to A3 size.

Remember your viewfinder shows only about 94% of the image that is recorded. If you exactly fill the viewfinder with your subject, when viewed on screen it will have more of the scene than you saw when you shot it. So my advice in the short term is . . . get closer.