Great. I decided to pick it up... About $150US less than I expected, so how could I say no? (BTW: if you don't hear from me you'll know the wife found out )

Anyway, not being one to only read reviews, before I reached a dozen photos I had to take the water test. (Been waiting since January!)



30 seconds under the shower. Hard to focus with that much water falling in the lens. Yet not a drop of water inside the lens/camera seal nor anywhere else as far as I can tell.

The 50-135mm is actually in stock today. I guess I'll be driving out to take a look at it tonight.

OK, some of you lucky b*****rds have the DA* lenses already.
tomorrow being the 15th, I should soon have the ability to get my hands on one. (assuming the store gets what they ordered and don't have to wait further for back orders).

Anyway, for those that have them and now that you've had a while to play with the lenses, would you recommend them? Are they worth the price?

The weather seals and silent focusing are high on my list, but for half the price and 1-stop slower I can get the 16-45 F/4 for example. Then add the price of a grocery bag and a rubber band I have weather sealing.

Its a long drive to the nearest real camera store, so I'm just trying to plan ahead if it will be worth the trip...

So far I have (worth using),
Pentax 18-55mm kit lens
Pentax 50mm f/1.4
Sigma 18-200mm

A few other of lower quality lenses will be waiting on ebay to help pay for a grocery bag and rubber band, if necessary (they wont bring in much more)

Thanks

But are those lenses compatible with full-frame retinas or do they only produce cropped sizes now?

Yes, crop factor is a result of the sensor size. The lens has no effect on that aspect of the final image.

Lenses for full frame sensors simply create a larger image circle, of which a smaller portion is usable by the camera. Some say that creates a better final image because the center of the image circle is often of better quality than the edges. The smaller sensor is therefor cropping into the better quality area of the image circle. I don't know to what extent that is actually true with current lenses... but still, the crop size itself is not affected.

One is labeled with the DG designation.

The Sigma website says,
DG (DG Lens)
These are large-aperture lenses with wide angles and short minimum focusing distances. With an abundance of peripheral illumination, they are ideal lenses for Digital SLR Cameras whilst retaining suitability for traditional 35mm SLRs.


Although, I thought the DG designation also had to do with some coating that helped for digital sensors, but the lens itself was still usable on full frame sensors (there is another designation for digital-only). So I'm assuming the DG label means it is better in some way.

Other than that, ???

Of course you are, why wait until dawn?!!

Very eerie the first time I used it. So quite I thought to myself "nothing happened". Had to check twice and focus further away to see that the camera was on and working.

Yes. In very low light the flash will, well, it will "flash" briefly in short bursts to help illuminate the scene and help the lens to "see" something to focus on. You will hear the tiny flashes as they go off.

Edit: Argh! a few seconds too late...

Just received Popular Photography mag here, the whole back cover was a Pentax ad. I was rather surprised to see that.