A lens will naturally project an image that mimics the shape of the elements in terms of where sharpness falls - in other words, the plane of sharp focus is curved. This means the centre could be sharp but the edges out of focus, and vice-versa.

Fast lenses tend to suffer more from "field curvature" so a 50mm f/1.4 is less suitable than an f/1.7 for close ups of flat subjects.

A macro lens is corrected to give a flat field, which makes it suitable for images of flat subjects such as documents. They will remain sharp corner to corner.

These are totally different beasts. Macro lenses, usually 1:1 these days, offer flatter field and better close up performance. The price we pay is a smaller maximum aperture and a less compact body. If you're often using f/1.7 - f/2 then you can't do that with a macro lens.

What do you want a macro lens for, as that will dictate the best lens for the job.

Here's the script from the Pentax lenses and Accessories booklet:

It would have been a "wide standard" that was favoured by some street photographers. Some people preferred 35mm to 50mm. I preferred 55mm, but it just goes to show that we can all see things differently!

A standard lens generally performs very well and can be somewhat abused with close up lenses, extension tubes, reversing on bellows and so on, without too much quality compromise.

The 35mm f/2 probably is weaker in some respects than the f/2.8, just as the 50mm f/1.7 has a better overall performance than the f/1.4. The wider aperture lenses come into their own in reportage and low light work.

Like a fine wine....to borrow a quote...it has (a bouquet?)...it has a bokeh... in photographic terms. But what sort of bokeh do we like? Prompted by discussions in the forum, here's an example of what I like the out of focus areas in an image to look like. Do please comment and also do please post in this thread any examples of your own. let's explore the concept.

It's a standard lens on Pentax DSLRs, giving a normal appearance similar to what is seen by the human eye.

Probably you have the camera set to "focus priority" which means it will only release the shutter when focus is achieved.

You can change this to "release priority" which will enable you to release the shutter at any time.

Settings are in the custom menus.

If the K-5 IIs is out of budget then surely FF certainly is? So how about the K-5 II, it will serve very well.

There are plenty of tests on EPZ with images to download and play with. I have plenty of other marques' images here on my hard drive, but I wouldn't change from Pentax.

Don't believe the hype, the grass is not greener elsewhere. Or if it is, it's likely to be the wrong shade of green. Pentax colour shines.

I'd rather start from the original, but how about this, which basically just tones down the glare and brings in more mood.