Nice shots from a great lens. I decided that mine was so good that I sold the 50-135DA*. The 35-105 has exceptional image quality and is much smaller (not much lighter though... it's a tank!). It's a very cost-effective high quality zoom to buy as an alternative to the DA* if you don't mind manual focus.

Lens sold - thanks for looking.

Jon

Very nice - enjoyed looking at your photostream and now need to raid the strawberries in the fridge!

Hi Geoff - I've sent you a reply!

Cheers,

Jon

Bump for a great and cheap lens that all good Pentaxians should have in their arsenal! It's the first lens you need to buy after your kit zooms....

Open to sensible offers close to the asking price.

Jon

How do you feel about manual focus?

If I was going to a wedding with a choice from my kit, I'd be keen to go as lightweight as possible. My three lenses would all be SMC MF lenses, one on the camera, one in each pocket:

50mm/1.4
35mm/2.8
20mm/4

The price of this lot together (all in great shape) was about £250. Lose the 20mm and replace it with a Tamron or Sigma 24mm instead, and you should be able to get the whole lot for about £150.

Of the lenses people have mentioned above, I'd second the suggestions of the Pentax 35mm lenses - either of them. The FA is a superb sharp fast lens (and fits my portability criterion) and the DA Ltd seems to be very highly regarded by everyone who owns it.

If you're using a dSLR, I have a 50mm SMCM f1.7 for sale - equivalent to 75mm in 35mm speak, and an excellent portrait lens esp when used close to wide open when things soften up a touch. £30 incl recorded delivery within the UK.

If you need longer, then the 135 SMCM described by Pentaxophile above is a great lens and well-priced for one in immaculate condition. You're unlikely to do much better for £40.

Selling a nice copy of this lens, purchased a while ago from another forum member here.

Optically it is in great shape aside from a very minor mark on the front element (visible in one of the pics below) which I have never seen evidence of in any of my photographs with this lens (and I will ship it complete with a Hoya skylight filter).

Cosmetically excellent, which is what you would expect with these SMC-M classics - they seem to be bomb-proof!

All works as it should - aperture, focussing etc, and there are no nasties (fungus, oily blades). Comes complete with original Pentax front and rear caps.

If all you've used before is modern consumer zooms, there can be no better way of being introduced to fantastic quality fast glass, and this makes a great indoor and/or portrait lens.

So why am I selling? Because I love fast lenses and have now got a 50mm f1.4 instead. But I love using these old MF primes, which is what I have on the camera most of the time now - use this and you might be addicted too!

Price is £30 in the UK including first class recorded delivery and PayPal fee.

Your FZ10 has the same lens that my FZ20 had. You're right that it is a great lens and faster than most SLR telezooms, but on the other hand you can get quite nasty red/purple fringing around highlights with it at 12X zoom unless you stop down to at least f6.3, preferably more (I tended to stop at 10X zoom to avoid these effects, as they were at the worst at the full tele).

You're right that you get more depth of field with a small-sensor camera when compared to any dSLR - usually considered to be one of the main advantages of SLRs - as it enables you to really isolate your subject and blur the backgrounds to give images much more impact. This control over depth of field is one of the main reasons to move to SLR from any small sensor camera.

As per my previous reply, yes the Pentax images will be softer than the FZ - that would be true of the images at default settings from pretty much any SLR as the "recipe" that SLR image processing engines use assumes that you are likely to want to do some fiddling on your computer and provides lots of scope for you to do that, whereas most compacts do most of the "cooking" in the camera so that the images are ready to go straight out of the box, but perhaps offer less scope for further meddling before their quality begins to degrade.

If you compare them side by side, the FZ images will be more contrasty, saturated and sharp, but the images from the Pentax will be smoother, more natural, and much closer to what you would have got in the past from 35mm film (along with Olympus, Pentax SLR images do tend to be quite "film-like"). Play with the image tone and sharpenss settings in the camera, and you will be able to get it to produce output that is closer to what you prefer.

It appears from your list that you could do with a sharp and sensibly-priced lens that offers a reasonable macro ability (insects) and longish length (birds) with a bit of everything imbetween! Given the requirements you've outlined, I think I'd probably go for the Tamron 70-300. It has a decent macro ability, is about as sharp as you can get without spending a lot more money, and at the equivalent of 450mm at full tele, covers the range you are used to with your FZ.

There is quite a nice review of it using a Pentax K10D at the photozone.de website. I think you may even be able to track down a new one within your budget.

Good luck whatever you choose!

Jon

Actually, although I think the 55-300 is the better performer, for my purposes I chose to sell that and keep the 50-200 WR. It performs well enough, I love the fact that it is WR, and it is so much more compact - barely larger than the kit lens.

I'm not sure I would recommend it, however, if you know that you will spend the majority of your time shooting at the long end. It is an excellent performer in the middle of its range, but you don't get the best out of it at 200mm.