Steve,

Frankly, I care, and a tad more than a fig.

I've just bought one DA lens for roughly £300. If I were to continue to buy the remaining DA lenses that I need/want they represent a considerable financial investment. I'm a hobbyist photographer who doesn't (yet) sell my images. I'd take great comfort from knowing that in 5 or 10 years time that this investment is still going to be worth something at least.

Just take a look at the prices that some very good lenses are typically fetching on Ebay for instance. My son recently picked up a near perfect FA 80-320MM for £40. OK we take a risk buying anything unseen, but a £40 risk that goes sour is a lot easier to swallow than a £600 - £700 one, as is the price of the 12-24mm DA lens. Is that going to be worth only £40 - £50 in a few years time. I hope not.

Truth is, I probably do already have all the lenses I need/want at the moment with some surplus and I don't forsee me buying any more DA lenses in the near future. I've only decided to buy the 16-45mm DA lens based upon the praises echoed throughout this forum and the fact that I'm not overly happy with the results I'm getting from the 18-55mm kit lens.

Well I've bitten the bullet as it were. I've ordered the 16-45DA lens from Pixmania.com who have it in stock for £274.00 + £8.00 Delivery.

George,

Thanks for the history lesson. That magnesium flash powder was a real so 'n so though.

I remember 10 X 8 plate cameras well. I used a Gandolfi monorail camera back in my City & Guilds night school days, a beautiful wooden camera.

The concensus so far then is that APS sized sensors are here to stay for the foreseeable future, for the likes of most of us anyway. I'm sure the pro's armed with their 1DS Mk II's et al will continue to believe they need the larger 35mm format for their work.

When then, do you think the lens manufacturers will start to re-label their lenses with the correct focal lengths for it's intended body. It's not a huge issue now but why are they labelling the 16-45 for instance as a 16-45, when for the body it is intended to be used on, it becomes a 24-70mm'ish lens. That's always puzzled me.

I suppose the imminent arrival of the 645D will satisfy the larger format users lust for a digital body and I can see that Pentax probably will not bother producing a third range that fits between the APS and 645D, which I believe is going to be slightly larger than 35mm but not as big as 6 X 4.5, sized sensors.

Looking at the lens roadmap (thanks to photo*ist) when the 70MM DA Limited lens is in production I guess the 77mm FA will no longer be needed, existing owners and 35mm users excepted.

Joshua,

Interesting article which in many ways answers my questions (allays my fears more like).

I think the last paragraph of the article has helped me come to a decision, I'll go for the 16-45 DA and I just hope I can get more than a fiver for it on ebay in a few years.

Thanks for all your interesting comments.

And another thing . . . did you ever consider that with each new increase in HDD capacity and reduction in its physical size . . . you would ever need more storage space? That's what I (and many others) thought . . . about a 10Mb drive (yes, 10Mb, not Gb). Now that was shortsighted.

That point comes into play when, in years to come, we have 20Mb, 50Mb, 100Mb etc. APS sensors. Lets hope disk technology continues to move as fast, else we will not have anywhere to keep our treasured pics.

Good point. I personally would see no need to switch sensor size if the output quality of the APS sensor improves, as I'm sure it will in time.

I'm half inclined to agree with your first point quoted above but I think your second statement is a tad shortsighted . . . unless you know something that Joe Public (me) doesn't.

To say now that 35mm full frame digital will never be top priority to Pentax is like Bill Gates saying all those years ago that "nobody would ever need more than 640Kb of memory in their PC." (or something similar). OK, he got very rich after that so it wasn't such a big gaff after all.

If the Canon and Nikon camps decide to abandon APS sized sensors in favour of 35mm full frame, I'm pretty certain Pentax will do the same . . .

Oops.

Excellent point and one which had not occured to me.

I'm not actually sure who drives who in the digital imaging game. Is it the sensor manufacturers who decide what will be available to camera manufacturers, or do the camera manufacturers tell the sensor bods what they want/need?

The growing range of 'digital only' lenses makes me wonder, are they really a good investment ?

The current plethora of digital SLR bodies mostly have APS sized sensors, IE: smaller than 35mm full frame which has spawned a range of lenses to suit this reduced size, but these lenses exhibit vignetting and possibly other issues when switched to a full frame body.

Personally, I don't think it'll be many years before sensor technology has matured enough to allow good quality 35mm Digital sensors to be the 'norm'.

If you draw a parallel with the growth of CPU speed in a PC, the first commercially available being a lowly 4.77MHz in the IBM PC back in the early 80's (yes, sadly I remember them, and that's Megahertz, not Gigahertz) to the 4GHz approx. that we have today, this represents a 1000 fold improvement in around 25 years.

So, the maths is not difficult, the demand for better digital cameras will probably drive the development of the sensors at an ever increasing rate, possibly making APS sized sensors, and hence the so called 'digital only' lenses, out of date in next to no time.

I'm aware that other factors contribute to the 'digital only' label, like additional coatings etc. but it worries me that an investment made now might not be an investment at all, more a waste of money.

This all occured to me because I'm thinking of shelling out the housekeeping money on a SMC Pentax 16-45mm DA lens. Should I, or shouldn't I, and who's offering the best deals at the moment (and has one in stock)?

Lastly, when you all decide to offload your 'digital only' Pentax lenses on ebay, please let me know