I've had a Tokina ATX-Pro 80-200 F2.8 for many years now and been very happy with it. It's excellent optically and very well made - quite heavy but then so are all the other equivalent lenses.

Here are some example shots:

In the studio



With a 2x TC and handheld

that lens will certainly be no better than the DA 18-55, and probably quite a lot worse.

I've owned both lenses and my 19-35mm (Pheonix branded but it's the same lens) was noticeably sharper than the 18-55 kit lens (which I thought was the worst Pentax lens I've owned).

I used to use the 19-35mm a lot with my film cameras and it's a decent little lens optically although it's quite plasticy from a build perspective.

I've used both a Z1p and MZ5 on autoexposure at gigs (mainly without flash and using a fast film and FA* 85mm F1.4) and had good results.

I've seen plenty of reports of re-chipping being required for Canon versions of Sigma products but I can't recall any cases with Pentax.

Dan,

Thanks for the welcome.

I usually only post on these sites when I'm actually in the process of buying new kit so dissapeared last time once my lens buying urges were sorted out. They're back now though as SWMBO is off to Singapore in July so I'm deciding what lens to ask for as a pressie... (16-45 is the most likely candidate).

Cheers
Steve

I've got both the Sigma 10-20mm and Pentax 10-17mm lenses. The Pentax lens is great fun and I enjoy using it, however the Sigma 10-20mm is my most used lens and I've found it to be an excellent bit of kit.

I posted a few test shots when I first for the fisheye zoom, plus a comparison with the angle of view of the Sigma and those can be seen here http://www.pbase.com/niblue/fisheye

There are also a number of shots using both lenses in this gallery http://www.pbase.com/niblue/stavanger as well.

On a fairly unrelated point - I've also got an ME-F but have never had the AF lens (28-70 F2.8 or similar if I recall correctly) for it. Is it worth getting i.e. is it sharp and what's the AF actually like. Not that I use the ME-F much, however I still wouldn't mind one of the lenses for completeness sake.

"just to be clear, this happens with all lenses, more noticeably the closer the focus is, are you saying this lens does it more than most?"

It's not something that I notice particularily when using other zoom lenses, however this particular lens probably focuses closer than any of the other zooms I've got anway.

At the time I bought the lens I was doing a lot of my shooting using an FA* prime lenses and F2.8 zooms (Tokina ATX Pro ones) so I guess it's worth bearing that in mind. The 28-200 is certainly no worse than other consumer zooms I've tried.

I didn't do any real sharpness tests until last year when I went digital. I found the 28-200 performed reasonably well, better than the 18-55 where their ranges overlapped.

What I mean was that when you're focusing on something close you can see it getting larger & smaller in the viewfinder (for example if you changed from a focus point nearby to one far away) so it did appear as if the focal length changed as the various lens elements moved about. It wasn't a big problem in practice however.

Nice shot. The close focus performance of the lens really is quite impressive.

I wrote a review of the FA28-200 a few years back and you can see it here http://www.geocities.com/niblue/fa28_200.html