Matt was correct in that the image needed a bit of extra lift. I tend to prefer not to have to do much post-processing of images and I'd have been tempted to have used just a touch of flash particularily to light up the eye.

I ride a CBR600 'cause my wife won't let me buy a 'Blade...

I'm also a fan of the Islay malts however my preferred option is Laphroaig.

I'm sure I'd seen something online saying that it was made by Tamioka, which would make sense as they also sold their own F1.2 lens, however I've no idea if that's true or not.

I finally got round to putting some test shots online - all taken at F1.2 using the K10D handheld at 100ISO:







100% crop from previous






100% crop from previous






Sharpness isn't too bad wide open, colour and contrast seem pretty good although there is a touch of CA. I really like the out of focus rendition and the ability of the lens to really limit DOF - at F1.2 and closest focus it does take a bit of concentration to ensure focus is correct though as the in-focus area is very slim indeed.

Well worth looking out for IMHO, if you can get hold of one cheap.

Just done some quick tests (centre sharpness only) of the Porst versus both my Vivitar 55mm F2.8 macro and also an SMC-FA 50mm F1.7

Wide open the lens is better than I expected, although because of the limited depth of field you need to be very careful when focussing on the target. At F2.8 it's noticeably sharper than the Vivitar - at all other apertures the two are very close indeed with the Vivitar perhaps just edging it from F8 and smaller.

Against the FA50mm F1.7 the first thing I noticed was that I'd done a better job focussing the other lenses than the AF did! Once I'd re-shot the test using manual focus then the Pentax lens was noticeably better wide open and edged all the other tests, but not by very much once at F5.6 and below.

The lens has arrived and for what I paid I'm initially quite satisfied with it. The build quality isn't the best and the focus is a little notchy, but the colour rendition seems good and that F1.2 maximum aperture makes manual focusing very easy.

Anyone know anything about these lenses (a web search pulled back a few images but not much else)?

It just bought one via Ebay (it wasn't expensive) as I thought it might be a fun portrait lens but I'd be interested to hear from anyone that has used one.

I did some testing of digitizing slides using a macro lens with the DSLR but the results weren't all that good. Instead I dug out my old slide scanner and built an NT PC (the scanner isn't compatible with XP) and the results from that were much, much better. Despite the age of the scanner the results still compare quite favourably with photos taken using the DSLR.

My specific requirement is that I like decent corner sharpness and that's probably why I don't get on well with a lot of consumer zooms as that tends to be where they're at their worst.

My experience is that "pro" spec zoom lenses ( e.g. F2.8 ) are generally pretty good, whether they're from Pentax or a third party.

Lenses like the FA 28-70 F4 are interesting though - constant aperture but small and light and also sharp enough for most people, and not that much more expensive than a 28-80 F3.5-5.6. Shame there isn't a matching 70-200 F4 as I could so with one of those for when I don't want the weight of the 80-200 F2.8.

I'm adaptable so can't say it bothers me, but then I'm used to having several different camera systems available to me - often with radically different handling.

I was going to write that I tend to prefer to buy Pentax lenses when I can as well, however I've just realised that while that's true for prime lenses (and the vast majority of my prime lenses wear a Pentax badge) it's not the case for zooms. Despite having owned quite a number of Pentax zooms the only one I've kept for an extended period was the FA 28-200, and it's really a Tamron lens.