Summer's not here yet! Presumably everyone here has stuck with Pentax. I feel quite relaxed about it all, but then I'm not waiting for FF like it is some kind of photographic nirvana.

I have looked to the skies.........your wait will soon be over.

I've no experience with Nikon and Canon cameras. All I can say is I've never regretted choosing Pentax. Great handling cameras, a joy to use and a selection of reasonably priced weather sealed lens to go with your weather sealed camera. The current camera that I would say has replaced the K50 is the K-S2 which I bought a few weeks ago with the 18-135mm wr lens, what a great bit of kit. I think you can buy with confidence.

Having had a lovely weekend with my new K-S2 and 18-135mm in North Norfolk and being very pleasantly surprised by this lovely little lens and its performance I decided to do a quick f8 challenge with it against my other lenses.
I did use a tripod and the 12 second timer.

Here are my unscientific findings.

At 18mm the lenses:-

18-135mm
18-55WR
16-50mm*
Sigma 10-20 ex
At f8 it is a very close field at full screen all the images look good,slightly different colours and coverage but all very minor. Displaying the images at 1:1 and I can find the weakest and in my opinion the best performer. The 18-55 was the weakest at the edges so lost this one, to my surprise the Sigma was the winner excellent across the frame and also I felt it had the most natural perspective with the least distortion. The 18-135 and the 16-50 I'll call neck and neck you could argue the toss all day about the tiny differences between them.

At 21mm

I only shot with the 18-135 at this focal length and aperture, it is excellent across the frame.

At 35mm the lenses:-

18-135mm
16-50mm*
35mm macro Ltd

With all these lenses stopped down to f8 it created another incredibly level playing field. All three images were so close and so good across the frame. I did feel however that by a hairs breadth the 35mm Ltd was the winner with stunning image quality across the frame. Second place? For my money this goes to the 18-135mm super zoom. I think it was just that little better than the * lens at the very edges and corners. A great result for budget zoom option.

At 50mm the lenses:-

16-50mm*
55-300mm HD
18-55mm WR
50-135mm*
18-135mm

What a line up at the gate! At this focal length this is where I saw the biggest variations in coverage. OK, OK, I know that the 55-300 does not claim to cover 50mm but it's close so it joined the party. Of the lenses that do report 50mm the 16-50mm * gave the widest coverage with the 50- 135mm* easily giving the narrowest the other two fell in between. The shelves I photographed were about 5 metres away from the camera by the way.
Despite having the most obvious distortion the 50-135* was the winner just fab across the frame, the weakest in this test was again the 18-55mm WR. All the lenses were great in the centre with the differences only showing as you moved towards the edges of the frame. The middle runners, well once again you could argue the toss all night over which was second best to the 50-135* they were all very good and you'd be a tough critic to not be happy with any of them, that includes the 18-55 WR.

Now finally at 135mm the lenses:-

18-135mm
50-135mm*
55-300mm HD

The winner here for me was the 55-300mm HD just great.
In second place but only just the 50-135* just pushing the 18-135mm into third place at this focal length.
Once again not a lot between the lenses all the images looked good full frame on the screen only on zooming in could you start to see the differences in performance.

What does it all mean?

It confirms my view from the weekend and the many user reviews, the 18-135mm is a cracking little lens, light, weather sealed, and stopped down punches well above its weight and size.

It also shows that if you can't afford or don't want to pay for the posh lenses and don't need fast glass, if you've got the light or tripod to be able to stop down you are not missing out on much. I'm not saying there aren't differences which are not represented in this lunch time bit of fun, bokeh, transitions, larger apertures etc. I would have to say the differences were not as great as I personally would have expected.

Others thoughts and opinions very welcome.

Dave you have saved me, thank you.

Not very wild or very woody.

They are all lovely. I particularly like the first one, right up my street.

I would have cropped the other way. For me this is a photograph about the poppies not the wall. Therefore I would remove most of the wall and leave the poppies in their entirety. Also the wall at the top is the brightest part of the image which also draws and confuses the eye so any bright wall left after the crop I would darken down to make it clear this is all about the poppies. You could of course darken the bright wall down first and see what you think before cropping it down. My two pennies worth.

Cheers

Nigel

It does sound like a good few hours out. I particularly like the beach hut abstracts. I'd also give my vote to the cleaned up version.

Woah there Bruce. Love the kit you're with.

I think releasing a good quality lens dedicated to APS-C shows commitment to that format which many will see as a good sign, far from a kick in the teeth.

All camera makes offer great cameras that are capable of producing stunning images.

I have also been interested in the Sony Alpha 7 series, lovely and compact for full frame and light but to get the best out of the sensor and camera I started looking at the lenses, it all added up to a lot more than my lovely Pentax gear and for what? Not a great deal of difference for the amount of money required that's what.

Love the kit you're with, it's great and will do the job well.

It would be OK, it is a friends lens that I borrowed. He won't mind.
In seriousness I would not mess about with a lens either. Just wondering if it would make a difference to the sensor area covered by the lens. I'm sure some brave/foolish person will give it a go sooner or later.