Very true. A print of equivalent size to the image viewed at 100% in Photoshop would be, well, large...

I would consider the purple fringing in those images insignificant, with the exception of the line in number 4... and that one is easily fixed. We clone out the results of dust on the lens or sensor, so is it so unreasonable to also spend a few seconds removing the occasional bit of purple fringing too?

No, it refers to 100% magnification, so of course a crop of that size is only a portion of the whole image... if that were the whole shot then the resolution and aberrations would be terrible

I suspect you're probably right there, it won't be a purely one-way thing... and no doubt neither Pentax or Tokina have any intention of telling us who did what. I like Tokina - generally more so than Tamron or Sigma anyway - so I have no real problem with using a Tokina design with the Pentax name on it - but I'd still prefer to know.

Oh I wouldn't discount it...but I also wouldn't want to discount a £200 difference without being pretty sure it was worth it

I guess my concern is, if the Pentax version is superior to the Tokina version to the extent that it justifies the price increase, surely that would be evident... and Pentax would have nothing to fear from letting us choose. To use a different example, I believe that the Tokina 100mm macro is a better lens than the Tamron and Sigma equivalents... but I am far from convinced that the Pentax 100mm is nearly £150 better than the Tokina. I would rather Pentax worked to convince me rather than simply decide that I'm not allowed to buy the Tokina. Also when one of the most common criticisms of the Pentax system is the range and availability of new lenses, I don't consider it all that wise for Pentax to be restricting choice even further

Call me old-fashioned but I consider the glass to be the most important part of a lens
Even the SMC coating... well it's nice, but I don't consider it the most important factor. If the optical formula is otherwise the same then IMO they are very similar lenses.


Absolutely, that was the point I was trying to make earlier. By the way are we just assuming that the Toxtaxes are primarily Pentax optical designs given to Tokina? After all Tokina has been fairly good at designing zooms in the past... of course I don't know, but I'm wondering if we're all making assumptions here... either way I think it may be fair enough for Pentax but it still sucks for me as a consumer, taking away an option that I would have if I were with any other system! And the decision to stop producing ANY K-mount Tokinas is far from fair.

Poor write-up or not it rather illustrates my point... Photozone has reviews of the Tokina 16-50mm f/2.8 and 50-135mm f/2.8 - for Nikon and Canon respectively.

Tokina and Pentax collaborated on some lenses... I am not sure about the specifics, i.e. to what extent each company was involved in designing, and would like to hear from anyone who knows more...

But anyway, what it means for us is that you can buy a Pentax 12-24mm lens (which is a Toktax or Pentina) but you can't buy a Tokina 12-24mm lens for the Pentax mount. The Tokina for other mounts can be had for over £200 less than a Pentax, so you can see why it would be nice to have that option... of course you can also see why Tokina and Pentax don't want to give us that option.

Another example is the Tokina 100mm f/2.8 Macro. A great lens, can be had for just over £250 in other mounts... but not for Pentax; instead we have either the (IMO inferior) Sigma or Tamron, or we spend £400 on the Pentax 100mm which I'm not convinced is better enough to justify the extra cost.

Sigma and Tamron simply can't be bothered to make lenses for the K-mount, they obviously don't consider it worthwhile. Which is why we often don't get lenses or in my case have to wait over a year for them. Naturally these lenses are available for Canon and Nikon, and often for Minolta/Sony; sometimes it's only us Pentax users who don't get them. In Tokina's case however it probably also has a lot to do with their collaboration with Pentax; why would Pentax want us to have the option of buying a Tokina lens if they can sell us something very similar for a lot more?

Sigma have a 10-20mm DC lens for around £300, and a 12-24mm (also works with 35mm film) for £500. I haven't tried either. Neither I would consider a reasonable price compared to the 19-35mm zooms I used with 35mm. If you need the wide angle badly enough to look at these lenses then the Pentax is probably the best.

As for Tamron there's an 11-18mm lens but... wait for it... no Pentax mount (surprised?)...

The Tokina 12-24mm of course would be a fair bit cheaper than the Pentax, but that's not an option for us. Sorry if you're seeing a pattern emerging here from my other posts, and yes it annoys me that as a result of the Tokina-Pentax 'cooperation' we actually get even less choice.

Returning to the original topic for a moment: I gave Pentax UK a call to ask for a general idea of when we might see the new zooms... they had no idea when they would be around, whether or not there was a delay, and generally gave the impression that this was the first time anyone had asked the question... all very odd.

Great - I'll see if Sainsbury's have some.

Actually that does help I have a P30T as well, and the *ist seems at least as loud, and certainly a lot louder than the quiet MZ5... but more than that, unlike the P30T's noise, the sound coming out of my *ist seems distinctly "unhealthy", being very high-pitched. Obviously what constitutes "loud" or "unhealthy" is a pretty subjective thing... I will try to record it and upload a small .wav tomorrow, that will hopefully demonstrate it better.

Hi, erm, this is an odd question...

I just picked up an *ist 35mm, since I needed a film body that works with lenses without an aperture ring. Seems a great little camera, but it seems incredibly loud... using the DOF preview the sound is unusually loud and high-pitched, and when I activate the shutter the sound (I can't tell if it's the shutter or the mirror) is unusually loud (compared to pretty much any 35mm SLR I've used) and again is a high-pitched, almost whining sound. The sounds seems disproportionate for a small and fairly advanced modern SLR, and I can't help thinking I would have read it somewhere before if the camera was supposed to be this noisy... so my question is, could there be something wrong with it, or do *ISTs usually do this?

Thanks in advance for any comments.