Tuesday, December 15, 2009

New lenses

Our lens collection has been extended recently. Yes, I do admit that I am writing "our" with pride and joy as it seems that Galia is further developing her interest in photography.

SMCP FA 50/1.4
- This is the lens that I thought would be Galia's standard lens. Somehow the process of obtaining one was long and laborious. At the end, Galia got a very good sample, made in Japan, properly serviced by Pentax Canada and joy to shoot with. On the technical side of things, it focuses very reliably on my K-7 and slightly less so on Galia's K10D. But the pictures that Galia manages to extract from it are making me proud.

SMCP FA 20/2.8 - As I wrote earlier this year, the SMCP DA 21/3.2 AL Limited was a little slow. As it turns out, I tend to shoot at distances closer than infinity with my wide lenses. Therefore a hunt has taken place that concluded with acquisition of this lens. My sample is pretty good, solid construction and all that. It is bigger than DA 21 but almost any lens will be bigger than these pancakes. On the other hand, it is similar in size to FA 50/1.4 only wider in diameter. My sample is wonderfully sharp wide open closer than infinity - exactly what I need. It is very good at infinity as well.

As planned, Galia inherits my DA 21 thereby completing her lens line up: DA 21/3.2, FA 50/1.4 and FA 100/3.5 macro. My line up is therefore FA 20/2.8, FA 31/1.8, FA 43/1.9, A 50/1.2 and FA 77/1.8.

1 comment:

Suecae Sounds said...

I obtained my SMCP FA 50/1.4 trough pentaxforums. It eventually arrived from a nice guy who lives in Iceland. Sometimes lenses take the strangest routes before they arrive "home".