Now that Pentax has announced the Pentax K-01, a strange little hybrid photo camera using the K-mount lenses inherited from the DSLR range (K-5 or K-r cameras), it becomes once again important to see what Pentax is planning for the future of this range of lenses. In the past, the question of survivability of the…
Category: Pentax accessories & lenses
Pentax announces limited edition Silver K-5
Back to the classics. Pentax announces a limited edition of the Pentax K-5. This time, despite the habits that Pentax was forming, this is not a colorful variant, but a very wise and quiet SILVER model. Back to tradition? Three nice lenses will also received the SILVER treatment: SMC PENTAX-DA 21mm f/3.2 AL Limited Silver…
Pentax K-mount: No more Voigtländer
Manual focus lenses for the Pentax K mount manufactured and sold by Cosina under the Carl Zeiss and Voigtländer brands are coming to an end: Cosina announced it ceased manufacturing them.
Lens reviews, now with Pentax forums
One of the very first resources I created for YLovePhoto is the list of web sites providing lens reviews or comparisons. There, I make sure that there is one location where we can go to find all lens reviews available on the web. Today, I updated it with a major addition. Pentax Forums just made…
Color on the Pentax lenses
There was already the all-color Pentax SLR cameras. Here come the 35mm f/2.4 lens. It will be available in 12 colors in a few weeks only.
Pentax 35mm f/2.4 lens
Complementary announcement from Pentax, a prime lens which could well become the lens standard for the expert photographer: a 35mm focal length (equiv. 53,5 mm) to be more or less the exact equivalent of a more traditional 50 mm from our dear memories, an f/2.4 aperture (just enough to be better than the reference f/2.8).…
Photography, so many failures!
photo credit: davidgsteadman When buying a photo camera, we often research in order to decide if this is the best camera, if its features will be goo enough, but will it be robust enough? Will it be useful or necessary to purchase a warranty contract extension? Will it fail very soon? When somebody asks me…
A fish-eye lens at rock-bottom price
When you use an expensive SLR camera you are often tempted to purchase a specialty lens like a ultra-wide angle (fish eye) lens. But, apart from the rare occasions when you really need it, it’s too expensive for you and me. Why not build it yourself? Instructables does the demonstration with a Nikon D90, but…
Focal length and photo lenses
Tamron rewrote its web site. This was the occasion to move the Lens Comparison Tool but it is still useful to compare a 400mm with a 500mm (or a 35mm with a 50mm). But you can also find a similar tool at Olympus (and it takes into account the specificities of 4/3 sensor format, of…
Two new Weather-resistant lenses at Pentax
Really unusual announcement : Pentax, which already has a nice line of SLR photo cameras specially treated to be weather-resistant, and just introduced the Pentax K-7 as weather-resistant and cold-temperature-hardened, now offers two new weather-resistant zoom lenses. SMC PENTAX DA 18-55MM F3.5-5.6 AL WR Lens Mount: N/A Lens Construction: 11 elements in 8 groups Angle…
Pentax joins megapixel truce
We had seen that Olympus thought stopping the race for pixels taking 12 mega-pixels as the maximum really needed by most photographers. But they had satyed more or less isolated… up to now. FotoMagazin, German monthly photo magazine, tells us the news in its lastest (April) issue: Pentax joins Olympus in the non-race. After Nikon…
All lens tests are wrong
I recommend reading a nice little post titled “All lens tests are wrong” that concludes that the only good test for a lens is to use it during a full year. Not wrong, but I still recommend to also check my list of web sites with photo lens reviews.
Focal Length Comparison
Thanks to Tamron, it is possible to easily compare photo lenses of different focal length and their effect on the size of an image. Tamron focal length comparison
Comparison of 80-200mm zooms
DPreview has a good comparison of 4 zoom lenses opening at f/2.8 for SLR cameras: Canon 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Nikon AF-S VR 70-200mm F2.8 G Sigma 70-200mm 1:2.8 EX DG Apo Macro HSM II Tamron 70-200mm 1:2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro Since they are one of the most coveted segment of the SLR…
Web sites for lens reviews
It is often difficult to group lens reviews in order to compare/evaluate a little more than their mere physical characteristics (focal length, aperture/diaphragm, or even number of individual lenses). But how would you evaluate/review optical quality? When I see the really impressive differences between two lenses, I would be prepared to judge from their price,…