Pentax Life

According to DPReview, Sigma has announced the availability date for K-mount versions of its new lenses. 70-200mm f/2.8 APO EX DG and 50-150mm f/2.8 APO EX DG will hit the shelves at the beginning of August, 2008.

Both lenses have constant F/2.8 aperture, 100cm closest focusing distance and nine diaphragm blades. Nothing new here but what makes these lenses unique is HSM motor which is compatible with the newest Pentax DSLRs. Unfortunately, AF will not work at all on the Pentax K100D and older Pentax cameras like *ist series.

Chasseur D’images, French photography magazine that is very popular in Europe, has tested two latest Pentax DSLRs and 20 (yep, twenty) lenses mounted on the Pentax K20D.

Lots of optics tested here: from FA* 27-70/2.8, FA*85/1.4 to all
Limiteds, DA*, the new DA17-70 SDM etc…

Most lenses are quite good and a couple numbers simply excellent !!

Talking about recent lenses:

• DA 17-70 SDM: it is good, vingettes a lot at 17 but it very nice upgrade over the kit lens. They say there’s no focus touch up (!! to be confirmed) but there’s indeed weather sealing. They do not say if it is SDM-only but I think so.
• DA*200/2.8: excellent !!
• DA*300/4: excellent !!
• DA35/2.8 macro: excellent !
• DA* 50-135 and DA* 16-50/2.8: centering defects but otherwise very good.

Great thanks to Thibouille for sharing such a good news.

For those who can’t read French or live outside of Europe there is DA 35mm f/2.8 Macro Limited review from the DigitalCameraReview:

In short, the new 35mm Limited is an amazing lens with fabulous edge-to-edge sharpness, amazingly close focus, great bokeh, and exceptional build quality common to the Limited series lenses. Once again, Pentax has delivered a fantastic professional-quality prime lens at a reasonable price.

Have you ever wonder how Pentax DA Limited lenses working on the film SLR cameras? Boris Liberman has collected a bunch of photos made with three DA Limited lenses mounted on the 35mm film SLR.

Pentax DA 21mm Limited shows a strong vignetting at every apperture up to F/22 while DA 40mm Limited and DA 70mm Limited are quite good even wide open.

Pentax K10D + Pentax DA 35mm F2.8 macro Limited. 100% crop of this image (1.6Mb)

Weblog Insomnia have published a load of full rez samples of soon to be available Pentax DA 35mm F2.8 Limited macro lens mounted on the Pentax K10D. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Another two of the new lenses - DA 55-300 F4-5.8 ED and DA* 300mm F4 ED - were shipped to the Japanese stores yesterday. In the U.S. Amazon promises to start shipping the first one on May 31 for $349.

LetsGoDigital’s Ilse Jurriën has interviewed Jon Carlson - Pentax Imaging USA product manager and the chief K20D evangelist - at PMA. He has told about Pentax and Samsung cooperation background, plans on future lenses and why the digital medium format development was suspended. But the most of attention was given to the Pentax flagship DSLR.

Thanks to the CMOS you have less energy consumption. The sensor of the Pentax K20D is capable of transferring the received information very quickly. What they did is decrease the picture to 1.6 Megapixels so it can be transferred from the buffer to the memory card speedily. This is how you reach 21 pictures per second… …Someone even told me that he uses Photoshop CS3 Extended and he attached 150 pictures sequentially as a QuickTime movie and it looks like a real movie recording.

…

We are now showing three SLR lenses that will get introduced later, hopefully this year. We have a 17-70 mm one that is considered as a replacement for the 16-45 mm but offering an SDM engine. And we have the extreme light sensitive 55mm and the 60-250 mm.

Cosina has announced two manual focus prime K-mount lenses under the Voigtländer brand.

Voigtlander Ultron 40mm F2 SLII pancake-style lens is half stop faster than popular Pentax DA 40mm pancake but ten millimeters bigger and a little heavier. It consists of six elements in five groups including double-sided aspherical elements and high-refraction glass. Voigtlander Nokton 58mm F1.4 SLII consists of seven elements in six groups.

Both lenses have nine diaphragm blades, all metal casing and fully compatible with Pentax KA mount. MSRP in Japan should be around ¥50,000 or US$435. These lenses are expected to hit the shelves in the next two months.

Previous versions of Voigtlander Ultron and Nokton lenses including screw-mount ones are well known for the built quality and exceptional sharpness even at the widest possible aperture.

Pentax has updated their lens roadmap recently. Nothing particular new except for cloned Tamron which was announced this Monday. But there is a good news and a bad news. The good is that DFA 645 55mm F2.8 is still there so the 645D project is alive. The bad is that DA* 60-250mm F4 is no longer targeted to December, 2007.

Yesterday several people at once have reported that the announcement of the new Pentax lens - DA 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 ultrazoom have appeared on the Pentrax Imaging website. But this announcement have disappeared in an hour or two just to appear again couple of hours later. So the Pentax DA 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 ED AL IF is officially announced.

The new lens looks like rebranded Tamron 18-250mm (that is also available for K-mount) but with Pentax’s proprietary SMC coating.

• Lens construction: 16 elements in 13 groups
• Angle of view: 76° ~6.5° (when mounted on a PENTAX digital SLR camera body)
• Number of diaphragm blades: 7
• Minimum aperture: F22 ~ F45
• Minimum focusing distance: 0.45m (1.48ft) over the entire zoom range
• Filter size: 62mm
• Maximum magnification: 0.28X
• Dimensions & weight: 75mm (maximum diameter) x 85.5mm (length); (3.0 inch x 3.4 inch); 16.0 oz (455g) (without lens hood)

Steve at Steve’s Digicams has reviewed Pentax K100D Super - latest update for Pentax entry level DSLR line-up. Unfortunately Steve hasn’t got the new DA* lenses (most of the sample photos are made with DA 12-24mm F4) so the most important new feature that differs K100D Super from its predecessor - Supersonic Drive Motor lenses support - haven’t been tested and even mentioned in his review.

Another Pentax K100D Super review is posted by JerryJ at DigitalCameraReview:

Since my day-to-day cameras are a Pentax K10D and Pentax *ist DL, I was curious how the K100D Super would compare. I expected the camera to perform better than the *ist DL but fall short of the K10D. What I discovered was that the K100D Super is much more like its big brother the K10D than I expected. In short, this is one amazing little camera… …the K100D Super is the best value on the market.

Japanese Impress Watch website have tested Pentax DA* 50-135mm F2.8 SDM lens. Automatic translation is close to unreadable but full resolution samples are talking by themselves. By the way, Amazon offers DA* 50-135mm F2.8 for $851.04.

DigitalCameraInfo have criticized Pentax A30 point&shoot digicam in the thorough review they have published recently: “With inaccurate colors, high noise levels, limited dynamic range, and terrible video quality, this camera isn’t worth the $350 price tag.“

Australian DPexpert has published a very short (no image quality tests or samples) review of Pentax K100D Super entry level DSLR. Overall verdict is “Highly recommended”. Their only dislikes are too loud mirror slaps and too high contrast and saturation level by default. Positive impressions: “The value-for-money of this camera makes the competition look either greedy or inefficient. There is nothing cut-down or under-done about the Pentax.“

Another one K100D Super review (and DA* 50-135mm F2.8 SDM on the same page) came from Japan. Here is automatic translation.

J. Keenan has reviewed fourth generation of Pentax Optio M series at DigitalCameraReview:

The Pentax Optio M40 is an entry-level compact digital P&S that provides a basic feature set, yet throws in some manual inputs not normally encountered in cameras of this class. The ability to set ISO and exposure compensation in most of the various shooting modes is a welcomed departure from the norm, although it seems somewhat incongruous in a camera that really is targeting users who wouldn’t ordinarily be expected to care about, let alone use such features. Performance in good lighting conditions is adequate, but the camera struggles to focus and shoot in dim light.