Pentax SMCP-FA 50mm f/1.4 Lens by Pentax
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Digital camera reviews of Pentax SMCP-FA 50mm f/1.4 Lens
Digital camera Review: Best Prime Lens for the Money
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an incredibly fast versatile lens. There are few lenses at this price point that deliver such value. I've used this in low light situations (museums where flashes are forbidden) and with a flash for portrait shots. If you can hold out for another rebate from Pentax, it makes it more the bargain!Digital camera Review: Best lens I've ever used
Summary: 5 Stars
To put it simply, this is the best lens I've ever used. Image after image turn out better than any other lens I've used -- including "L" glass from Canon! Beautiful bokeh.Digital camera Review: Don't Think About It, Buy This Lens!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This lens should be in every Pentax/Samsung camera owners bag. This is the lens I would recommend that beginners use to learn their camera's with, As you can really "See" the changes with this lens when trying different settings on your camera. And the photos this lens produce is really amazing. So much better than the kit lens. And its low light performance is really outstanding. So don't think about it any longer just do it and get this lens, You will not regret it. GET IT!Digital camera Review: Earned Reputation - Oh so Nice! Silky Background Crisp Foreground & FAST
Summary: 5 Stars
After recently switching to the Pentax line I have been attempting to purchase a variety of lens that allow the biggest 'bang for the buck'. This lense came up repeatedly as a great choice and after having tried it out I can see why.
Although small and fairly lightweight, this no-frills little lens takes beautiful shots. It's very fast, has absolutely fantastic deep color rendition, performs wonderfully even in low lighting and is worth every penny. As an example, my other two purchases included the Pentax 18-250 (super versatile zoom that is a great walk around lens) plus a Tamron 90mm macro (great macro work plus is a terrific portrait lens). However, the Tamron was problematic when working indoors for two reasons - first, the 90mm is great for head/shoulder shots indoor but simply required far too much light to get good results on a full body shot. That is where this little lens picks up...less light, more dimension without sacrificing clarity and still provides beautiful background. Very pleased. This lens has earned its reputation and is a delight.
Digital camera Review: Even after price increases, worth the purchase
Summary: 4 Stars
**Updating of original entry, which praised the lenses performance, but dinged the wacky price fluctuations up to $600+!**
PRICING:
Pentax bumped up the prices of their lenses around February 2009, changing the purchase of this lens from being a 'no-brainer' to at least something to be mildly mitigated. This specific lens enjoyed a 37% price increase. It remains one of Pentax's fastest existing production lenses.
AMAZON PRICING:
So hence the wacky part. By virtue of temporary scarcity and some weird vendor shenanigans, the primary (anchor) price of the lens was being listed for three times higher the bargain price, and roughly twice as much as the new elevated price. Pricing has stabilized albeit at the newly designated elevated schedule.
PERFORMANCE:
This lens still shines compared to its contemporaries. While not a macro, it provides reasonable close focal range, Autofocus is on par with what we've come to expect with Pentax lenses, and the colors are reasonably good. This lens does a good job at adding that extra dimension of "oomph" of contrast that your eyes don't capture at the time, although the mind blowing vibrancy of the 77mm Limited or 85mm 1.4 isn't there.
The lens is fast and does what you expect to accomplish with ambient light. It's also great for hand held shots. It's not razor sharp wide open with low light, but lends itself really well to portraiture as it softens the skin tone. In bright daylight however, the lens is respectably sharp.
BUILD
The lens is plastic and may fool you if you haven't used some of Pentax's other quality FA based lenses. It takes a 49mm filter and does not come with a hood. It feels fairly well built, but I wouldn't go dropping it any time soon. The lens cap stays on pretty well, but only without a filter. The focal ring is pretty narrow, but placed in a way that you don't have to search for it too much when manual focusing. It does not have a declutching mechanism built-in like the DA* lenses have, so you'll need to hit the MF switch on your camera body to easily focus.
FA vs DA (& DA* LENSES)
If you don't need weather-proofing of the DA* 55mm, and you're really price conscious; I'd recommend going with this lens.
This is an FA-type lens so it also has the manually selectable aperture ring on the lens, something the DA* 55mm 1.4 is missing. If Pentax ever releases that full frame camera we've all been dreaming about, you should consider whether or not the DA line will support sensors bigger than APS-C. The FA will work like a charm and is fairly flawlessly downwardly compatible with other Pentax bodies. The DA's have limited downward (and possibly upward) compatibility, depending on the sensor/negative size.
BOTTOM LINE: I still think this lens is worth it, as its alternatives still cost too much, or lack the feature set that this lens possesses. As of today (1/7/2010) this price is still reasonable for this caliber of lens performance.