Web Analytics RiceHigh's Pentax Blog: Yet Another Shootout for Six 50mm Lenses

Monday, August 30, 2010

Yet Another Shootout for Six 50mm Lenses

Further to the last digital standard zoom shootout carried out by the ERPhotoReview, I think the author's last group test amongst six 50mm lenses is also worth mentioning:-

http://erphotoreview.com/wordpress/?p=243

This test is yet quite interesting as the Takumar 55/1.8, Pentax A 50/1.4 and Pentax F 50/1.7 each represents the well-established optical formula and design of each own, which have been long and widely used in various variants of the Pentax "standard" prime lenses (now the 50 is just a "short-tele" portrait on Pentax DSLRs, anyway).

It can be seen that the 50/1.4 actually performs the best, except its dominant CAs found (same case as the DA 16-45). Other than that, it performs very well optically for both image centre and "corners" (Well, the projected images are still cropped on APS-C bodies, right?).

Btw, how about the DA*55/1.4 when compared against the 50/1.4 then, it was found that the DA*55 perform even better, optically! Just see this:-

DA* 55/1.4 Vs FA 50/1.4 - A Measurebating Shootout

But yet very unfortunately, the DA*55 is using the SDM, which is found to be slow, inaccurate in AF, and proven to be unreliable! :-( Furthermore, DPR previously put really adverse comments about the inferior quality and control found of the DA*55 lens and units (they requested 3 different samples from Pentax UK (as told by the DPR reviewers) but the lenses they tested did have similar misalignment and inaccurate focusing issues). Too bad..