Pentax SMC-FA Zoom 28-70mm f/4 AL Reviews

It's light, user friendly, fast, and the range is ok for street walking. It's a very nice portrait lens as well, i.e. for taking pictures of kids at play. It has good qualities at both ends (28 and 70mm), even wide-open (f/4). It's sharp for the price and a poor mans version of the f/2.8 28-70. Well it's my version anyway :-) A bonus is that you can use it with the built in flash. Drawbacks are the build quality and the (poor) manual focus abilities.

Light, small, quite sharp. Certainly beats the kit lens with my K100D. Cheap! OK, so it feels plasticky but it is an outstanding bang for the buck.

Used to be the 'best' cheap zoom for Pentax AF. Now it makes for a nice, contrasty 42-105mm on a digital SLR, which makes it a great portrait lens if you need the focal range to be versatile. It's useable wide open the entire range.

On a K10D it may be a bit limited in resolution.

The other reviewers said everything I would say; this is small, light and very sharp. Although I have other (more expensive) zooms covering this range I find myself taking this one with me on the K10D. K10D does not outresolve this, so, don't worry. The surprisingly low MTF score reported here is also irrelevant for current digital bodies; the performance at the area covered by the sensor is simply great. (As you may know, the MTF chart is based on a full frame sensor/film size). The sharpness, color rendition, bokeh, flare resistance are all very very good. It feels plasticky, so what? You will not be using this lens to rub on yourself, do you? The only negative aspect, for old school shooters, is its manual focus ring since all the throw is about 90 degrees... Do not hesitate to buy one in good condition. Its price/performance ratio -on digital bodies- is exceptionally high.