Question about Pentax Lens just bought. Help wanted!

[rainbow_qry]

This is my first DSLR- Pentax K100D set. Bought together with a bundle of 4

lens on Ebay. I know these are quite old not auto focus lens, don't know a lot

about these lens. Can anyone explain how are these lenes, what they are most

suitable for, how much do you think they worth? I was considering maybe sell

some of them since I really don't think I need so many lenes as a starter.

 

These are the description of the lenes:

1. Series 1 vivitar 28-105 f 2.8 zoom, fast lens this one , heavy all metal

build ,strong leather case.

2. sigma 70-210 f3.5 zoom as new this one,never used,soft leather pouch..

3. same as above but used with signs of wear but still sound with no problems.

4. 24mm f2.8 wide angle prime lens also unused.

All are free from scatches clouding or fungus, not even dust specs

 

Any comments welcome.

 

Thanks for your help

[a few images]

The Vivitar 28-105 is a great walk around lens. Between $75 and $150.

 

The Sigma's are good - Cheap though, one on ebay ending in 11 hours for $11.. Another for a buy it now at $49

 

No experience with the 24mm f2.8

[rainbow_qry]

Quick response. Thanks Tom. Any comments which one I shall practice except the 18-55mm lens

[stemked]

Because of the 1.5X crop factor you are *likley* (depending on what you shoot to be needing/using the wider ends of your lenses. The 28mm part of the lens is like a 42mm lens in film.

 

Fast lenses are a blessing and a chore. If you don't like to use tripods, and you want 'better' images fast lenses (like the Vivitar) should throw the background out of focus making subjects 'pop-out' when shot wide open. I personally have no experience with the lens you noted but vivitar Series one are known to be good optics. The downside of course is these lenses are heavier and that can really wear you down if you carry it a lot.

 

The 24mm f2.8 (Pentax?) is going to be a nice pocketable lens, nice for the camera too because it is your widest optic.

[jeffpolaski]

If you have been using an SLR system for some years, you should probably just keep those lenese you are comfortable with,

 

If you are new to SLR photography, and really want to learn about photography, you might consider getting a single focal length lens and working with that. I won't go into all the resons for this -- there are plenty of threads on learning, really learning, how to make photographs.

 

I'd suggest a 40mm lens for the K100d. I use one on my istDS. It gives me an effective 60mm focal length, which is a "normal lens" equivilent that is a bit tightly cropped. The slightly narrower cropping will help you control frame content.

 

Zoom lenses are nice and convenient. With a fixed focal length lens, you can zoom in by stepping forward and zoom out by stepping back. Incredibly, many wonderful photographs were made this way.

 

With the K100d, you can shoot to your heart's delight and get instant basic feedback.

 

For my nieces and nephews, I gave them basic film Pentax SLRs with 50mm lenses. If they later fell prey to zooming and automation, well, that's the way it went.

[rainbow_qry]

I've never used SLR before so some people told me just stick with the 18-55mm lens comes with the K100D and don't touch manul lenses maybe because it is difficult to use? But I really want to take it seriously and hope can learn from stratch so I was wondering which combination will be better.

 

I think I will use the camera mostly for travel and architecture, street, so wide angel is a good choise. But taking the X1.5 into account, does it means the 24mm Pentax wide angel lens is 36mm, which is in the middle of 18-55. Can it be still counted as wide angel at all?

[from darkness]

Hello Rainbow,

 

You should consider buiyng a focus split screen which will help a lot while focusing with manual lenses. You can control your DOF better as with a normal mate screen.

If you are at the beginning it will be hard to focus with manual lenses.

 

Teoretically it is considered that a focal lenght smaler than the diagonal of your senzor is wide, the equal of the diagonal is normal and what is above represents telephoto. You can calculate that.

But somehow I would not consider the 24mm to be wide. :)

 

Christian

[rainbow_qry]

Not sure whether focus split screen is for me. Can't find a lot of thread on photo.net. Does it always work well with the body and will it compromise the quality of picture?

[michael_kuhne]

I always advise to train the eye for focussing by using the matte part of the screen. The split part is used mainly to double check, if the screen has one.