Pentax Zoom Lenses

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The article originally featured in January 2009’s ‘What Digital Camera’.

This month Jon Tarrant compares three Pentax zooms in the 16-55mm range. Which one offers the best balance between price and performance?

Pentax has long been known for the quality of its lenses. In 1971 it stole the worlds photographic limelight with the introduction of Super Multi Coating (SMC) and this technology is now routinely employed to improve light transmission and reduce flare. At that time other manufacturers either claimed that they already used (or were about to introduce) their own multi-coating technology, or insisted that the route to better image quality instead lay in improved element design rather than simply adding more elements. Nevertheless, all modern photographic lenses from all manufacturers use multi-coating technology of some sort.

As already implied, one of the most important advantages arising from multi-coating is the ability to construct lenses containing more elements, and thereby to achieve better control of lens aberration. Nevertheless, the latest SMC Pentax-DA 18-55mm AL-11 zoom tested here actually employs fewer elements than the lens it supersedes – 11 elements in eight groups versus 12 elements in nine groups.This does not reduce the need for multi-coating technology, but rather provides evidence of the improvements that have been made in cost-effective lens manufacturing.

When fast standard prime lenses from five manufacturers were recently compared (WDC, September 2008) Pentax’s 35mm f/2.8 came out on top. As part of the test process Pentax’s original 18-55mm zoom was also evaluated at its 35mm setting. The results were impressive and exceeded the MTF figures obtained for some of the prime lenses. The new version, tested here, is even better, yet costs not a penny more. Sadly, it’s not even close to the primes on the maximum aperture front, though.

This in turn raises an important point……….

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