Funky old lenses vs perfect new glass
Best of Pentax Forums Newsletter April 16, 2026
Funky old lenses vs perfect new glass
I’ve just picked up an SMC PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye for my Pentax K-3 III Monochrome. Interestingly, while the 10mm end of things is suitably fishy, I find myself using it at 17mm quite a bit. It’s not really fishy, but it’s quite funky, what with the rectilinear distortion.
Maybe funky old lenses just fit my funky old eyes better than perfect new glass. The two Limiteds I tested from Lens Rentals are among the highest rated Pentax lenses ever. Yet neither one tempted me, and I sent them both back.
How about you? Funky old glass with character? New optical perfection? Vote in this week’s poll, and let us know why you do what you do in the comments!
Elsewhere in this week’s newsletter, New Member Fluora gives an enthusiastic review to the HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm F4.5-6.3 ED PLM WR RE; site supporter Medex has done a monochrome conversion on his 645Z; and we have a Pentaxian Profile of the great BertieK!
If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, please take a moment to join the almost 1,600 Pentaxians who have subscribed to our free curated compendium of the hundreds of great images and post shared each week in our Pentax community. Please let us know your thoughts here in the comments and on our Pentax Forums, and have a perfect Pentaxian week!
Threads of the Week:
MONOCHROME Pentax 645Z conversion - done!
April 13, 2026 • Pentax Medium Format • 13 replies • 326 views
Medex said — My first Pentax 645Z monochrome conversion is completed. 1 year ago I did 645D monochrome conversion, but hesitated to use my 645Z for this risky project. Conversion of 645Z went well - I reused all original optical elements, ultrasonic dust removal is retained, sensor is perfectly aligned. Read more »
Long-Term Data Storage for Home Users
April 9, 2026 • General Photography • 13 replies • 708 views
Not a Number said — Christopher Barnatt covers: “Data preservation for home computer users, covering cold media data retention, and required refresh actions, for hard drives, SSDs and flash drives, and optical media. Plus discussion of long-term cloud storage, and family storage audits." Read more »
Renovating a Voigtl?nder Prominent 6x9
April 9, 2026 • Vintage Cameras and Equipment • 8 replies • 233 views
VisualDarkness said — I recently got hold of one of my dream cameras, Voigtl?nder Prominent 6x9 from 1932, at a decent price. It was in an unknown condition but so far: shutter is almost perfect focusing works Rangefinder works, but hazy/spots and uncalibrated Viewfinder ...Read more »
Pentaxian User Reviews
Pentax Lenses
HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm F4.5-6.3 ED PLM WR RE
Reviewed by New Member Fluora
Review Date: April 10, 2026 Recommended | Price: $400.00 | Rating: 10
Pros: Amazing balance of optical quality and handling, incredibly fast autofocus, great price
Cons: A little flimsy, and incompatible with older cameras
Sharpness: 10 Aberrations: 10 Bokeh: 10 Autofocus: 10 Handling: 10 Value: 10 New or Used: New Camera Used: Pentax KP
People like to say things like “good, light, cheap, pick two” for a lot of different types of gear, but this is one of those rare cases where you can just have all three.
This lens is the one that made me fall back in love with photography all over again, and I’m not exaggerating. Prior to buying this one in 2023, all I had was the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AL II kit lens and a serviceable but dated manual-focusing Tokina 400mm f/5.6, the latter of which spent the most time on my camera. I had long dreamed of finding an autofocus telephoto lens, but nothing I was able to find was remotely in the range of what I could afford at the time - until the 55-300 PLM popped up on B&H while I was browsing lenses. I bought it, almost on impulse, and when it arrived, I realized I’d entered a new era.
If you have a compatible Pentax camera, are interested in wildlife photography, and are looking for a new lens, then this is the first one you should consider. Many of the classic struggles with wildlife lenses - namely their weight, cost, slow focusing, and clumsy handling - simply don’t apply to this lens. Despite being one of my longest in maximum focal length, this is actually one of my lightest lenses. The lack of tripod foot isn’t a cost-cutting thing - it genuinely doesn’t need one. Using a nifty collapsible mechanism, it can be packed down tight to the point where it’s barely longer than an 18-55 kit lens, meaning that you usually won’t even have to take it off your camera when you put it away.
Optically, this lens is like nothing I’d ever seen before at the time I bought it. It’s so much sharper than my Tokina 400mm that it gives me much more effective reach despite being 25% shorter, and it handles backlit subjects and other tricky lighting with so much more grace. The maximum aperture of f/6.3 at the long end is a bit tight, but it’s more than enough to work with in daylight, and I’ve had surprising luck with it in utterly abysmal indoor lighting. Bokeh is great too, being pretty much completely non-distracting. I’m aware that other modern wildlife lenses are able to run circles around this lens in all these respects, but only at five or ten times the price. For something you can buy without emptying your savings and use one-handed, the 55-300 PLM is absolutely stunning.
The real star of the show is probably the autofocus. The idea with the PLM system (Pulsed Linear Motor, I believe) seems to have been to make the autofocusing elements as fast and light as possible, allowing them to be snapped into position remarkably fast. This comes at the cost of the system being completely “fly-by-wire”, which isn’t invisible - the focus ring on the lens is just an encoder knob and requires power from the camera to control the focus, and there’s a small but noticeable lag. The lens is also about as far from parfocal as it’s possible to be, and while the autofocus does try to actively follow you while zooming, it’s not always very accurate, and this doesn’t happen at all if the camera is asleep. When you’re doing handheld wildlife photography, though, you probably just want to let the camera handle the focus so you can pay attention to your subject, and this lens is easily among the best for that. The main concern I have with this lens is its durability. While the parts are certainly made to good tolerances out of decent materials, it’s still a plastic-on-plastic lens body, and you can definitely feel some slop in various parts. It’s also really good at inhaling dust when you zoom in and out a lot, which hasn’t happened enough to affect image quality on mine yet, but is a bit discouraging to see when a CLA would probably cost about as much as the lens cost to buy in the first place. Unlike any of the lenses I’ve bought used (so, the rest of my collection), it’s hard to imagine this lens lasting multiple decades, and it’s sad to think of an optic as being disposable. Even so, I also don’t think this reflects any particular greed on Pentax/Ricoh’s part, since the benefits of the tradeoff of making it out of plastic are handed right back to the customer - in no world would an optic of this quality be available at such a low price if it were made of metal, quadruply so if it were made of metal and also still so lightweight. Unlike a lot of modern tech products, I don’t think this lens is necessarily built with any sinister planned obsolescence, but it’s worth keeping in mind that it might not be something that will end up outliving you. Below is one of my best shots with this lens, taken at 300mm f/8. This is cropped at full height from landscape to portrait and downscaled by a factor of two, just for reference.
Comment of the Week:
Loyal Site Supporter BertieK on A new Pentax dSLR: FF? APS-C? The Best of Pentax Forums April 9 Poll: I want Ricoh/Pentax to give Leica a run for their money - so bring it - a new FF Monochrome.
Funky old lenses vs perfect new glass
The Best of Pentax Forums April 16 Poll
I’ve always considered myself an ultrawide-angle lens guy because I shot the vast majority of the thousands of photos I took as a photojournalist with the SMC Pentax-M 20mm F4. So when I started shooting Pentax APS-C dSLRs I bought the legendary HD Pentax-DA 15mm F4 ED AL Limited. The Limited on APS-C is the equivalent of 21mm on 35mm film and sensors-close! But I didn’t love it. I don’t know why. I just…don’t really like the images I take with it. Maybe something wider? So I bought the SMC Pentax-DA 12-24mm F4 ED AL [IF]. And…not only do I not love it, I hate it. The autofocus hunts endlessly…and then misses. It regularly locks up my Pentax K-3 III Monochrome. And the images are pedestrian at best. When I did the Monochrome Wide Angle Shoot Out it finished a distant, dead last behind the SMC 20 F4, the 15 Limited, and two lenses from Lens Rentals: the HD Pentax-D FA 21mm F2.4 ED Limited DC WR, and the HD Pentax-DA 20-40mm F2.8-4 Limited DC WR. (Perhaps I have a bad copy.)
But I’ve been buying Pentax lenses since 1979; I’m not about to stop now. So when an SMC PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye fell into my lap, I grabbed it. When it arrived I put it on the Monochrome, but with some trepidation after my last three wide angle efforts. And now that I’ve been shooting it for a few weeks…I love it!
Interestingly, while the 10mm end of things is suitably fishy, I find myself using it at 17mm quite a bit. It’s not really fishy, but it’s quite funky, what with the rectilinear distortion.
Maybe funky old lenses just fit my funky old eyes better than perfect new glass. The two Limiteds I tested from Lens Rentals are among the highest rated Pentax lenses ever. Yet neither one tempted me, and I sent them both back.
How about you? Funky old glass with character? New optical perfection? Vote in this week’s poll, and let us know why you do what you do in the comments!
This poll closes October 11
And here are the results of last week’s poll:
Weekly Photo Challenges
Weekly Challenge #736 - Capital City
Posted By: rod_grant: Welcome to Weekly Challenge #736: Capital City
Thank you Frank (xs400) for selecting my photo as the winner of last week’s contest!.
This weeks challenge is Capital City. I would like a National Capital, but will accept a State or Provincial Capital; buildings, spaces, interiors - whatever defines your capital.
The challenge will run until midnight next Wednesday, April 22ndt 2026 at midnight GMT. I will announce the winner the next day.
And here’s the entry from Forum Member WondringLisa: Horseguards Parade in London. Went back to this old favorite of mine with the new tools that Lightroom has.
A Walk Down Memory Lane
Johnny McTaggart
Pentaxian Profile
By PF Staff in Pentaxian Profiles on Mar 8, 2012
It was really like coming home for me.
Or like the first time I laid eyes on my wife.
It was so comfortable, so right, that I just knew we’d be together for the rest of my life.
That was the feeling I got when I pressed my eye against my Pentax, clicked the shutter, tilted the camera forward slightly, then looked at the image on the LCD screen.
I know that might sound dramatic, but it really is the best way to describe it.
Now, this wasn’t something that happened to me at a tender age either - I was 38 years old.
PentaxForum Front page stories April 9-15:
BertieK: Master of Monochrome
Cooking up Trichrome recipes with the Pentax K-3 III and GR IV Monochromes
By cjfeola in Pentaxian Profiles on Apr 15, 2026
The stereotypical Pentaxian is an extremely grumpy oldster who has been shooting Pentax since the early Paleozoic and now spends days shouting at clouds.
BertieK blows that stereotype into little bits.
Monochrome bits. In her two years as a Pentaxian she has acquired a pair of K-3 III Monochromes and a GR IV Monochrome. Not that she’s given up colour entirely-her Trichrome recipes produce painterly colour images from black & white. Here’s her story.