He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother....

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother....

I've been thinking about a 70-200mm lens for a while, and they are incredibly useful but big, heavy and pricey. Then I thought, what on earth are we doing to ourselves? We buy a moderately small camera and then load it up with all sorts of lenses and accessories, with a huge bag to go with it, until we can barely stagger from the car to the edge of the car park. And don't forget the tripod. So here's an example, and I want to say upfront that this could easily apply to all makes, so I'm not having a go at any one of them. It also applies to mirrorless lenses in that full frame mirrorless still needs full frame sized lenses, often to the detriment of relatively small cameras.

I'm a Pentax User, and my full frame Pentax K-1 is actually relatively compact as full frame DSLRs go. Now which of these lenses would you choose?

HD Pentax-D FA 70-200mm f/2.8, weighing 1755g without hood or tripod collar and currently costing £1849.


HD Pentax-D FA 70-210mm f/4, weighing in at 819g and currently costing £959.


SMC Pentax-FA 70-200mm f/4-5.6, weighing a svelte 460g and second hand actual cost for a mint example £45.



The third lens I have bought and, subject to quality testing, it looks pretty good at a fraction of the cost and weight of either of the current lenses. It goes further, the three lenses using 77mm, 67mm or 49mm filters, a huge difference in filter costs, However, I am losing weather resistance and QuickShift focusing (so no tweaking of the focus position in AF), but at an outlay of just £45 I might not mind too much.

When I have a moment spare I will do a Vintage Review, but for now I'm very pleased with the low cost, low weight option. I can now walk easily to the edge of the car park, and maybe, just maybe, even a little way beyond.......