Pentax smc DA 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 AL II
1. Introduction
Just before this year’s PMA fairs Pentax, along with two new reflex cameras, presented as well some new lenses. I was a bit surprised noticing among them a Pentax smc DA 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 AL II model, the successor of a Pentax smc P-DA 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 AL “kit” lens. Why was it such a surprise? There are two reasons behind it. Firstly, the previous “kit”, having decent optical properties, a metal mount, a fully usable manual focus ring and a distance scale was one of the better “kit lenses” on the market. As the proverb says, the best is the enemy of the good. Especially that the second reason must be introduced here – Pentax cannot boast of a particularly impressive lenses selection so trying to improve a bit the old kit lens would be rather pointless, tantamount to wasting the constructors’ time and the productive capacity of factories.
However, we are not here to judge the policy of the Pentax company or its decisions about what to manufacture and when. Our task is to test whether the new “kit” is indeed better than its predecessor. We were given an opportunity to do so courtesy of the Fotozakupy.pl shop. The results are presented in the next chapters – happy reading!
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