Pentax SMCP-FA 50mm f/1.4 Lens

This is such a fun lens to take pictures with. It is fast wide open. The automatic focus is really nice, but switching to manual gives you so many other creative options. Definitely worth the price.

I purchased this lens through a different retailer (B&H) for the same price as advertised here. At first, I used it because my standard lens was not capturing my flash at a distance that I needed to photograph a large item that I was selling. Instead of a more powerful flash, this seemed like a better alternative. It worked perfectly. Zoom lenses are nice, but there are too many situations, especially with a DSLR, where they just don't cut it. For medium-low light, I prefer this to flash anytime, especially for $200.00.

If you've never had a fixed lens you don't even know what you're missing. If you've never had a lens that fast you don't know what you're missing. If you've never had an original Pentax lens on your Pentax or Samsung camera, you don't know what you're missing.

Just go and buy it. What are you waiting for?

I bought the Pentax 50/1.4 based on the suggestion of a friend and I absolutely love it.

I do a lot of product photography as part of my job, and I used to use a complicated flash setup with my older zoom lens that can take quite some time to fine-tune. Thankfully the 1.4 aperture of this lens lets in so much light that most of the time I don't need to use my flashes at all, just set the product on some white paper and shoot it using the natural light coming in through the window.

My only complaint is that on the crop sensor of the K10D camera I use it with the 50mm length can be a little longer than I would like (most DSLRs crop the image, so a lens will appear seem 1.5 times as long as it really is).

As much as I love this lens, if I had it to do over I would have spent the extra $80 and gotten the Pentax 40mm/f2.8 pancake lens. The small form factor and shorter length of the 40/2.8 make it seem like a more attractive option.

http://www.amazon.com/Pentax-Compact-Samsung-Digital-Cameras/dp/B00077KMXG

For a very inexperienced photographer, this lens was a good purchase. I recommend getting a prime lens to force you to move when composing your shots. And this lens has such a great depth of field when wide open, you can get really creamy shots. I'm really happy with the performance as well. When shooting faces, everything was very sharp and looked really great. The construction knocks off 1 star. The aperture ring can shift a tiny bit so that the camera thinks it isn't on automatic. You have to twist the ring back over to get it to register. I only have to do this a couple of times, but it's worth noting. The autofocus can be finicky if you're trying to shoot in really low light.