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  #21  
Old 29th February 2020, 03:41 AM
Svend Svend is offline
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Alex, I hadn't thought of looking on ebay UK. I have restricted my searches to N. America only, but from what you found it seems to be worth a good look as the prices you noted seem pretty reasonable. Shipping from UK to here may not be much more than domestic either. Thanks for checking into that. Much appreciated! I'll let you know if I end up there...I'm kinda striking out here, so the UK may be better hunting.
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  #22  
Old 29th February 2020, 07:09 AM
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Martin Aislabie Martin Aislabie is offline
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The best way to check for scratches on a lens is to hold the lens up to the light, look through the lens and focus your eye on the far element.

Slight movement of the lens in the light will show up any scratches.

Scratches are usually on the front element - but you can get them on the rear too.

Such lenses have been loved to death by careful owners cleaning the lens by rubbing/cleaning/polishing - without first removing the microscopic grit first - which can be on either the cleaning material or the lens itself.

A quick blast of air is usually sufficient to remove any grit from a lenses surface.

Of course prevention is better than cure - so use a filter to protect the front element, keep fingers away from those glass surfaces and use lens caps all the time.

Lens wraps help enormously the keep lens caps in place if your lenses are loose in the bottom of a camera bag.

Scratches to the rear element are worse for image quality than front ones.

All scratches affect image quality - what ever the lighting conditions.

How much is the million dollar question.

Martin
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  #23  
Old 29th February 2020, 08:44 PM
Svend Svend is offline
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Update here: in the end I did not buy the Tokina. I did as Martin and others suggested - looked from the rear and shone a flashlight through the front element. All the scratches were readily apparent, and there were a lot of them. Looking from the front there were none visible at all. Just shining the light through the front showed how much flare was created...not good, too limiting for my uses.

I will keep looking. There is a Sigma Superwide II 24mm for sale that looks good, so I may go for that. Or shell out a bit more and try a zoom for once - the Pentax SMC-A 24-50 looks interesting, although I will have to get around my ingrained anti-zoom lens bias

Thanks for the advice everyone! I will let you know when I find a winner.
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Last edited by Svend; 29th February 2020 at 08:55 PM.
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  #24  
Old 29th February 2020, 09:18 PM
Richard Gould Richard Gould is offline
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It can be difficult indeed to see the effect of these very fine scratches on the front element, sometmes a lot of flare, depending on how bad they are can be a soft focus effect, wich is not to bad, indeed I keep one lens for a Leica that produces wonderfull soft focus effects which can look lovely again with the right subject, As far as Zooms go, I personally rather like them, with my slr's I mostly use zooms, saves a lot of weight, with no real loss of quality, I have 2 superwide zooms, the 24 to 85 always goe's with me if taking one of the minoltas, and I have a 24 to 105 which lives on my 700si
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  #25  
Old 1st March 2020, 12:16 AM
Svend Svend is offline
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Richard - yes, I really should try a zoom at some point. I think I've read so many comments and reviews panning zooms in general that I never gave them much thought. Reading Thornton's Edge of Darkness didn't do much to change my mind. Nor does the 18-55 kit lens on my K5....not too impressive...the 45 year old Vivitar I mentioned is far sharper.

But I have been reading some glowing reviews of a small handful of older Pentax zooms that users are saying are as good as primes....hmmm....tempting....
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  #26  
Old 3rd March 2020, 12:48 AM
Svend Svend is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Svend View Post
Richard - yes, I really should try a zoom at some point. I think I've read so many comments and reviews panning zooms in general that I never gave them much thought. Reading Thornton's Edge of Darkness didn't do much to change my mind. Nor does the 18-55 kit lens on my K5....not too impressive...the 45 year old Vivitar I mentioned is far sharper.

But I have been reading some glowing reviews of a small handful of older Pentax zooms that users are saying are as good as primes....hmmm....tempting....
So further to the subject of wide-normal zoom lenses, I have been looking into these as a possible viable option over a prime. I know there are a few dyed in the wool Pentax users here (Mike O'Pray and Pentax Pete, raise your hands please ), so does anyone have a recommendation from personal experience for a 24-50 or similar? In your experience, is there one that is truly as good in image quality as equivalent primes? FYI, I definitely want to have 24mm at the wide end as priority; the long end is less important to me. Doesn't have to be a Pentax marque either...I am open to 3rd party lenses as well....(Vivitar Series 1 perhaps?).

Main performance criteria is how it works on a film camera (Pentax MX) with monochrome film; landscapes, nature, and architecture as main subjects.

Very curious to hear some comments.



PS -- If the Mods would prefer, I can open a new thread on this topic...


[Edit: new thread here: http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.or...d.php?p=131449 ]

.
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Last edited by Bob; 3rd March 2020 at 06:04 PM.
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