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North Spore Shop: North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies

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Any camera gurus about? I need help making the Right choice for a lens this time...
    #13070598 -

I'm about to purchase a new lens for my camera. I've got a Pentax K20D (I started with an *ist D back in 2004). I've currently got 4 lenses in my kit, and only two of them give good sharpness, but they're both too heavy.

When I was young I bought big lenses, a 180mm macro lens because I loved to chase butterflies around, and a 50-500mm lens because I wanted to do aviary photography, and couldn't afford the prime 500mm lens. I made the same mistake with both these lenses, they're both too heavy, even if they produce quality photos.

My other two lenses are pretty much kit lenses, the standard 18-55mm F3.5 lens and a 28-200mm lens that came with my dad's film Pentax. I'm ready to replace my primary lens with something useful. I need something faster than F3.5, and for both night photography as well as portraiture (I can never get a good boca with 3.5). My problem is I only have about $500 to spend, and that limits me to either a really fast lens (say F1.8) with something between 28 to 50mm (prime nonzoom) or I can get a good wide angle lens that has a zoom but is around F2.8.
I love taking landscape photography, and I love doing panoramics as well, should I get a wide angle? Or should I get a prime, and get a panoramic head in the future and just stitch images? (I hear this is higher quality anyway). Help!

I wish I could trade my 50-500mm for a 70-200mm and the 180mm macro for a 50mm macro lol.

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Re: Any camera gurus about? I need help making the Right choice for a lens this time... [Re: Maverick]
    #13071185 -

If you consider going the zoom route, I'd take a look at the Tamron 17-50 2.8, a supposedly incredible and sharp lens for a cropped sensor. Would surely outperform the above as a kit replacement.

Sigma has similar lenses in focal length/speed, but the Tamron gets rave reviews on all mounts.

Can't go wrong with a quality prime, personally I'm very much on a hobby level so it's hard to justify $ on nice primes when I'm just hanging out outdoors or what have you taking a few shots.

That said I have a cheap(er) Minolta 50 1.7, that is my only prime and it is fun to play with. In a quick googling, there doesn't appear to be as many cheap prime options like that for Pentax.

IMO, you're better off going for a bang for the buck, middle of the line zoom (be at just wide angle or more general like 17-50) that will get you great performance and cover more needs so you can use that as a better foundation and eventually trade/sell/whatever for different primes etc or what have you.
Although it seems like you've been going for a while, you don't seem satisfied with that current cop of gear.

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North Spore Shop: North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies


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