PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- User Rating: 
Summary for PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- Fun Lens to Have
Notes on PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- Have owned this lens since December 2007 and have had a lot of fun with it. At 17mm, it functions like a conventional wide angle lens, but at 10mm it is truly a fish-eye. The flexibility cannot be beat! Image quality is excellent (color rendition and sharpness). It can produce some interesting perpectives once you learn how to exploit its characteristics.
The lens surface extends (bulges out) beyond the front rim of the lens which can expose it more than a conventional lens. However, Pentax claims that it has a special coating which is supposed to resist scratches. I am ultra careful and choose not to test the strenght of the coating!! The lens cap is a slip-on type vs. a clip-on type. The lens is a tad heavy, but solidy built.
The more I use this lens, the more pleased I am that I purchased it.
PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- User Rating: Summary for PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- Versatile, adds creative dimensions
Notes on PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- This lens can be used for many other photographic projects besides just landscape/scenic panoramas. Of course, some caution is needed when thinking about the lines, convergence, etc...but it is a fun as well as useful lens. It goes with me everywhere! Admittedly, it's not my "primary" lens...that'd be my Pentax SMC 18-250mm lens.
PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- User Rating: 
Summary for PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- Digital Fisheye for Pentax
Notes on PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- Every bit as advertised. A most unusual lense. It takes a while getting use to the lack of an apature ring but the lense is everybit worth it. If you are in a small room and need to take in the whole room this is the lense for you. The Lense is as sharp as all of the other pentax lenses that I have and the depth of field is tremendous.
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PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- User Rating: Summary for PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- Impressive, but watch out for that front element
Notes on PENTAX DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF) Fish-Eye ...- Sometimes you just need to go to the extreme - in this case it is really wide angle. In my old Canon film-camera days, I had the 15mm 2.8 fisheye which was an even bigger chunk of glass because of its speed.
Now that I have gone to the Pentax K100D camera, I was pleasantly surprised to see this 10-17mm lens was available. I was even happier because unlike the Canon lens, the Pentax is a zoom, so that not every shot has to be the distorted wide angle that you think of when you hear "fisheye". The lens goes out to the equivalent of about 26mm on a 35mm format, which is a very useful focal length as well.
The lens also allows manually tweaking the focus while in the auto-focus mode - something my 2 Sigma lenses warn against.
The only drawbacks to the lens that I see are that you can not mount a filter and the curved front element is exposed (same for the Canon). So, just use a little caution. And, unlike the old Canon, there are no rear filters either. Finally, for those who like to manually adjust the aperture ring - there isn't one. It's all set through the camera :-)
I could go on about the lens, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I've posted a few photos in the Amazon collection.
