in sum, building on Mike's reply: A D-FA designation means that the lens will cover 35mm film format, is in the latest Pentax lens mount (supporting Quickshift, aperture ring and "A" setting for aperture), and has been enhanced to work well with the digital sensors (antireflection coatings, etc.).
Lenses that work well with a digital sensor will always work well with film, presuming appropriate format coverage. It's the converse that isn't true because digital sensors are pickier about light path and antireflection coatings due to back reflection from the sensor. Godfrey On Sep 3, 2006, at 7:57 AM, Michael Perham wrote: > The only D FA lenses being produced are the two macro's, the 50 and > 100. I > believe the 100 was jointly developed with Tokina, the 50 is based > on the > old 50 mm macro. Anyway, the old macro's were a bit large and > heavy for > todays DSLRs and I believe the antireflective coatings are the only > digital > specific design element in the new D FA lenses. > > Mike. > >> I've seen mention of D FA lenses in a few threads here. I believe >> that >> John or Godders mentioned that these lenses were designed with >> digital >> capture in mind and that they were also designed for a "full >> frame" sensor, >> or at least a sensor larger than that currently used in Pentax >> DSLR's. Do I >> have that right? >> >> If that's the case, how might such lenses behave when used with film? >> Would they provide better or worse results than current FA lenses >> given >> what we know about the requirements for good digital results? Why >> would >> pentax make such lenses unless it expects to be using larger >> sensors at >> some point? Perhaps to offer new glass to users of film cameras, and >> increase lens sales? -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
