Does your lens has more letters after its name than a retired rocket scientist. What do all these lens markings mean? You can refer to a lens simply by the name of the manufacturer, the focal length, and its maximum aperture – a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6, say, or Canon 50mm f/1.4. But as lenses have often evolved from decades of development, they usually have a line of additional letters after their names, stamped on the barrel or printed on the boxes.
Some lens markings are about manufacturer branding – defining a more recent range, or a lens that’s built to higher standards than another. Others are to do with the optics themselves, and to highlight specific technologies used in the lens construction. In the jargon-busting guide below, we’ll translate these lens markings for you.
Pentax has admitted that its first compact system camera, the Pentax Q, is not selling as well as the company had hoped.
Speaking at the launch of the Pentax K-01, the company’s newest compact system camera the General Manager for Pentax UK, Jonathan Martin, told our sister website TechRadar, “Though it [the Q] has been well received, we haven’t seen the numbers that we would have liked to.”
Pentax has unveiled its latest mirrorless camera, the Pentax K-01, which boasts what the company claims is the world’s thinnest interchangeable lens – the smc Pentax-DA 40mm F2.8 XS unifocal.
This latest addition to the popular Pentax K series features 16.28-megapixel resolution with a newly developed CMOS image sensor measuring 23.7mm by 15.7mm, as well as high-speed burst shooting, an extra-wide sensitivity range with a top sensitivity of ISO 25600 and Full HD video recording.
Forget CES and PMA, Japan is the place to go for new camera news….
The Pentax 645D’s SLR-like controls make it refreshingly quick and easy to operate, but is £10K just too high a price to pay for this 40Mp medium-format camera?
Pentax K-x Review: Overview
The lens is still pretty quick, and offers full-time manual focus override, but even the Olympus 9-18mm lens manages this trick, and the Pentax autofocus is much noisier.
Pentax K-7 Review: Overview
The Pentax W60 may look and feel cheaper than many other rugged cameras, but it can go to a fairly impressive 4m underwater, albeit for only two hours.
