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Pentax-03 Fisheye 3.2mm f/5.6 (Pentax Q) - Review / Test Report |
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Lens Reviews -
Pentax Q
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Page 1 of 3
Review by Klaus Schroiff, published January 2012
Introduction
Pentax offers two different species of lenses for the Q system - mainstream and "toy" lenses.
The Pentax 03 3.2mm f/5.6 Fisheye is the third mainstream lens if this classification can be
applied to a Fisheye lens anyway. That said it shares a couple of aspects with the "toy" Q lens group -
it has a fixed max. aperture and doesn't offer AF. We reckon that the comparatively "fast" max.
aperture lifted it into the mainstream class here. A focal length of just 3.2mm will sound odd
for most readers but this relates, of course, to the small sensor size of the Q system. In full
format terms it is equivalent to a 17.6mm fisheye lens which also explains the comparatively
moderate field of view of "just" 160 degress (vs 180 degrees on most other fisheye lenses).
The build quality of this tiny lens is good. The outer barrel is made of some kind of alloy (?)
which sits, funnily, on a plastic mount. This results in an unbelievable weight of merely 29g!
The dwarfish Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 UMC, a micro-four-thirds lens, is almost 7x heavier just to give
you a framework for comparison. The focus ring operates smoothly with no wobbling whatsoever.
The inner lens tube moves marginally during focusing.
As already mentioned it is a manual focus lens. This shouldn't really be a problem especially
consider the f/5.6 max aperture based on the 5.5x crop factor. Effectively the depth-of-field
is equivalent to f/30 on a full format camera! However the min. close focus distance is 10cm
so you can go wrong if you don't care at all. So you should activate "focus assist" in the
camera and do at least some coarse manual focusing. This works by pressing the "Ok" button then.
Just turning the focus ring will not trigger the magnified focus view (which is a bit cumbersome).
| Specifications |
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| Equiv. focal length | 17.6 mm (full format equivalent) |
| Equiv. aperture | f/30.8 (full format equivalent, in terms of depth-of-field) |
| Optical construction | 6 elements in 5 groups |
| Number of aperture blades | - |
| min. focus distance | 0.09 m (max. magnification 1:?) |
| Dimensions | 40.6 x 30.5 mm |
| Weight | 29 g |
| Filter size | - |
| Hood | - |
| Other features | - |
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