Looking over the pile of recent acquisitions it seemed that nothing major was lacking. I have coverage from 15-450mme plus the 600mme Hanimar long telephoto, weather seals from 27-450mme, a fisheye zoom and a couple of fast manual primes. All is well..
Almost.
The one thing I lack here is a quiet lens for the quiet body. The K-5 has a nicely muted shutter sound but a typically noisy AF screw drive. The best options to beat this are Sigma's HSM lenses with Pentax SDM good but tarnished by a few bad copies (make that several dozen bad copies..).
I found a
Sigma 18-50 f/2.8-4.5 HSM OS Macro &c lens for under $100. I've owned this before and it does a good job. No weather seals but zoom and focus are internal so water is less apt to get inside. Focus is nicely nearly silent, and it even has in-lens stabilization which is
very rare in Pentax mount. It has switches for both OS and AF (which allows for catch-in focus on the K-5). I will get an extra stop of light along with silence.. and an extra 100g of bulk.
Given the advantages of silence I'm letting this one back into my lineup. Maybe someone else will take a white 18-55wr off my hands?
