Lens review

Pentax smc DA 70 mm f/2.4 Limited

3. Build quality

First thing that you notice are small physical dimensions. Anybody who has ever seen 50-90 mm lenses, made by other companies, certainly had to wonder how Pentax managed to compress these 70 mm and f/2.4 aperture into such a small-sized instrument.

What’s more, those tiny dimensions don’t give the illusion of delicate build. The lens doesn’t look like a shoddy device, which can fall apart after a few days of usage - quite the opposite in fact. The outer barrel and its look remind classic metal lenses from the 80’s of the last century. We have a metal bayonet mount, a metal barrel, a clear distance scale and a narrow manual focus ring. The ring is perhaps not the height of ergonomics but the sheer dimensions of the instrument didn’t allow anything bigger. Nevertheless, it operates precisely.

The buyer gets in box an interesting screw-in telescopic lens hood and a soft case, made of artificial leather.

When it comes to the inner construction, it consists of 6 elements in 5 groups. None of the elements is aspherical or made of low-dispersion glass. The overall picture is complemented by a 9 diaphragm blades aperture and a non-rotating 49 mm filter thread.