Pentax Lens Reviews on Dpreview

[airconvent]

DPreview has introduced a lens review section and their first 4 lenses for business consist of 2 Canon and 2 Pentax lenses. What was bewildering was the reviewer rated the Canon kit lens higher than the Pentax 16-45, which in turned was rated the same as the Pentax Kit lens....

[airconvent]

oops..sorry. this is the link :

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/

(sorry, I can't edit my post because using Netscape, I always get kicked out of the programme in edlit mode...)...

[creampuff]

Hah, dpreview
I stopped visiting dpreview because it has discredited itself completely when it gave that infamous "Recommended... Just" rating on a camera which went on to sweep so many accolades and awards.

BTW Netscape has reached a dead-end support wise, switch to Firefox.

[night86mare]

Originally Posted by airconvent DPreview has introduced a lens review section and their first 4 lenses for business consist of 2 Canon and 2 Pentax lenses. What was bewildering was the reviewer rated the Canon kit lens higher than the Pentax 16-45, which in turned was rated the same as the Pentax Kit lens....

i think perhaps you're being too overly sensitive here..

if you look at the rating for the 17-85 is for canon, it says, recommended (with reservations)

the score is marginally higher (~1.5, i think)

anyways, i hardly ever look at ratings given by reviewers, it almost always seems like a slip shod job, especially when you have only reviewed say, 4 lenses? what sort of basis do you have? what sort of criteria do you put in? better to read the conclusions, and browse through the information, and you'll see that they actually say a lot of bad about the canon lens, despite giving it a marginally higher rating in terms of scores.

[airconvent]

yes...but the final score represents the overall performance. How can a final lower score but interpreted as good if the reviewer gave it better marks in 1 or 2 areas ?
I guess we have to take all this with a pinch of salt...

Off Topic : BTW Denis , I use netscape 7.1 because many sites including malignant ones can't run because it supports so little of the new-fangled java stuff...haha. For that emergency when I need to access a site that Netscape can't handle, I use Opera.
And on the odd occasion when nostalgia sets in, I fired up Netscape 4.7 too!
I previously tried Firefox and Netscape 8 but that seemed to increase the alarms coming from my anti-spyware...

[night86mare]

Originally Posted by airconvent yes...but the final score represents the overall performance. How can a final lower score but interpreted as good if the reviewer gave it better marks in 1 or 2 areas ? I guess we have to take all this with a pinch of salt...

i was thinking - perhaps the reviewer is submitting to consumer demand. after all, the 17-85 is going to be a relatively "wider range of zoom" lens.. and we all know how much everyone loves that, despite the fact that you will have poorer optical quality, clumsier handling of distortion, etc.. as the review of that very lens shows compared to the other 3.

maybe they will highly recommend every 18-200. or 18-250 anyways.

[fengwei]

Originally Posted by airconvent DPreview has introduced a lens review section and their first 4 lenses for business consist of 2 Canon and 2 Pentax lenses. What was bewildering was the reviewer rated the Canon kit lens higher than the Pentax 16-45, which in turned was rated the same as the Pentax Kit lens....

Hmm, I don't know how you got the impression that they rated the Canon kit lens higher than our Kit lens

Canon 18-55 kit lens:
Detail Rating (out of 10)
Build quality 6
Ergonomics & handling 6.5
Features 7
Image quality 7.5
Value 9

Pentax 18-55 kit lens:
Detail Rating (out of 10)
Build quality 7.5
Ergonomics & handling 8
Features 7
Image quality 7.5
Value 8

Canon 17-85 USM:
Detail Rating (out of 10)
Build quality 8.0
Ergonomics & handling 8.0
Features 8.5
Image quality 7.5
Value 7.0

Pentax 16-45:
Detail Rating (out of 10)
Build quality 7
Ergonomics & handling 8
Features 7
Image quality 8
Value 8

The only aspect the Canon kit wins is the Value mainly because it's cheaper? Well, it's a cheaply made lens w/ a plastic mount. If you hold a Pentax kit lens and a Canon kit lens side by side, you'll know which one you'd like to have

And the Canon 17-85? Well, even a lot Canon users claim it's not a very good lens

[southernoise]

I thought that the reviews was quite impartial and did gave kudos to many additions that Pentax had provided for a "kit" lens.

[sbc]

Originally Posted by airconvent DPreview has introduced a lens review section and their first 4 lenses for business consist of 2 Canon and 2 Pentax lenses. What was bewildering was the reviewer rated the Canon kit lens higher than the Pentax 16-45, which in turned was rated the same as the Pentax Kit lens....

Going thru the review's conclusions, it gave 16-45 a rating of 8 for image quality and 7.5 for the rest.
That is just about right.

[istDeS]

Originally Posted by sbc Going thru the review's conclusions, it gave 16-45 a rating of 8 for image quality and 7.5 for the rest. That is just about right.

This is what i thought also. The canon kit lens score better in value and for 17-85 in feature because it has USM and IS.