I sometimes find myself believing that the purest form of photography involves identifying a scene you want to capture, planning the day/time/light/equipment etc... and going out and doing just that. But, MOST of the time I believe that is pretentious rubbish that makes me disgusted with myself. Maybe, because I have more success typically with just going out and immersing myself in the place with no agenda beyond looking for an image to make that pleases me and will capture that moment for me. It can be on the street, in the desert, the mountains anywhere really.

I frequently find myself wanting to take a single lens that is not too big and just go see the world around me. The question I am exploring in my head and in my recent post on my Vivitar 20mm, and future ones too, is this: Which lens to take? I am now shooting full frame, so all my legacy manual focus lenses work quite differently than on APS-c. If you care this will explain crop factor better than I possibly could:      https://photographylife.com/what-is-crop-factor and I am having to re-calibrate my brain.

So... which lens should I take? I don't know, I loved my 24mm f2.8 on my APS-c Pentax K5, but it is much wider now and I haven't really played with it much on the K1 but I plan to. The focal length I tend to "see" is around 35mm which correlates to a 24mm on APS-c, and I have a lovely 35mm lens I will be posting on in the future the Pentax K35mm f3.5 However, I believe that I would find just one focal length to get limiting after awhile and my somewhat nebulous goal is to identify a group of lenses that I can grab for just walking around and being creative. Further I think I want to keep it "Pocketable" meaning I can put a lens in each jacket pocket and one on the camera switching as needed. I imagine having a wide angle in the range of 20-28mm, a medium wide to normal in 35-50mm and something longer... 85-135mm ish. I have several contenders to look at in this category. K135mm f2.5, likely my next victim for review, the DFA 100mm f2.8 macro which I ADORE, and something like this lens we are going to talk about in this post. The Rokinon (Samyang) 85mm f1.4. there are many 85mm lenses in the Pentax line up, but I don't own them. I had a chance to buy an 85mm f1.8 several years ago in the K series that matches my other vintage K glass, but I just didn't have the cash, I did play with it a little and it was a fun lens. https://www.lloydshell.com/p884566878  Should anyone wish to donate one I would not turn you down... just saying.

This Rokinon lens was given to me in a box of lenses from a friend, I have looked at it when lens browsing in the past, it is pretty inexpensive which makes it tempting and has a decent reputation for sharpness. There is a good review here where you can find a LOT of good lens information on lenses that fit Pentax cameras: https://www.pentaxforums.com/userreviews/samyang-85mm-f1-4-aspherical-if.html 

My experience has been a little up/down with this lens. Like I said, I seem to see more in wide angle terms and find this an awkward focal length, especially in light of its closest focusing distance. The lens barrel does not move in and out like many lenses as it is internal focusing, but the closest closest focus is far enough away to annoy me as I like to get close to things, not straight up macro distances but, closer than this lens can get. So, gripe #1 doesn't focus very close, I did not try extension tubes, though I may at some point. Gripe #2 it is tough to nail focus, wide open the depth of field is quite thin and it tends to spoof my focus confirmation and I got a LOT of pictures where the focus point was in front of where I wanted it. This is a part of using an f1.4 lens with manual focus. That can be fixed using live view with focus confirmation but that is awkward in the extreme when just walking around and just didn't work well for me. Gripe #3 chromatic aberration, lots of it. It is an older design and not corrected as well as newer lenses. Pentax has a brand new 85mm f1.4 that is autofocus and is supposed to be excellent but is... unsmall. 

Now the good: when you nail focus to get your subject right the bokeh, or blurred background quality, can be quite good. At least to my eye. There is not a way I am aware of to measure this as it is subjective, and blood feuds seem to have been started in discussing it in online forums, but I like what this lens can achieve. The build quality and feel of using the lens is quite good. The focus ring is nicely damped, it balances VERY well on my camera and it is a pleasure to handle. The colors are nice and it meters as good as any other lens on my camera. Last, it is quite sharp, but needs to be stopped down a little to really get as sharp as I want, so maybe a mixed good. Overall it is useful and may be included at times in my kit, but I have more lenses to test before this becomes a contender. I have included a bunch of photos below all taken with this lens, usually during my daily commute and within a fairly localized area of downtown Salt Lake City. I simply lack the time to devote a whole day right now to just playing with this lens, and honestly, it just didn't excite me enough to make the effort. That may be the concluding point really, it didn't excite me as much as I wanted, I missed focus too much with this, the other quirks are forgivable but that one was hard to get past. 

You will have seen the Walker Building in my photos before, it looks imposingly down on my transfer point from train to bus in the morning. The longer reach allows me to capture this detail of its reflection in a window, but I found myself wanting something a little longer.

This is where the chromatic aberration reared it's ugly head, it is mostly corrected in the first photo. Not corrected in the second one.

I hoped that the wider f1.4 aperture would help with taking pictures in the morning gloom, where light is limited, I took several photos before I got one with acceptable sharpness to view at this size, it would not hold up if you could see it fully zoomed in. The front focusing made this hard, you sway more when looking up and the camera moves with you changing which part of your subject is in focus.   

I typically don't photograph the place I work at but I made an exception here, this was taken at f4 with the focus point somewhere in the middle of the M   

I have not visited the backboards outside of the ER for awhile, they have been a fun place to play in the past.   

At closest focusing distance and f1.4 the depth of field is quite thin, but he subject isolation can be quite good. That is the trade off with this type of lens.   

This is my favorite picture taken with this lens, I sit in this spot every day waiting for the bus when I leave work. I just like it, don't know why.   

Stopping down gives excellent image quality and less subject isolation.     

This was more of a test for my focusing skills than anything else I did, these folks were moving around a lot and it took a lot of effort to nail the focus, and I lot of lost shots due to focusing error. I tried to stay out of their way and hopefully out of their shots. They had a Canon with a standard kit zoom, and it looked like they were shooting pretty wide shots. But, again I stayed out of their way as best I could. They are in a public space and it is entirely OK for me to take their picture, but it is part of me to be unobtrusive when I can.   

Middle distance shots trying to get really good isolation are hard, I was less pleased than I wanted to be with this, I had hoped for more blurring of the guy in the background.   

This was a f2.8 and I missed the focus ever so much to the front, but I included it as an example of background bokeh which I felt was entirely acceptable.   

Good, you stuck around! Thanks for reading and have a great day! As always feel free to leave a comment.