Pros & Cons
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- Sharp.
- Compact.
- Wide aperture.
- Excellent build quality.
- True standard-angle design.
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- Slow, noisy autofocus.
- Some barrel distortion.
- Dim corners at wide apertures.
- Omits weather sealing.
Pentax SMC FA 43mm F/1.9 Limited Lens Specs
| 35mm Equivalent (Telephoto) | N/A mm |
| 35mm Equivalent (Wide) | 43 |
| Dimensions | 2.5 by 1.1 inches |
| Lens Mount | Pentax K |
| Stabilization | None |
| Type | Lens |
| Weight | 5.5 |
As the oldest lens in the Pentax lineup—it was introduced in 1997—you'd expect the SMC FA 43mm f/1.9 Limited ($599.95) to deliver optical performance that's behind the times. But that isn't the case at all. The svelte, all-metal prime lens is quite sharp, even when paired with the high-resolution full-frame Pentax K-1 ($1,335.00 at Amazon) . It lacks some modern features, including weather sealing and an in-lens focus motor, but it's still the best standard-angle lens you can get for a full-frame Pentax, so we're naming it Editors' Choice.
Design
The FA 43mm ($409.00 at Amazon) set the tone for the Limited series. It's very small, at just 1.1 by 2.5 inches (HD) without its lens hood. It extends when focused close by about a quarter inch. It weighs just 5.5 ounces and supports 49mm front filters. The hood adds about a half inch to the height, but a negligbile amount of weight. A slip-on metal cap is included. Older versions of the FA 43mm are marked Made in Japan, while newer copies are assembled in Vietnam. There's no discernable quality difference between the two. Pentax only offers the lens in black at this time, but it has been available to purchase in a silver finish in the past.
Autofocus is supported. The FA 43mm doesn't have an internal focus motor, so focus is driven by your camera's screw-drive system. That makes it noisy compared with lenses with motors, and in the case of this lens it's also fairly slow if you need to move from one extreme to another. The focus ring turns close to 180 degrees to move from its closest focus distance to infinity, which takes a bit more time than other screw-drive lenses like the FA 31mm Limited ($896.95 at Amazon) , which moves across its range with a 90-degree movement.
The manual focus ring is finished with a knurled texture. It's narrow, but easy enough to turn with one finger when the camera is set to manual focus mode. (In contrast to DA Limited lenses, which feature Quick Shift for full-time manual focus, you'll need to switch the camera body to MF in order to manually focus with the 43mm.) Despite turning easily, it doesn't turn freely, so your focus point will remain set and you'll get some real tactile resistance.
A focus scale turns along with the ring, with marks from its minimum distance to infinity in feet and meters, and hard stops at both ends of its range. The corresponding depth of field scale is marked from f/4 through f/22 in full-stop increments. The lens also has a physical aperture ring. You'll set it to A when working with a camera with electronic aperture control, but if you opt to use the FA 43mm with an older film body or via an adapter with a full-frame mirrorless camera like the Sony Alpha 7 II ($898.00 at Amazon) , you can turn the ring to set the aperture to f/1.9, to f/2.8 through f/11 in half-stop increments, or to f/16 or f/22.
The 43mm focal length may appear to be an odd choice on the surface, but it matches the diagonal length of a 35mm film frame perfectly—that makes it a true standard-angle lens, even though it's a bit wider than the 50mm length one normally thinks of as standard. It's a focal length that's easy to fall in love with, as it's not quite as wide as a 35mm prime, but has a bit more breathing room than a 50mm.
The FA 43mm focuses as close as 1.5 feet (0.45-meter), which is a decent working distance for a standard lens. At its closest focus distance it projects objects onto the image sensor at 1:8 life-size. That pales in comparison with the Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 Di VC USD ($399.00 at Amazon) , which focuses to 11.4 inches for a 1:3.4 reproduction ratio. But the Tamron isn't available for Pentax cameras, and is a much larger, heavier lens.
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Image Quality
I tested the FA 43mm along with the full-frame, 36MP K-1. The lens scores well on Imatest's center-weighted sharpness test. At f/1.9 it records 2,396 lines per picture height, better than the 2,200 we want to see in a photo from a high-resolution camera system. Quality holds out through most of the frame, although the edges are on the soft side at 1,752 lines.
Stopping down to f/2.8 improves edge quality dramatically (2,431 lines), and bumps the overall average score to 2,798 lines. At f/4 you get 2,967 lines, and the lens hits peak resolution at f/5.6 (3,063 lines) and f/8 (2,997 lines). There's a mild drop in image quality due to diffraction at narrower apertures—2,917 lines at f/11, 2,812 lines at f/16, and 2,758 lines at f/22. But from f/2.8 through f/8 the lens nets extremely crisp results, and still manages very good marks at f/1.9 and f/2.
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There is a bit of barrel distortion, about 2.3 percent, which gives straight lines the appearance of an outward curve. And you'll notice that corners are dim at f/1.9 and f/2—about 3 stops darker (-3EV) than the center. That deficit is cut to -1.5EV at f/2.8, and is completely negligible at narrower apertures, dropping to about -0.5EV. If you shoot JPG you can enable in-camera correction to compensate for distortion and for illumination. If you're a Raw shooter, Lightroom ($9.99/Month at Adobe) corrects both with a single click profile correction.
Some may not love the look of the out-of-focus blur (bokeh) that the FA 43mm creates. When shooting against busy backgrounds—notably foliage—the blur tends to get a bit busy, with loads of circular highlights that can vary in size based on distance to the background and closeness of focus. Bokeh is a subjective aspect, but for a lens that tends to paint images with a very specific character as the FA 43mm does, it's worth noting. You may hate the look, though personally I love it.
Conclusions
The Pentax SMC FA 43mm f/1.9 Limited is just as much a gem today as it was when it was introduced nearly two decades ago. It's small, light, nicely built, and, most importantly, deadly sharp. You don't expect such a compact lens to capture images at f/1.9, or if you do, you expect quality to suffer when shot wide open, but this a lens you can shoot at any aperture without worry of quality loss. Simply put, the FA 43mm is one of the best lenses in the Pentax lineup. It finally has a perfectly matched digital body in the form of the K-1, and is an easy pick as our Editors' Choice. Full-frame Pentax shooters in want of a top-notch standard lens needn't look further.
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Further Reading
Final Thoughts
Pentax SMC FA 43mm f/1.9 Limited Review
The Pentax SMC FA 43mm f/1.9 Limited is the oldest lens that Pentax still makes, but its performance has withstood the test of time, and it captures the perfect standard-angle field of view on a full-frame camera.