Pentax SMCP-FA 50mm f/1.4 Lens

This is a superfast lens. I can't believe how little light it takes to produce a decent picture. When I bump the ISO on my Pentax K10D up to 1600, I can take pictures with very little light at all.
Another thing I really liked about this lens is that it's very small and light. I had read how small it is in several reviews, but after using several different zoom lens, I was still surprised.
Perhaps most importantly, the image quality is very good.
I especially love the way the lens has very shallow depth of field.
For a more complete article on this lens click the following link to see the review done by Popular Photography Magazine.
http://www.popphoto.com/cameralenses/4769/lens-test-pentax-smcp-fa-50mm-f14-af.html

super fast, very sharp, great bokeh! an excellent portrait lens. It has quickly become my primary lens for indoors low light shooting. comes highly recommended

I had previously purchased a Sears 50mm F/1.7 manual lens. That lens only worked on my Pentax DSLR in full manual operation. This Pentax FA lens will work in all the normal operation modes, and autofocus's nicely. It helps to give the lens a little time to find its mark but its way faster and more accurate than trying to focus yourself. It was for this reason that I wanted to purchase this lens - to get an Auto focus, Auto exposure 50mm fast prime for portrait work. Put simply this lens delivers. The 8 bladed aperture creates a beautiful creamy Bokeh for the background, the lens coatings reduce flare and aberrations. It stays sharp wide open and being full frame looks sharp in the corners too. It does everything that it needs to do - Im very happy with it.

I own a sports photography company and wanted a good Wide Angle+Fast Prime Lens. This purchase was more of an experiment than necessity. At 2.0 and Smaller the lens is by far the sharpest glass to date. Not too saturated just perfect for group shots at 6.7 - 11. Indoors...dropping from an f2.8 70-200 down to f2.0 50mm is the difference of a door mat to a football field! Sure you don't get as close to the action (get up and move...lazy :P) the only technique that is required is accurately focusing fast action at a razor thin aperture. The auto focus is nowhere near as sharp as old fashion manual focusing, but once you get the hang of focusing you'll love the results. The only draw back I found is the pics are not sharp at sub f2.0 for professional sales. if it was for my kids playing Basketball or wrestling or any indoor sport I'd shoot at f1.4 all day but for resale to the public f2.0 is the fastest with tack sharpness you can go...still f2.0 is fast as heck. check us out a rancierphotography.com.