Pros: This is the fastest sharpest 50mm f/1.4 among Canon, Nikon and Pentax.

Versatile, high quality, will become your favorite lens.

Cons: Pentax has matched their price to the other companies offerings.

It's important to note the lenses selling for half of this are f/1.8. Unfortunately for budget minded consumers Pentax never made an auto-focus 50mm f/1.8.

Other Thoughts: Once again, this is priced on the low-end for 50mm 1.4 lenses, not to be confused with 50mm 1.8's.

Pros: It's a very good lens for the price it used to sell for. The bokeh is smooth and fairly sharp at 1.7. Despite what the other reviewer had said, it does have an aperture ring (you can see it in the product picture).

Cons: If you go with 1.4 aperture, the picture is not as sharp. And it's not really worth the current price.

Other Thoughts: I'm not sure why Pentax has double the price (and substantially increase the price on others) for an exact same lens. The reasons I had go with a Pentax camera were the value and price, but now I think it's better to get a Canon/Nikon as they offer better value.

Pros: This is one of the sharpest 50 F 1/4 lenses out there, so long as you stop down to at least F 3.5. Between F 4 and F 5.6, it's sharper than comparable lenses from Nikon and Canon. The Pentax 50/1.4 has been around for a long time and is well-proven (not to mention the R&D and tooling was paid for a few decades ago. This lens does well in low light situations and as a short telephoto. There's no aperture ring, so it must be used on K series dSLR. This is probably the first

Cons: Pentax used to provide really good value on thir lenses but has recently doubled prices over the past several months on this and most other prime lenses. It's now seriously over-priced.