Compactness
weight
macro
handling
build quality and optics is impressive for the price
looks
very handy range, even on a cropped sensor - eq. 42-300mm
All round bargain in my opinion

some possible zoom creep
slight vignetting even on cropped body

Very decent lens indeed!
Contrast is ok. Vignetting is ok. Resolution is good. Bit of zoom creep.

Despite some of the above crit, I really love this lens. It is very, very compact and is the perfect walk-around lens on my K100D. It focusses extremely fast and accurate. It also has a macro range at full 200mm of about 50cm away from the subject. The Shake Reduction of this camera also works perfectly for me with this lens. I have serious shakes, the reason why I bought this camera in the first place. Canon IS works fine for me, Nikon's VR does not, but Pentax's SR works best for me. At 55mm I can take pics at 3/10 of a second - pixel sharp. At 200mm on this lens, I can take consistenty pics at 1/20sec and get consistent pixel perfect pics! Just excellent.

It is not a L-Series Canon lens (I have owned a number of these in the past), but it is a more than competent lens if you want to use it for a travel lens/all rounder for yourself.

Customer Service

decent pre-digital AF Pentax lenses are very scarce here in South Africa, but service was not needed as yet

Similar Products Used:

Covering some of this range:
Tokina 24-200mm (4-5.6 I think)
Canon 24-105mm L4 & L2.8
Canon 100-400mm L4-5.6
Canon 24-85
Canon 17-85
Canon 18-55
Canon 24-70 L2.8
All the Canon 70/75-300 varients
Nikon 24-120VR
Nikon 18-200VR
lots of ultra wide zooms (10-20, 10-22, 15-30)
etc., etc