2026-05-24 Comparing a Pentax-A 70-210mm zoom to a Kitstar 55-220 zoom

Kitstar 55-220 on left, Pentax 70-210 right

I was in a camera store one day when the owner made me a very generous offer. He had a bin that held a selection of items priced at $1. He said I could take one item free, as the rest were bound for the garbage bin.
    I had been plucking items from the $1 bin for weeks. There had been a great choice of everything photographic including zooms, wide-angle lenses, accessory optics, extension tubes, battery grips, cameras, cases, books, electronic flashes and filters. 
    But the selection had thinned out so there were just items I already had, items missing their battery doors, cases for cameras I never expected to find and lens cases that while nice I wouldn’t invest $1 to acquire. After all, all lenses and cameras are bulky enough without padding them with cases.
    But I digress…
    The store had another table that held items you could chose for $25. I had plucked just one item from this table, being content to acquire  items five at a time from the $1 bin. It turned out all the $25 items were going to move to the $1 bin, except the bin was going back to its established $5 price. The $1 bin is what happens to the $5 bin when no one is taking anything.
    I asked, “When are you going to transfer the items?” The owner chuckled and said, “ The moment you leave.” I threatened to return later in the day and he laughed.
Anyway I fumbled through the $1 selection and chose the larger of the two remaining zoom lenses. It had both a filter and a rubber lens shade, as well as being a rather unusual 55—220mm zoom range.
    The lens is a Kitstar brand and it turned out I already had one. The one I had was a Canon FD mount I had already blogged about, but the new one was different in that it had a Pentax-K mount. I had found out this particular lens was made by a company I had never heard of previously. When the Miranda Camera company went under the Topman company bought their plants and started making lenses. They would rebadge the lenses for any importer that would carry the line of zooms and wide-angle lenses in popular mounts. 
    Speaking of the mounts, Topman had their own system of interchangeable mounts. It is a really fun mount that smacks of great engineering and precision manufacturing.
    

Pentax ME with Pentax-A 70-210mm f/4 mounted zoomed to 70mm

I have a Pentax ME with a Pentax-A 70-210 f/4 zoom mounted on it. I thought I would see just how similar the two zooms would be in their design objectives.
    The two lenses turned out to be very similar in length, diameter and weight. I won’t bore you with lengths and diameters, just the weight. The Kitstar lens is 6 g heavier than the Pentax. That is without adding the filter and the rubber hood to the Kitstar while the Pentax has a built-in metal hood.
    The two lenses also share in having their macro range at their widest zoom position. It could be important if the difference of 15mm between the Pentax zoom’s 70mm to the Kitstar’s 55mm would make all the difference. The Pentax lens has its macro position as a range that continues under the otherwise minimum focus range (the focal length stays at 70mm). At all other focal lengths the Pentax can not enter a macro range.
    

Kitstar (Macro Range in Red)

    The Kitstar starts at 55mm at a marked 1:10 macro ratio. But as you focus to the closer marked ratios the lens is actually zooming! At the closest 1:4 marked macro setting you are actually zoomed to 100mm focal length.  I don’t know how to summarize that quirk in making a choice between the zooms.
    At the time both lenses were being sold the Kitstar would have been a cheaper lens while the Pentax would have had a much greater reputation. Pentax lenses were multicoated with a highly regarded reputation for being flare free. Pentax had also solved the grease on the aperture blades problems common to many earlier lenses.
    Topman/Kitstar optics were being tested by the popular photography magazines, but were starting late and had a lot of competition. Their coating was marked as Int* on the lens bezel, which might be meant to imply they had a multi-coating trick up their sleeves too. In practice I doubt anyone looking for a particular set of features in their zoom would choose the Kitstar if they could afford the Pentax. 
    The obvious criticism of the Kitstar isn’t with the macro end, its with having 55mm at one end of the zoom range. It was common knowledge you were buying the 70-210mm range zooms because the 70mm end was considered the beginning of the “ideal” portrait focal length while the 210mm end was great for shooting sports, wildlife and flowers. So why buy a zoom that started at almost the same focal length as your camera’s normal lens and was also a stop slower. It would be heavy, harder to focus through and you would have to zoom it before using it for portraits every time!
    Yet I think the Kitstar has a lot to recommend it. Having marked macro settings can be very important. Having that creeping focal length thing for macro certainly is different. Being slightly faster at the wide end could be what you need. Using slightly smaller filters could work with your other lenses. Even having interchangeable mounts can be a game changer in some circumstances.
Which do you think you would have gone with, back in the day?

Lens Details

Kitstar 55mm-220mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom (Pentax-K mount)
(made by Topman Optics, Japan)
weight 689 g (1.52 lb.)
closest focus 1.5 m (<5 ft)
Macro at 55mm 1:10 
(marked 1:8, 1:7, 1:6, 1:5, 1:4 as slowly zoomed—using macro control— to 100mm) 

Pentax-A 70mm-210mm, f/4 zoom
weight 683 g (1.51 lb.)
closest focus 1.2 m (<4 ft)
Macro at 70mm range varies but closest is approx. 1:4 at about the same distance as Kitstar

    The last surprise was the filter. Rather than the common 1A skylight filter usually found as a “lens protector”, it was a Kitstar 80A. This is a warming filter that drops the colour temperature 200K. When you start making optics with many elements some end up “cold” (blue), some neutral and some “warm” (red). Either the Kitstar zoom needed some warming to correct an overly blue tint or the photographer needed results with a warmer tint (this is commonly found with wedding and portrait photographers).