Originally posted by UncleVanya It would be useful to see crops from the 55-300 compared to the five-star uncropped.
Here you go! (Click thru to flickr for larger size) I took a couple shots with each lens, including a magnified LiveView, and used the best one. Shot on a tripod w/ 12 second delay, each at f8, ISO500.
I don't know how clear the screen shots will show it, but Tou Five Star is clearly better in this controlled shoot. The SuperTak is next, followed closely by the DAL 55-300. The only thing is that I can usually get more keepers with the DAL 55-300 because its autofocus is often better than my manual focus.
Comparison of 3 lenses; each at 500ISO, f8
TouFiveStar at 60% center crop; others at 100%
Tou FIVE STAR 500mm f8
Pentax DAL 55-300mm @ f8
Super Takumar 300mm f4 at f8
And here with each at 100% center crop
And one more with the FiveStar at 100% and the DAL and SuperTak at 166%
Of course the other thing to note is that the SuperTak is a fixed f4 (but there is lots of green CA at f4; stopping down improves matters) but it's a heavy chunk of glass. The DAL 55-300 is autofocus, reasonably light, and quite small compared to the others. It's f5.8 at 300mm, but at long distances, I'm usually shooting f8 just to get some depth of field. The FiveStar 500mm is very light, but it's so long, so it's not particularly handy to carry around, but I got mine for under $30, and you can see it does just fine.