Just scored a 400mm F2.8, with a 1.7 AF teleconverter for what seemed to be a good price... described as ‘excellent’.
Lens arrived, had a real tree camo sticky backed vinyl covering, which I removed, revealing very nice condition white exterior, a few marks, but nice. Filter holder is there, has no filter, but could easily fit one, I think it may require one in place.
Aperture blades, which are accessible from the back, are sticky. Maybe some alcohol would fix, or send to KEH.
Glass is clear, focusing is reasonably smooth. Have not attempted to take a pic with it yet.
The BAD part....
There is a CRACK in the second element. It is basically a straight line crack about 1cm or so from the edge of the second element. Difficult to see at first glance, but it is there (and now that I see it, I can see it in the seller’s somewhat out of focus photo too). I guess they didn’t notice it.
Seller's pic attached, the crack is at 3-4 O'clock. Yeah, obvious now....
I spoke to the seller yesterday, and I have a return label, so can get $$$ back on this ($2600) they seem reasonable at this point.
But... should I run like hell, send it back, cry for a bit and forget about it.
Or make some ridiculously low offer to just keep it?
It’s possible the crack could have little to no effect. It’s possible it might never move. It’s close to the edge of the lens, perhaps it doesn’t even intrude into the APSC field of view??? I know sigma say one of their lenses (bigma maybe) takes a 95mm filter, but you can use a step down ring to 86mm when shooting APSC, which got me thinking....
My use for this lens is for shooting rocket launches using my K3, which may be at a range of 2 miles to 10 miles distant. The attraction of this lens was that with the 1.7 AF tc I could get to equivalent of a 1020mm f4.7 approx, still have some autofocus ability, it would also work with the 1.4x-l and 2x-l converters, which are rated about as good as it gets for TCs, albeit manual focus.
Alternatively, get a Bigma 50-500, or even a Pentax 150-450, pocket the change and never look back. The DA 560 is too much $$$ for me I think.
I do have a DA*300 that I could put a 1.4 TC on and save a fortune. Not quite the same but...
I don’t really want to have a ‘stupidest thing I ever did’ story (either way!).
Thoughts?
Last edited by MalcS; 01-05-2020 at 06:35 AM.