I have made my first experimental shots with my new DA*300mm this weekend at the Zoo in Istanbul and by the lake of Sapanca. In Sapanca I made some shots together with Pentax SMC AFA 1.7x. The outcomes of the first experiments can be considered as satisfactory. but I must admit I had some concerns about the lens either. Here are some results;
DA*300 with AFA 1.7x TC, F/8, 1/1500, ISO 400 F/5.6, 1/1500, ISO 800 F/5.6, 1/750, ISO 800 F/5.6, 1/350, ISO 800 F/5.6, 1/250, ISO 800 F/5.6, 171500, ISO 800 F/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 800 F/5.6, 1/750, ISO 800 F/8, 1/750, ıso 400 DA*300 with AFA 1.7x TC, F/8, 1/2000, ISO 400 DA*300 with AFA 1.7x TC, F/6.7, 1/125, ISO 400, EV+1 DA*300 with AFA 1.7x TC, F/8, 1/1500, ISO 400
You'll decide how sharp the lens is after seeing these samples. In my opinion it's a very sharp glass. I can at least say that it's much much better than the BIGMA which I sold few weeks ago. Tough the AF+SDM system is quite fast and silent in general, time to time AF is jamming without any reason and turn to normal then. This made me mad because I missed some lovely shots due to this reason. Hood of the lens is a good one but mounting the hood is not practicle. Using the lens as 500mm with AFA 1.7x TC gives also very good results. However due to crop sensor and the coverage of the viewfinder, its a bit difficult to arrange composition @ 500mm for fast moving objects like birds. As far as I heard this lens can also be used with FF bodies. I hope one day pentax will have an FF body and I'll use this lens with TC on that body.