I'm done with May single in challenge with M*300. Time for the wrap up. It was a fun.
Still in love with what K1ii does to the wide open performance. When I shot M*300 with APSC I tried to avoid wide open due to decrease in sharpness. This month it was hard to move away from wide open due to quality in bokeh I gained. On FF the wide open sharpness is good enough. It's good to be on format these lenses were designed for. This is the first star lens from Pentax and it has quality in its rendering to be worth it.
4m MFD was a challenge during the month. With FF it was a bigger problem than with APSC. Even with 2" extension I only got around 2m and didn't really get into macro zone. Normally this isn't a problem, as you would only use this lens when shooting further away, but in the SIC it limits versatility a lot and makes indoor work very difficult. Other big problem during the month was shutter shock which was quite obvious with this lens. Live view and electronic shutter was easy solution on tripod, but it limits OVF use a little and takes away advantage from improved SR. There was purple and green fringnig especially wide open as can be expected from such a long lens. Defring on Capture 1 didn't clean it all and on some shots I reduced saturation from purple color locally to get rid of PF.
Outside SIC I mainly use this lens for action and continue to do so. IQ is good enough and CIF makes shooting easy enough. The other uses are when you want the soft bokeh background or if you want brenizer kind of rendering. Not the easiest lens to use, but still the star in M series.
I'm going into June SIC with M50/4 macro. After last month I want the ability to get close when I want
Wide open:
Wide open (the Brenizer kind of rendering when focused close to infinity):
Wide open action:
Wide open taken with 2" extension tubes with Brenizer stitch of 20 shots spread on 4 rows:
f8 panorama from 10 shots:
f11 focus stack from 3 shots:
f11 landscape cropped to panoramic frame:
f11 sunset: