[aurele]

The roadmap for 2013. "DA Tele zoom" it says ~120-380. A DA 1.4X converter will also come. I'm very interested in this lens...

i did forgot this part

[Transit]

Maybe we should start a time-share for the DA560.
I would probably use it 3-4 times a year.
So 3-4 weeks?
Say, 17 photographers could share it for the year.
So about $415 per person?
Anyone that wants to buy into the time-share has to buy someone else out!
Yep, count me in!

Good thinking !
six months in each hemisphere following the birds

[Ex Finn.]

I would like to know what this lens is intended for?, it is too long (physical size) for birders unless you are in a blind, too many elements for astro work, what gives?.

[Douglas_of_Sweden]

It strikes me that the new 560 f5.6 most closely compare to the A*600 f5.6:



A* 600/5.6 ED [IF]

560mm vs 600mm
both f5.6
close focus 5.6m vs 5.5m
both have 112mm filter thread
3040g vs 3280g
diameter 130mm vs 133mm
both have ED glass

But the important differences are
1) length 522mm vs 386mm
2) 6 lenses in 5 groups vs 8 lenses in 6 groups
which are of course connected.
The old A*600/5.6 have two extra lens elements in the front group which is what I presume is what makes it a telephoto design rather than a telescope design and accounts for the shorter length.

Anyway, they seam to occupy much the same niche in the super tele biosphere. Why did they go for that instead of a 400/5.6, 500/4.5, 600/4 or some other combination of focal length and max aperture. I'm not saying it is necessarily wrong, but I'd like to understand why this is the first new super tele. There may be coming more later on occupying the other niches, but why go for this first?

Another maybe related question:

What happened with Pentax old telescope manufacturing? It had a stellar reputation and was way expensive. But what happened with it in the purgatory years with Hoya? Do they still make telescopes? Could it be that Ricoh, having listened to costumers complaining about the lack of lenses longer than 300mm, but seeing that they can't soon enough make room for production of a longer tele in the lens plants in Vietnam, discovered that they inherited a telescope factory somewhere with too little to do, and came up with the idea to let them design a long camera lens? It is a crazy explanation, I know, but somehow it would make sense.

EDIT: Can't find any evidence online that Pentax still makes telescopes, but the binocular and spotting scope sections are alive: http://www.pentax.jp/english/products/binoculars/scope/index.html
And surprise surprise! "All Weather" protection is a concept they already use for their spotting scopes. My hypothesis is that Pentax/Ricoh let the spotting scope department design this lens with some people from the camera section, and that it will be manufactured at the same place as the spotting scopes. It is not more strange than when Pentax let their CCTV section make COSMICAR branded SLR lenses and other non-SMC lenses with various names, some named Pentax without the SMC prefix, some named Takumar-A etc. Use the production lines you have. But it looks like it influenced the design quite a lot. Maybe a good lens, but expensive and half a meter long!

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Last edited by Douglas_of_Sweden; 09-11-2012 at 06:46 PM.

[aurele]

According to the picture i thought it would be bigger

[LamyTax]

And your point is...?

It doesn't get you very close at all. Every other lens in the same price ball park allows closer focus distance.
And the quality at 5.6m won't be stellar (it's designed to be stellar at the opposite).
So you'd have to crop for small birds. Combined with likely lowered quality... not for this price.

I have and I do. Here is a link to an animation I created from 15 frames I shot of a hummingbird at 50 ft using my Televue 85 scope, a 0.8x field-flattener/focal reducer, my 1.7AFA and my K5 (= 816mm f/9.52), cropped to 2200x1760 and then reduced to 1024x819 (640x512 as posted) for the animation:
http://remotesensingart.com/Hummers2012/HummerDance.gif
and here is a link to an animation of the moon's libration I shot over 18 nights using the same gear, cropped to 2000x2000 and then reduced to 900x900 for the animation:
http://remotesensingart.com/Pentax10/Moon05_22b.gif

Try <20ft. Also, what are you trying to prove to me with downsampled images? No, really, <1mpix final resolution isn't exactly the best way to refute my argument .
I'd sure like to be wrong, but what I've personally seen so far were weak corners and lowered resolution with scopes. If that's not the case, then, well... the lens just got a little bit better in my mind.

[eurostar]

Oh, if they would create a simply, optically great 400/5,6 prime at 2400 euros...

[Pål Jensen]

Oh, if they would create a simply, optically great 400/5,6 prime at 2400 euros...

People don't but 400/5.6 lenses any longer. They buy zooms covering this range. The roadmapped ~120-380 is probably Pentax "400/5.6" lens.

[eurostar]

People don't but 400/5.6 lenses any longer. They buy zooms covering this range. The roadmapped ~120-380 is probably Pentax "400/5.6" lens.

I have big hopes in that lens, if only it could be of the same quality of the 60-250... but the lack of the star worries me.

[Kunzite]

It doesn't get you very close at all. Every other lens in the same price ball park allows closer focus distance.
And the quality at 5.6m won't be stellar (it's designed to be stellar at the opposite).
So you'd have to crop for small birds. Combined with likely lowered quality... not for this price.

Indeed, the maximum magnification is 0.10X vs 0.14/0.15X for Nikkor/Canon 500&600mm - point taken.
The "likely lowered quality" is just a supposition; let's see how it performs. You can bring the telescopes as an argument, but when making an astronomy telescope, close focus performance is not a criteria; which doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done. Also, it matters very much what kind of telescopes did you saw.

[SteveM]

People don't but 400/5.6 lenses any longer. They buy zooms covering this range. The roadmapped ~120-380 is probably Pentax "400/5.6" lens.

I agree. Pentax already has a 300mm lens and 400mm is only a 25% increase in focal length, which isn't worth it. Would someone buy a 18mm to compliment their 15mm? Or how about a 62mm to compliment their 50mm? You need at least a 50% jump in focal length to make a marketable and for what people use telephotos for, 100% is typical.

[froeschle]

People don't but 400/5.6 lenses any longer.

Nope, lots of people probably would buy a 400/5.6 lens for a reasonable price - rather than a 560/5.6 for an unjustified price of more than 3k€!

[Pål Jensen]

Nope, lots of people probably would buy a 400/5.6 lens for a reasonable price - rather than a 560/5.6 for an unjustified price of more than 3k€!

Due to modern optical designs a 400/5.6 won't be much reasonably priced than the zoom lens reaching the same range and speed.
Anyone claiming that 560/5.6 should cost 3000Euros show a degree of ignorance that is truly mindboggling.
The price if the 560/5.6 is exactly where you should expect it. They don't come any cheaper. Cheap telephotos over 500mm do not exist. Pentax is the cheapest.

[LamyTax]

Indeed, the maximum magnification is 0.10X vs 0.14/0.15X for Nikkor/Canon 500&600mm - point taken.
The "likely lowered quality" is just a supposition; let's see how it performs. You can bring the telescopes as an argument, but when making an astronomy telescope, close focus performance is not a criteria; which doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done. Also, it matters very much what kind of telescopes did you saw.

I'd be surprised if the quality at 5.6m was that great. That'd somehow mean that every other lens maker doesn't really know what they're doing with their >12 element designs.
Maybe 5.6m is a "feature", because anything closer really sucks. Easy way to find out once it's there, use extension tubes.

Either way, you don't buy such a long lens so you have to crop much to get things up close. Especially not at this price. However, for larger animals, what's the need for such a long lens? 400 is plenty for those, atmospheric disturbances often make longer lenses useless.

Sure, there are things you can use the 560 for, but as you can see, it's rather limited as it is. And I can't see Pentax entering the sports world.

[cwood]

a re-designed 300mm F2.8 with a matched new set of teleconverters would have made far more sense. Pentax fails once again for me.

Many Pentax shooters may not realize this because Pentax has been unable to keep up with the market. But the new telephotos and the new teleconverters produced by Canon and Nikon do NOT suck when combined and shot wide open. The historical "loss of quality" when shooting teleconverters is hardly worth discussing. Typically the only "problem" I notice when I use my long Canon lenses plus teleconverters is that AF performance drops slightly (but not too bad).

My current favorite long-lens is a 200mm F1.8 which I can stack using my 1.4x plus 2x teleconverters for a superb 560mm F5. Basically I get 4 lenses for the price of one (200mm, 280mm, 400mm, 560mm). The thought of spending $7k for this lens would not even enter my thought process. I'd rather pick up a Sigma with a set of TC's.