[UncleVanya]

I'm Mar.

As you all know, I didn't like the Pentax DA 55-300mm. Not only was it back focusing but it wasn't long enough for wildlife, my favorite subjects. So, I changed lenses and shot with my newest LBA plunge. The Sigma 70-300mm macro f4-5.6.

Both are nominally 300 at the long end - was the 70-300 "longer" in practice?

[photolady95]

was the 70-300 "longer" in practice?

No. But the Sigma having the "macro" option made it so I could close focus on the birds/squirrels, etc. In other words, I had more closeness than a simple 300mm lens does/did.

[UncleVanya]

No. But the Sigma having the "macro" option made it so I could close focus on the birds/squirrels, etc. In other words, I had more closeness than a simple 300mm lens does/did.

Gotcha. The 60-250 I have focus breathes so it can appear shorter than a similar 200mm in close situations. I wasn't sure if that kind of effect was involved.

[dfromal]

I used my Pentax 35mm lens for the month. I'm pretty happy with this little lens - the "plastic fantastic" many of you call it. I tried shooting across the aperture range throughout the month, and never really found a "sweet spot," although, my personal taste tends to lean towards the shallow depth of field that I can achieve when the lens is wide open. The colors were rendered beautifully, in my opinion. Far better than with either of my kit lenses, for sure. I noticed that in post-processing, I did tend to deepen the blacks and sometimes slightly adjust the color balance towards the blue side of the slider. I love the lens for small still life set-ups on a table. I used the lens for a couple of portraits of children. I found that it's not a very flattering portrait lens as it tends to distort facial features when I'm close to the subject. This is not as noticeable with small children. I shot a couple of landscapes and found that I liked the results more than I expected I would. I paid less than a hundred dollars for this lens, brand new, from Overstock.com about three years ago. It was worth every penny. I love the autofocus. It's fast and accurate. The lens is small enough that I can handhold with a slow shutter speed with out much shutter shake. (This is even more true when I remember to turn on the image stabilization feature on my K-5.) This lens is probably my "go-to" lens when I am walking around looking for photo opportunities. I do prefer my manual 50mm lenses, but I love the ease and speed of "auto-focus." I recommend this lens without any hesitation.

---

Last edited by dfromal; 09-01-2015 at 07:14 PM.

[wolfiegirl]

Pentax 28-70/4.

I initially bought this in my first few throes of LBA. I got it for about $60 with a sf7 attached. I purchased it with the idea in my head that it was supposed to be a sleeper of a lens, wonderful in iq and rendering and worth getting.

After a month with the magical tamron 35-80/2.8 qz-35m last month (Which also had its own issues), I must admit I was a bit disappointed with this lens. It is f4, so significantly slower. I tended to get a lot of camera shake, and never got the chance to put it on a tripod to determine whether it was me or the lens.

It has a slight 80s soft focus glow which can create some wonderful portraiture - if you know what you're doing. And I must admit, I never figured out what caused it. Sometimes it showed it, and sometimes it didn't.. *shrug* It also has a macro feature on it, that I *think* engages at 70mm, but I could be wrong. It's an AF lens, and it shows where the distance scale is, on the front of the lens in a digital kind of way.

Very little purple or green fringing that I noticed. No starbursts and the flare handling was fairly meh..

The focus ring is teeeny weeny weeeeeny. Hardly worth having it at all, if you ask me.

This is a pretty lame review, if you ask me. But other than being grateful for the focal range during unexpected moments, as it is in my general shooting comfort zone, I was not particularly inspired by this lens. Maybe I'll get reinspired one day and give it another go. In the meantime, I think it'll just go back in the cupboard for now...

[clockworkrat]

I haven't had the misfortune of getting a dud yet, but well done on persevering. I did enjoy quite a few of your shots from last month, for what it's worth, but I hope you feel more energised with your 50 this month.

[wolfiegirl]

I haven't had the misfortune of getting a dud yet, but well done on persevering. I did enjoy quite a few of your shots from last month, for what it's worth, but I hope you feel more energised with your 50 this month.

Thanks clockworkrat. It did a good job and got me two explores. But I didn't feel half as 'crafty' with this lens as I did with the tamron. I don't know. Perhaps I'm just on my way out. Will see how I go. Thanks for your feedback =) I appreciate it.

[Bagga_Txips]

First I have to apologise to everyone for not commenting on their shots since about the 18th Aug - I will try to catch up this month. Now I will catch up on my lens rreviews, but they will be fairly brief because I have been "off" photography for a couple of weeks, dunno why.

Firstly, the lens I used for the first half of August, the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 (lotsa letters here). It's a very capable lens, nice and sharp, and very versatile. It seemed to focus quite quickly, and the noise didn't bother me to the extent that I can remember it making much of a noise - maybe it would frighten birdies away, but then so would me crashing about in the undergrowth anyway! The image quality seemed good, and I was pleased with the bokeh, when bokeh was part of my intention. My copy of the lens might backfocus a little bit, especially when closer than 3 or 4 metres, but I am too lazy to do much about that. I was very pleased with the results it gave, but really dislike how heavy it was, so abandoned using it when photolady gave up on using her 55-300.

Secondly, the 55-300, which I used, or intended to use, for the latter part of the month. I don't know how many shots I took with it, but it was far less than I intended. It is a cheap lens, and I got it as part of a 2 lens kit when I bought my K-r maybe 5 years ago - so it is not the latest WR version of the lens. The shots I took show that it is very good value for the price, and it gave good results. For the price... I think it was a bit cool in its rendition, but it was quite sharp enough for me. However, I found that most of the time I was using it at 55mm, so perhaps I was exploiting its best points. I took a flower shot at 300 mil, but it wasn't as sharp as I would like, but it was windy and handheld, so I can't fully blame the lens for its blurriness. But for me the built quality was a major factor. I am a bit of a gearhead (ok, maybe a lot) so I found that I got no joy at all from handling the lens, or from owning it, which may explain why I hadn't used the lens much at all in the years leading up to this month.

In short, the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 is well worth buying, but take up weight training or steroid abuse before you do, and the Pentax 55-300 is damned good value etc etc but I want to get rid of mine.

[robgski]

My review of the Super Takumar 135mm F3.5 (M42 mount). I bought this lens and the PK adapter for less than US $50, and I am very pleased with it. Though I prefer to shoot much wider lenses, the 135mm was a pleasant change of pace. I regret I didn't get to do any portrait shooting with this lens, but it was very sharp for non-macro detailed close ups of plants and flowers, and for abstracts. I had to be at least 6 ft (ca. 1.5 meters) from an object, and I could not focus on things farther than 75 meters away, so it was not really a telephoto. That may have been due to the adapter. I did not find it to be a big problem, especially since the clarity of objects I could focus on was so sharp. It's manual only, but I the K-5 assisted me in attaining sharp focus if I didn't rush the shot. The focus rings was a bit stiff, but not a hindrance. The realtively compact size of the lens made it easy to carry and handle despite its solid heft (is this thing all metal?)
In summary, a real bargain of a lens that produced great results.

[blackcloudbrew]

First I have to apologise to everyone for not commenting on their shots since about the 18th Aug - I will try to catch up this month. Now I will catch up on my lens rreviews, but they will be fairly brief because I have been "off" photography for a couple of weeks, dunno why.

Firstly, the lens I used for the first half of August, the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 (lotsa letters here). It's a very capable lens, nice and sharp, and very versatile. It seemed to focus quite quickly, and the noise didn't bother me to the extent that I can remember it making much of a noise - maybe it would frighten birdies away, but then so would me crashing about in the undergrowth anyway! The image quality seemed good, and I was pleased with the bokeh, when bokeh was part of my intention. My copy of the lens might backfocus a little bit, especially when closer than 3 or 4 metres, but I am too lazy to do much about that. I was very pleased with the results it gave, but really dislike how heavy it was, so abandoned using it when photolady gave up on using her 55-300.

Secondly, the 55-300, which I used, or intended to use, for the latter part of the month. I don't know how many shots I took with it, but it was far less than I intended. It is a cheap lens, and I got it as part of a 2 lens kit when I bought my K-r maybe 5 years ago - so it is not the latest WR version of the lens. The shots I took show that it is very good value for the price, and it gave good results. For the price... I think it was a bit cool in its rendition, but it was quite sharp enough for me. However, I found that most of the time I was using it at 55mm, so perhaps I was exploiting its best points. I took a flower shot at 300 mil, but it wasn't as sharp as I would like, but it was windy and handheld, so I can't fully blame the lens for its blurriness. But for me the built quality was a major factor. I am a bit of a gearhead (ok, maybe a lot) so I found that I got no joy at all from handling the lens, or from owning it, which may explain why I hadn't used the lens much at all in the years leading up to this month.

In short, the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 is well worth buying, but take up weight training or steroid abuse before you do, and the Pentax 55-300 is damned good value etc etc but I want to get rid of mine.

Nice review on the Tammy. I agree with your comments. I've tended to find mine to produce images just a bit on the dark side typically but I love the sharpness it has. Anyway well done.

[clockworkrat]

Put my review up for the DA L 50-200 WR.

I bought this lens in the fairly standard plan for building a lens collection of having zooms throughout the range then buying primes for quality within the range. Whilst there are certainly better lenses that cover a lot of this range, I am of relatively limited means, and also want the WR for a bit of insurance. So that's why I bought it.

It has been my primary lens throughout August 2015 for the Single In challenge, and after getting some time with it I feel reasonably able to give an informed verdict. Personally, I have a bit of a rough relationship with this lens; because it's long-ish, and quite slow with a minimum aperture of F5.6 at the long end, I find myself bumping up the ISO more than I normally prefer. Usually this means AutoISO with a spot of EV compensation for highlights or particularly dark situations. As such I'm rarely able to make best use of what actually seems to be half-decent glass because it really needs lots of light and I live in Scotland. However, it is a cheap, telephoto zoom, and it is light, and it does feel reasonably well put together (I'm not the most delicate of lens owners).

On a more objective note, I can't really say I'd disagree on any points with the PentaxForums official review of the DA 50-200 which features the same optics. It needs to be stopped down a fair bit at the long end to get the best sharpness from centre to corner, but is a bit more forgiving all-round around the 100mm mark. I've only taken the odd shot at 50mm with this and can't really complain too much, but I'm only using it on the K-30 sensor. I'm sure its flaws would show up a great deal more on a K-3, for example. There's a touch of CA in most shots with high contrast, but usually these clear up in PP with little fuss.

Overall I'd probably give this the thumbs up. If you're looking at this lens then you probably know why you want it, and I can't think of a good reason you should avoid it. Just be prepared to accommodate its lethargic aperture.

I'm glad I've got this lens, and it was definitely a good idea to do the month with it because now I can have it with me all the time for when I need the length, even if I'm mostly using a shorter lens. There have been a few shots - mostly of birds - that I just wouldn't have been able to get otherwise, and I'm happy to have them.

What I didn't mention in the review was the issue I had with shake; with my shorter lenses I was quite able to use shutter speeds up to 2 stops slower than the 1/FL rule. However when going long on the 50-200 I found that even 1 stop slower was enough to introduce noticeable shake. To whoever I chastised on Flickr for not making the most of SR, I humbly apologise.