Originally posted by Anjoemara Hi I,m a beginner with photografy. I just bought the pentax k20 d. I just want to buy a lens and I am thinking about the pentax 55-300 mm. I want to use the lens for wild animal photograpy at my holiday in surinam. Is it a good lens to buy. If so why I can buy this lens at a good dealer for a good price. Any information more then welcom. Thanks
First, congratulations with your camera. It is a very fine tool.
I have the 55-300mm as well, it is a very, very good lens for the price paid.
It is also not heavy. Good for travel. Get one.
If you'd want to go longer than 300mm, there is little benefit and very high cost involved.
Going from 300 to, let's say, 400mm will cost you an arm and a leg, you'll be carrying very heavy equipment and outside of Surinam you will not have that much employ for it.
And remember, the difference in magnification is only 33%.
If you want to understand what that means in real life, follow this link and play with the slider at the bottom of the window:
Focal length comparison tool, Tamron USA
You could consider a tele converter. However, there are some negative side effects:
- Your autofocus will suffer: focus time will be much longer and much you'll see more focus hunting. You may loose the opportunity for a picture. Wildlife tends not to wait for your AF to focus.
- It will impact your image quality negatively.
- You will loose aperture (sensitivety), meaning that you will need to slower shutter speeds and/or higher ISO values. Not something you'd like with wildlife photography.
- Your camera shake reduction will be fooled. Instead of compensating for 300x1.5 = 450mm, it will only compensate for 300mm. That will cause blur on your photos.
When can you use a TC?: with lots of light, so you can use small apertures and fast shutter speeds and AF has enough to function.
What is the alternative?: buy the 55-300, great lens. Your camera is equiped with almost 15 megapixels, take the shot and crop it on your computer. You can have roughly the image quality cropped down 50% as with a TC, or much, much better when shooting in low light.