Hi all i just thought of starting a thread related to this lens and the use of it for wildlife, opinions and experience in using this beast are welcome!

First my own experience with this lens; i have two of them both are the takumar in M42 mounts. One of them is in the process of being revised by me as i am trying to hack a few screws that are not easy to find. The second one is in very good optical and cosmetic condition. Theres only one thing that i wish it was better, the rotation of the focus ring is a bit stiff. But ill try to fix it by re-lubricating the focus threads. I mainly use this lens while I'm hiking in the woods...this is a massive and very heavy lens.. after a few hours hike with this monster in your arms it takes a while to get your camera steady when trying to focus by holding the camera by the tripod mount while with the other hand focusing and then take the picture...
I needed a bit of practice before i could use this " technique " efficiently. So i walked the woods near the area where i live and where i knew i could find either some kites or very nervous deer's. The wild life is easily scared and because they are always in alert its very difficult to approach them. Moving silently with a massive/heavy lens while trying to remain unnoticed is very difficult (normally they ear you before they can see you and vice-versa) Nevertheless after a long day walking i managed to surprise a couple of deers while they where feeding in the fields outside the woods... Here is one of them
The deer was in the shadow. It was a hot and sunny day but for the deer to stay undetected they stay in the shadow they rarely come out to the full sun light unless it is very cold.


You can even see the ticks attached to the deer....(carefull another danger of walking in the woods is Lyme disease )

Beautiful animals, definitely !
Hiking with that 500mm lens is good excercise, but it sure is one hell of a carry-around lens

True.. and the hardest part of all is to keep silent and furtive so you don't scare the animals away... it was amazing to see the deer , once he heard the shutter of the k-5, lowering and rising is head( 2-3 times a second) as if trying too trick me into thinking that he was not looking for intruders!

I used this lens for several years. There were things I liked about it and those I didn't. Despite it,s size it was relatively light because of its simple optical formula. And it did give me a lot more reach. I even used it with a 1.4X-L teleconvetor with acceptable results. And I only paid $350 for it.

What I didn't like was the minimum focus distance, which was often a problem having tp back off subjects, it was a touch soft, and finally, as the ;ens was non-APO, there was a tendency for colors, notably red, to bled a little. I sold it and replaced the lens with a 600mm f5.6 A, which is a much nicer lens (but 10X more expensive).

The image below I took long ago, not sure what film I was using.

It's true that it does have a lot of PF, but once you learned by experience(going out and using it ) how to avoid it or diminish its effects this lens is very good and sharp.As you can see in the first picture the focus is almost spot on and the sharpness shows! in the second one i'm a bit off about 50 to 80 cm into the background (you can see it by looking at the grass which is sharper behind the deer... ), nevertheless @ 500mm f/4.5 for 400 euros is no too bad!!!! You just a question of learning how to optimize the gear you have... this is only after a couple of week with this lens ... i wonder what i will be able to do in a few months. Nice picture by the way!