Latest Review Posted | SMC Pentax-DA* 300mm F4 ED [IF] SDM Optically this lens is okay. It's a little dated, so "near-misses" are unusable in my opinion, but when things are in its strike-zone, it performs without any major complaints. Sharpness is okay, it's good from f5.6-f8.0 when the subject is filling most of your frame, but it can't really handle far-off subjects that require heavy cropping. Out of focus areas show some pretty heavy fringing, especially in high contrast settings, but thankfully this does not affect a properly focused and exposed subject at all. I don't notice any substantial loss of image quality using this lens on a full-frame sensor.
The autofocus is a little weak, it's slower than one would expect from a lens whose primary use would normally be sports or wildlife. It's reasonably accurate if it's already in the general range of the subject, but the lens does "get lost" when having to switch from infinity to close up or vice versa. A quick manual focus adjustment to bring it back into the right ballpark again and it'll go back to chugging away happily, but it can be very frustrating, especially when trying to capture very quick scene changes.
In terms of ergonomics, the lens is well-built, a little on the heavy side, and has a relatively large filter size, but other than that is pretty compact and is mostly an internal focusing lens. The tripod foot is a little bit of overkill, as this lens is neither large nor demanding enough to really require it. Especially with Pentax's IBIS, thi... |