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TAIR-3S - Fotosniper 12 ensemble 300mm F4.5

Sharpness	9.7
Aberrations	8.5
Bokeh	9.5
Handling	7.4
Value	9.4

Reviews	Views	Date of last review
19	131,957	Fri November 24, 2023

Recommended By	Average Price	Average User Rating
100% of reviewers	$78.65	9.26

TAIR-3S - Fotosniper 12 ensemble 300mm F4.5

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Description:	There are several versions of the 4 element Tair 300mm f4.5: Tair 3 This is the original one, different structurally to the later ones, conventional milled focus ring at the front of the lens, no preset. Often found in M39 mount (needs review page). To adapt original M39 mount tair 3's to eg mirrorless, Thomas Bernardy on mflenses recommends: "a Zenit M39 4 ring set (cheaply available from Russia) and a M39/LTM to mirrorless adapter ... The Zenit ring set includes a 16.4mm distance ring which is exactly the difference between M39/LTM (28.8mm flange focal distance) and Zenit M39 (45.2mm). Obviously this was done to enable the usage of Zenit/M39 lenses on the old Russian M39/LTM cameras like the Zorkis and FEDs. " Tair 3S/3C/3 PhS (or FS). This one - the classic "Photosniper" variants of the Tair 300mm f4.5 designed to be mounted on a stock with focus operated by a disk on the underside of the lens. Tair 3A/ 300-A The most conventional of the variants: preset t-mount lens, focus at the rear end of the lens (reviews here). Tair 33 This is a larger medium format lens designed for the kiev (= hasselblad bayonet) mount cameras. Lenses for those are very difficult to adapt to other cameras. The optics are similar to the other versions and there is an interesting comparison with a nikkor ED 300mm f4.5 and a mamiya-sekor 300mm f5.6 here . The Tair-3 300 mm f/ 4.5 was manufactured at three plants: Tair-3 4.5/300 – S. A. Zverev Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant (KMZ). Tair-3A 4.5/300 - Zagorsk Optical Mechanics Plant, Sergiyev Posad (ZOMZ). Tair-3 4.5/300 – Kazan Optical Mechanics Plant (KOMZ). Optics: 4 elements in 3 groups. Weight: 1.6 Kg (excluding trigger mechanism and stock) Length: 24.6 cm Width (diameter plus focus wheel): 12 cm Preset Lens: 4.5 to 22 in full stops, but mechanism permits infinite variability between minimum aperture set, and fully open. Diaphragm: 16 straight blades. Trigger Mount (can be used for Tripod): 3/8 inch (needs adapter to standard 1/4 inch thread) fixed to body rather than rotatable. Mount: M42, but can easily take T2-PK instead. If trigger mount is used for tripod, either the tripod head must allow the lens to be flipped, or the mount needs to be loosened and rotated, to switch between portrait and landscape. Scan of original user manual posted here.
Mount Type:	M42 Screwmount
Price History:

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Ptekra

New Member

Registered: December, 2014

Posts: 5

Review Date: December 13, 2014

Recommended | Price: $60.00 | Rating: 8

Pros:	Sharp, Solid build
Cons:	Heavy, hard to set the aperture
Sharpness: 10 Aberrations: 7 Bokeh: 9 Handling: 6 Value: 8 Camera Used: K-r; K-5

Its cheap, and have a special feel when use it because of the focusing mechanism. The IQ is very good, But its heavy for a long walk in the woods.

Johndav

Veteran Member

Registered: June, 2013

Location: Sunny Dun(ny)fermline, Fife

Posts: 405

Review Date: July 16, 2013

Recommended | Price: $62.00 | Rating: 9

Pros:	Handling
Cons:	Weight, older tripod bush, preset iris
Sharpness: 9 Aberrations: 9 Bokeh: 9 Handling: 8 Value: 9

Bought complete with the case (battered) and rifle stock - though like a lot of others I would never use the stock. The lens was bought on ebay and described by the seller thus "You will not often find this item in this condition and it is Well Worth Having to The Collector." It had quite a bit of fungus on the glass.
Thankfully instructions have been posted on dismantling the lens so I was able to get to the fungus which cleaned off quite easily - I was surprised.
The unusual turn wheel focus actually works really well and the results are pretty sharp

lrbijl

New Member

Registered: December, 2012

Posts: 1

Review Date: March 25, 2013

Recommended | Price: $120.00 | Rating: 9

Pros:	Sharp, easy to focus, great gun stock
Cons:	Heavy
Sharpness: 10 Aberrations: 7 Bokeh: 9 Handling: 9 Value: 10

I bought this lens for some wildlife and sports photography on the cheap. It has not disappointed!

I use it almost exclusively with the gun stock and have made the trigger electrical. This works as a charm! After some initial getting used to the focusing wheel in the front of the lens I now consistently have around 50% of my shots in focus, and that is for wildlife and rugby. Using the gun stock and trigger really gives great balance, smooth focusing and reduces shake considerably. There are some aberrations when shooting very high contrasty things, like a bird in a tree before white clouds.

Other people say the setup is very heavy, and they are probably right. However, it has not bothered me in the slightest. I do think that without the gun stock the lens is quite a bit harder to handle, even though I have had success with this on occasions where running around with a "gun" looks a bit weird. I am also of the opinion that the gun stock is more versatile than a monopod in situations where 300mm is too long to handhold.

Heres a shot I took of a pheasant (I think) today. Im not really much of a birder.

dme

New Member

Registered: February, 2012

Posts: 17

Review Date: February 25, 2013

Recommended | Price: $50.00 | Rating: 8

Pros:	Sharp, fast, handles well, good bokeh
Cons:	Huge and heavy
Sharpness: 9 Aberrations: 8 Bokeh: 10 Handling: 9 Value: 9

The picture shows the full Photosniper 3 kit, including the trigger mechanism, rifle stock and the bundled Zenit camera; I believe it was sold between 1974 and 1982. The big lens at the heart of it is the TAIR-3. Mine is rather battered, has quite a lot of dust in it, and is missing the trigger mechanism and stock.

The other Photosniper on this site is the later Photosniper 12 based on the TAIR-3S. The maximum aperture is the same, but the lens tube is different.

The focus wheel under the main body of the lens works well. In spite of the 1.6 Kg weight I have no difficulty hand-holding and manually following focus from the touchline of a Rugby match.

The inscriptions on mine are all in Cyrillic; it self-identifies as a TAИP3-ФC 4,5/300 9668.

If 9668 is a serial number either they didn't sell very many, or mine is earlier rather than later.

Although it is an M42 lens, the M42 screw piece is attached in the same way as the outer piece of a T2 adapter is secured to its rotatable core, and it is the same depth. I managed to find a T2 adapter whose rotatable core matches the Tair 3 tube precisely, and so mine now has a PK bayonet.

Wide open the images straight from the camera are somewhat lacking in contrast, although the detail is all there. This lens is sharper than my Sigma 70-300 f4-5.6. However, wide open, pixel peeping fine texture (eg. tree bark) that should be pretty much black reveals itself to be very dark purplish-reddish, whilst highlights acquire a turquoise tinge. Unfortunately, these defects are simply magnified when I attempt to use a 2x or 3x teleconverter; the image looks soft, and the CA becomes intrusive. On most of my lenses, the Kiron 7 element 2x and Kenko 7 element 2x converters clearly outperform the Kenko 4 element 2x teleconverter, but on this lens they are all equally bad.

The 16 aperture blades ensure that the aperture is always round, and the bokeh is excellent.

Because this lens, even with the T2-PK bayonet, lacks the aperture sense lever of a proper PK or PKA lens, the Pentax 1.7x AF adapter doesn't add autofocus. But I find the CA of images taken with this combination (510 mm f7.65) acceptable.

Under challenging shooting conditions (hand-held in a strong wind) I was able to get sharper images with the Samyang 500 mm f6.3 mirror, though the differences aren't great (and neither are the photographs

); the longer exposure time due to f7.65 versus f6.3, or even random variations in 'seeing' (a townscape shot on a misty evening in a strong wind with the clouds changing minute by minute) may explain this.

Stacking the Pentax 1.7x AF adapter with a 1.5X PK Teleconverter (DOI or Kiron Matchmate) (which provides the necessary aperture lever) allows the AF to function, but the images are mushy.

The two 1.5X Teleconverters I have tried by themselves actually work well. The Kiron Matchmate 1.5X gives a sharp image, but Lateral Chromatic Aberration is apparent. The DOI 1.5X doesn't give any lateral Chromatic Aberration, but is less sharp. I prefer the Kiron, but the DOI is perfectly acceptable, and detail is apparent that you cannot see if you simply increase the size of the base digital image by 50 percent.

Overall, I recommend it.

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TAIR-3S - Fotosniper 12 ensemble 300mm F4.5