Pentax smc DA 55-300mm f/4 : A sound performer
8 is a great choice when it comes to a consumer long range telephoto lens. All-in-all it is optically superior to the sigma and tamron equivalents with the usual great pentax build quality. The af is fast enough for all applications i have needed so far. A brilliant lens relative to its very competitive pricing. Have only had it for a couple of days, will add more images as i snap them.
Excellent telephoto lens if you got the km or k7 kx pentax buy it you will need it.
Nice lens for the money, still getting to grips with it, a bit soft at 300mm.
It’s a great versatile lens, but when on full zoom (300mm) it looks as if it’s focused, and the focus light comes on with my pentax k-7, but once photos are downloaded, the subject is slightly out of focus. This is under good lighting conditions. Maybe i need to play with it more, but it looks like this is not ideal for nature photography which is what i got it for. I don’t want to have to manually focus after the autofocus. When i get sharp images they are great, but have lost some nice shots due to the dodgy focus issue.
It worth money when it bagain. I bought it at it was 240 pounds and it worth if you don’t have a long telephoto lens.
I bought this for my pentax k200 camera body and the resulting image quality is extremely good. At its first outing to test it i photographed sanderling (birds), general landscapes and banger racing on a beach. It was january so the light was low. The results exceeded expectations. The product itself is compact and light for the focal range and quality of images – ideal for travel. Okay, so you lose a few stops at f4. 8 compared to far more expensive lenses but the trade off is worth it. I have also tried it in very low light and combined with modern digital technology, the resulting images even at f5. 8 were more than acceptable.
Pentax smc DA 55-300mm f/4.0-5.8 ED Lens
- Make sure this fits
by entering your model number. - Standard zoom lens for extended telephoto range
- Focal length of 85 – 450 mm (equivalent in 35mm film format)
- New optics especially adapted to high quality DSLRs
- Dirt resistant PENTAX SP Coating on front lens element
- Convenient manual focusing with wide focusing ring
Overall i would say this is a brilliant (for the money) lens. It takes consistently sharp shots (with a pentax k30). I only have two criticisms, the autofocus can be a little slow and it isn’t weather sealed. Apart from that it is brilliant and i would recomed it.
An automatic choice for my pentax k7. A very good lens giving sharp bright results throughout its focal range. Auto focus is ok for snap shots and landscape views but for close ups, or anything special, use manual focus for much sharper results. I have prime telephoto lenses that give better results but a good prime will always beat a good zoom and i must clarify that my prime lenses are of a higher spec than this unit. All in all a very good ‘walkabout’ lens for the price.
Great pentax colours as expected, nice and sharp. Can be a bit of pain hunting for focus but a twist towards infinity can shorten this as it is along throw from minimum focus to to infinity and back. An absolute stunner though, nice and sharp from f4 to f22, it will hold f4 until just over the 100mm point. A great addition to expand your zoom range.
Let me first say that i do own some really good pentax lenses like 200mm fa* and several from limited series. This one is not in the same league looking at optical qualities but it is not bad either. Considering the price it is even great imo. What i appreciate is that it is really light but still can give decent pictures in the whole range. My sample gets worse towards the long end but it is still acceptable. As with anything else there are trade-offs, being f5. 8 is not that bright and if there is no sufficient light iso will have to be increased. Contrast is good and colors it produces are natural like many other lenses from pentax. There is some vigneting but again it is not deal breaker. All in all this is a (cheap) zoom with good range and as long as one does not expect miracles it is great (little) zoom lens with lot of reach.
I bought this lens to give me closer shots of aircraft and wildlife. First outing was at waddington air show. It was easy to use ,once i’d got used to the autofocus, and the results were excellent. It is quite heavy on the neck (much more so than the 50-200mm), but that’s my only criticism.
Pentax have done a good job here – they’ve spent the money on the optics instead of the electronics. It relies on the camera to drive the focusing, which is a bit noisy and struggles a bit sometimes, but there is a manual override which comes to the rescue. In combination with the k-5 it’s hard to beat.
Needed to increase the range of my kit and decided to spend a little extra on a pentax lens. No complaints, clear and crisp resuls.
The pentax 55-300mm lens is very good. I’ve had it for about two weeks and is a very capable lens. The zoom and focus rings work very smoothly and are not fidily. There’s no sign of fringing in the pictures and the performance is great right through the focal range. The auto-focus can sometimes start ‘searching’ in low light but overall is very fast. In well lite places the lens can produce some brilliantly crisp and clear pictures. Personally i think it’s the best consumer lens for pentax in it’s class. It’s build quility is also super, as you’d expect from pentax.
Well made and images are very good. Sharpness above average for this kind of zoom, no optical problems like fringing (chromatic aberration). Colours are very good and autofocus fine. A noticeable improvement over tamron 70-300mm it replaces. For someone who can’t afford top lenses, this is an excellent buy and won’t let you down. Only cons i can think of is that it needs a tripod mount on the lens. Fully zoomed out, it can droop on a tripod because of its weight.
I own several pentax primes, and the 17-70mm. The weighty 17-70mm is an excellent ‘standard’ zoom: razor-sharp corner to corner from 17-35mm, good at 50mm, then hit and miss at 70mm (mostly miss). In many ways it outperforms my primes with its flat plane of focus (the prime’s focus tend to curve markedly closer towards the edges). The 55-300mm beats or equals the 17-70mm at 55mm, and is way superior at 70mm, from then on its great up to 200mm (it is superior to the 50-200mm here). At 300mm the edges of the frame are significantly blurred. 200-300mm should be viewed as an ‘extended range’ if you demand absolute quality, though for centralised subjects where the outer parts of the frame are set back and would therefore be out of focus, this is a minor or even non-issue. For the lens’s size and price this is acceptable. Focus is bang-on at all focal lengths. In late afternoon light focus can hunt, but as always judiciously placing the centre focus point over something contrasty helps. Edge to edge resolution is excellent mid-zoom, slightly less at zoom extremes; even at 300mm the very centre resolution can be excellent (though is often only ‘good’).
If you are a pentax acolyte, all things pentax are the best.
Pentax smc DA 55-300mm f/4.0-5.8 ED Lens : I have bought this lens after a bit of experience with equivalent sigma apo version lens on nikon d70. This lens does exactly the same but of course in a pentax way in terms of the colors. It is not a speed demon nor supper glass you can shoot against the sun but if you learn how to use it (e. With k-5) you will get the photos worth limited quality. Do not expect you buy a lens and voila pictures come out great, give it time and learn where and when it works for you. The lens works great up to around 240mm (the reason why i bought it was 200mm) and if you step down to f8. 0 you have to get a quality picture still with a very pleasing bokeh at 200mm:). This is the lens i take when i go out during a very sunny day e. Sandy beach and very bright day. I paid for mine £200, if it was more i would go for sigma apo.
I bought this pentax smc da 55-300mm f/4. 8 ed lens in order to get better (i. Larger image) shots of garden birds, than is possible with my 30+ years old pentax-m f4. At £263 the new lens is probably a lot cheaper than the old lens was (in real terms), and weighing in at 460g the new lens is around 80% of the weight of the old lens. I can’t see any difference in picture quality when taking photos using both set to f8 200mm on my k110d camera. I’m still getting used to the rotary zoom control (rather than the slide zoom) but the lens does shrink to 2/3 length when set to 55mm, which is an advantage. The only concern i have is the detachable/reversible plastic hood.
It’s compact, well built and a very good performer. All in all, i believe it’s one of the best lenses made by pentax in recent years, with no weak points.
Its good but it is probably better to pay the extra for the 18-300 .
Excellent lens pin sharp detail with exact and speedy auto focusing. A real high quality accessory for both novice and experienced photographers alike.
Well what more could be written on this lens. Probably the best consumer lens pentax have ever produced. To receive this today at an unbelieveably low price is certainly putting a smile on my face.
Took some test shots of a newspaper taped to a wall. Camera was on a tripod, exactly square to the newspaper, used timer function and its image quality was pretty poor. Right hand side is blurry until f11. My 25-30 year tamron ad2 80-210 is sharper and all the way across the image. Returned it to amazon for a replacement and repeated the tests and all ok. Recommend buyers check they have a good copy of this lens. Its supposed to be the best around for its price.
Screw drive so its a bit noisy. If you only want the 300mm reach id advise saving up for the 300 f4 (you’ll get it for £650ish on black friday). Silent focusing (although not really any faster than this one) and image quality is far far better. Image quality isn’t bad on this, its quite good, if you need to crop though the 300 f4 holds up much better. With this lens if you crop away more than 25% of the image it starts to get unuseable, the 300 f4 you can crop away more than half the image and your still left with something useable. This lens is still very good though, its f4 up to about 100mm i think and 4. 5 for another 50 or so mm so you can get a bit of background blur going, and the blur is nice and smooth.
I bought this with my pentax k200d in addition to the standard 18-55mm kit lens. I chose it over the more typical 200mm zoom lens due to the extra reach & a lot of reviews stating this was much better quality than the cheaper tamron 300mm zoom available. It’s also a faster lens than the 200mm, with a max aperture of f5. 8 at 300mm, whereas the 200mm lens has the same max aperture at only 200mm. The lens feels pretty solid to me, the zoom is very smooth & manual focusing is pretty easy when needed. Af is a little noisy but works well, although the manual focus ring rotates which can surprise if you’re holding it when it works. Comes with lens hood & decent protective case. A few days after i got the camera & lens i went to the zoo which was an excellent opportunity to try it out. I got some fantastic shots of the animals, many of them at the max zoom setting. Although it’s not the fastest lens i still managed to get some nice de-focused backgrounds & not many shots suffering from camera shake.
I would like to say, delivery great, packaging great,the lens is more than i expected and very happy with this.
I have to say i wasn’t expecting too much when i purchased this, but had my fingers crossed. I took this lens to costa rica and it really exceeded my expectations. Yep, it is a zoom lens so it will never have the same quality as a prime lens, and yep, it does struggle at times with the auto-focusing, which can be a bit annoying, but the picture quality were really, really, very good despite these issues. I took a huge amount of shots of birds through branches and leaves, which came out amazingly good – they were critically sharp, with good punchy colours and brokeh, and had i not been the one taking the photos i would never had guess they were taken with a cheap zoom lens. The lens is also really light so can be easily used handheld. I would strongly recommend this lens.
Everything that i expected when buying a long zoom lens, focus a little slow at times but spot on when it gets there, excellent value for the money, highly recommended.
Having read many tests on this lens and the sigma equivalent, it is clear that the optics are better in the pentax lens. Depends what you want, better optics or lens with stabiliser (pentax cameras have a stabilser internally anyway), with its silent focusing(true pentax is noisy). I always, go for the better optics.
This glass is sharp and the sort of quality i used to get from old pentax takamur lenses on 35mm spotmatics. The lens was purchased for my new k-5 iis, which i bought for wildlife photography to get better results with detail; better than my eos 60d and ‘bigma’ 150-400. The rewsults are pretty good for a zoom lens and this allows me to get used to what the camera can do without having to worry about changing lenses all the time; and let’s face it, who wants to keep changing lenses and missing shots while you do so, or getting loads of dust, pollen, wind strewn country dirt into the sensor?.Not meit is light, versatile for some street or portrait, but ideal for tele-photo shots of wildlife that you can’t get too close to; although even with a 600mm prime lens you’d still have to get quite close and so stand still and blend inthe other reviews highlight the main features of this lens and it’s quality, bokeh (ability to blur background) or clarity. So i will just add that i have only given it 4 stars because of the noisy screw drive – come on pentax, use a nice quiet hyperdrive or silent ultrasonic piezo drive motor, like tamron does.
Good functional lens of its time, a bit heavy though, need a strong tripod.
Does all its supposed to and does it very well, a must for the k 5. Very well made, and not too heavy.
Recently purchased this pentax lens for my pentax ist dl2 camera. I am delighted with the results. Wildlife photos are a pleasure to take and good results are obtained without a tripod.
This is a very compact lens and is an ideal complement to the standard 18-55mm kit lens. The iq is very good up to 200mm but becomes a bit softer after that. Focus can be slow and is quite noisy.
I bought this lens recently to replace an old sigma telezoom and the tamron 70-300mm di ld. This pentax outperforms both, and even if pricier, i think is a better telephoto. If you must have ‘macro’ capabilities, then go with sigma’s or tamron’s flavors of the 70-300mm. I find this lens quite sharp throughout, has great colours (pentax style) and does not show chromatic aberration problems like the tamron did. One of the best points in this lens is the focal range. You’ll change lenses less often, and miss less shots. Sadly the minimum focusing distance is a bit to long, if they made it 0. 5m shorter it would make a big difference for the 55mm end, in my experience. In terms of design and build, its the same as the kit lens, its fine for this price point. It has the little window in the shade to change the setting on your polariser filter (great idea pentax).
I have been an amateur photographer for over 35 years and have been in the situation where i have passed out in 105 degree heat carrying numerous camera bodies, lenses etc. These days with digital cameras, i don’t need to carry a body loaded with ektachrome and another with print stock and so i am also reducing the number of lenses that i carry. My kit lens is an 18-55 giving me approx. 28mm to 80mm in 35mm terms and i wanted this zoom to extend me out to wildlife distances. This lens takes me from approx. 80mm to 460mm in 35mm terms and i have found mine to be sharp at all focal lengths. I considered the tamron and sigma alternatives as they have a close focus or pseudo-macro function that this pentax lacks, but i found that the lack of purple fringing and consistent performance throughout its zoom range, more than makes up for this, the images this lens produces are crisp and saturated and it is a fantastic consumer lens. I use mine for portraits, candid’s and wildlife photography and i wouldn’t hesitate in replacing it like for like if it was lost.
The 55-300mm lens is an example of pentax glass at its finest for the price. The sharpness and colour balance are superb. I sell images and find that time after time the results need almost no post processing – chromatic aberration basically is non-existant. I previously owned the 50-200mm which (my copy anyway) was far inferior to this lens.
The post Pentax smc DA 55-300mm f/4 :
A sound performer
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