- Included: Soft lens pouch, Front and Rear Lens Caps, T-Mount Adapter, 10 Year Warranty
- This lens gives you the equivalent of looking through a pair of 10x power binoculars, Manual preset diaphragm, rotating tripod mounting collar
- Fully Multi-coated, exotic anti-reflection coatings, latest in computer-aided-design / computer-aided-manufacturing, Diamond-cut from crystal-clear, water-white optical glass
- 10 Year Warranty
Product Description
A Opteka High Definition 500mm preset telephoto lens is great for nature and sports photography. The amazing power of this lens gives you the equivalent of looking through a pair of 10x power binoculars. It has a manual preset diaphragm, a rotating tripod mounting collar and a soft lens pouch. Because all Opteka lenses are designed and manufactured with the highest possible degree of consistency, you can swap lenses mid-shoot with no discernable variation in color o… More >>
Opteka 500mm f/8 Preset Telephoto Lens for Pentax AF SLR Cameras
2 Comments
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting a lot from a $80 500mm lens. After seeing a photo example on the flickr site, I figured I would give it a try and see for myself. I used this lens with my Pentax k-x, and was able to get some decent shots of birds, even in flight, that were pretty sharp focus-wise. And they were hand-held shots (in-camera shake reduction works pretty good).
However, upon looking at the photo enlargement, there was significant purple fringe around the tree branches in all of the bird photos. Photos were all taken on a cloudy day, and birds were approximately 100-150 feet away. Interestingly, a photo of a snow covered branch taken at approximately 50 feet away showed no apparent purple fringe.
Bottom line, the jury is still out as to whether I will keep the lens. Waiting for a sunny day to take some more photos with this lens.
2/15/10 Update: Returned this lens back to 47th Street Photo, and purchased Sigma 70-300 APO Telephoto. I found the lens too difficult to focus, as well as the purple fringe to be unacceptable.
Just a side note – Paid $209 for the Sigma thru Amazon (47th Street is the seller), while the price on the 47th Street website was $189! What’s up with that???????
Rating: 2 / 5
This lens has exceeded my expectations. For about $70 my hopes for quality weren’t too high. When the lens arrived the barrel connecting the optical component section the the T-adapter was loose. A simple fix; I tightened it. When mounting the T-adapter, the scales on the lens barrel ended up on the bottom of the lens when fixed to the camera body. Another easy fix: loosen the adapter mount with a jewelers screwdriver and rotate the lens barrel until the scales are on top where they belong.
Optically the lens performs well. The aperature is set with one adjusting ring. Focus is set with the f-stop wide open to get the brightest image. Once focused the lens is stopped down to the desired aperature with a second adjusting ring. Simple.
A word about focusing. I also bought an Opteka 500mm mirror lens. The 500mm preset lens is much!!!! easier to focus than the mirror lens because the depth of field is so much greater.
The lens is light weight and seems well built. Just remember it’s a $70 lens and not a $700 lens.
The pictures I’ve taken have nice contrast and are reasonably sharp if you take the time to focus carefully. This is a manually operated lens so you’ll have to do some searching through your camera menus to set up your system to get properly exposed pictures. I use a K100d body and the set up wasn’t difficult. That’s it. I hope this was some help if you’re considering this lens.
Rating: 3 / 5