What does everyone think of this lens?

[Markw]

I want to do alot of wildlife work and I figure that a long distance lens will help dramatically. What do you all think about this lens:
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Kenko-420-1600mm-Telephoto-Digital-Cameras/dp/B000MX5LEK/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=photo&qid=1225823046&sr=1-12[/ame]

PS. if you could get back ASAP, thatd be great.
Mark

 

[Overread39 2]

short answer - cheap load of rubbish.
longer answer - I too looked at some of these super cheap super zooms and asked around - general responce was that they were not worth the glass they were made from - heck if you read the first review for this the lens does not even have any aperture blades! IT also looks to be a 210-800mm lens with a 2*teleconverter toget that extra range - canon, nikon heck even sigma don't make a 200-800mm focal length zoom lens. Avoid this like the plague and save for a proper lens

A 70-300mm zoom would be a cheap way to get a good focal length for wildlife - though the 300mm end will be softer.
moving up in price a 300mm f4 prime would be the next best - also a 1.4 teleconverter would give you a 420mm lens from that which would still deliver good quality results
There are also the two sigma superzooms - the 50-500mm and 150-500mm in this price area as well.

 

[kundalini]

You would have more satifaction by spending the money on a meal.

 

[Big Mike]

You get what you pay for.

 

[Dubious Drewski]

Yeah, I would not trust that thing to deliver any sort of usable image. You'd likely get better image quality by cropping into a shot taken with a 70-300.

 

[matt-l]

Wouldn't trust it as far i can throw it.

 

[Overread39 2]

well I went out and tried to find photos taken with this lens - not easy!
I did find this though for a 650-1300mm - this is page 2 - and if you go hafl way down and look at the user name pcasciola - he/she is the user who bought the lens.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-103319-p-2.html

sadly on their site you have to copy - paste links- here are some examples liked form there:

Here is the Opteka at 650mm. It was a little soft looking out of the camera, so I cranked up the USM in Noise Ninja before resizing, to 200% at a radius of 1.9.

http://www.casciola.com/pics/opteka_3394.jpg

Here it is at 1300mm. Same USM, but I increased the radius to 2.4:

http://www.casciola.com/pics/opteka_3400.jpg

And here is the 100% crop from the 650mm shot, completely untouched out of the camera. Ok, it's not so great, but remember, under $300.

http://www.casciola.com/pics/opteka100pct_3394.jpg

And with some USM. I couldn't do too much USM here because of the ISO 800 noise:

http://www.casciola.com/pics/opteka100pctUSM_3394.jpg

I also recomend reading page one of the thread - its very much fun test and at the settings which had to be used its not for wildlife at all - just way too slow. Also its apparently a huge monster of a lens!