55-300 Vs 80-320

My two favorite hobbies are motorsport and photography,and i love combining the two,.The motorsport i'm most interested in is motocross (used to ride to quite a high level)and rallying .

My question is .. out of the two lenses i've listed ,which of the two has faster focusing performance

Cheers Sean

I dont know about the 55-300 but the 80-320 is quite abysmal when it comes to focusing, unless the contrast is high and it has a positive area to lock on to then it seems to hunt forever, apart from that its a terrific lens.

I have and use both lenses and don't have any issues with either of them. The extra 20mm can be useful, but the lack of the ability to manually yeak the AF is not.

I have both the 55-300 and the 80-320. From my direction there is no competition the 55-300 is far superior.

I bought my 80-320 2nd hand in 2006 with an aim to use it at the Farnborough air show. It was hopeless at this as it seemed to spend most of the time doing end-to-end focus hunts. Aircraft tended to be well over the horizon before focus could be obtained.

The arrival of the 55-300, in time for Farnborough 2008, was a revelation as it has quick shift focus so it was very easy to do a quick manual approximate focus and let the auto focus finish it off.

Glyn

thanks for that ,very usefull

I bought my 80-320 preused from SRS, as world wide bidding frenzies on e-bay were pushing the prices up. I can appreciate the pluses for the 55-300 but there was a £200 price difference at the time - for that difference I am willing to get used to the 80-320 'foibles'. I have managed a few aircraft shots but no jet fighters in digital. My 75-150 f4 M, was pretty good at Curborough car sprints when taking slides.
Link to my 'aircraft' experiments/training!:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28204187@N08/sets/72157619450555912/

What about the old Pentax-F 100-300mm? I have one and quite like it, although I'll readily admit it can be a bit soft at 300mm. Just interested to hear how it compares to the other two mentioned here as I bought it for airshow use but have yet to try it for that.

Be careful if do decide to go for a 55-300 and make sure you get the best version for your needs. I believe that there is now a DAL version which does not have quick-shift focus (or a lens hood)

Glyn

In defence of the 80-320 I have to say it is supposed to be THE best "budget" long zoom that Pentax have ever made, I presume this in terms of image quality as it cant be for its focusing speed I think John is the only person I've heard of that has no complaints about this lenses focusing abilities, I would be interested to know which version he has, the earlier black or the later silver and if there is a difference between the two:

Reviews seem to have the F 100-300mm placed higher than the FA zooms (the reason why I chose that one). Just interested as to how accurate the reviews were, as obviously I couldn't afford to buy all 300mm-ish lenses and compare them.

The same lens was later offered with power zoom, mine's the earlier version without. A good thing, as it's a heavy enough beast without an extra motor and circuitry!

I have the black version of the 80-320mm and it's been no worse or better than any other similar telephoto zoom in terms of focusing. I have never used the silver version so can't compare the two.

Thats interesting John, if we eventually get together on a Pentax meet you'll have to bring it along and let me try it, and you can try the silver version.
Mine was bought new and it has always had a focus problem, MZ7, MZ5n, MZ10, istD, K10D and K20D, I always atributed it to the fact that it had such a long focal range.