DA55-300.....Very Impressed

well I am anyway.....

Full frame downsized to 800px in CS3


downsized from 1800px to 800px


100% crop.



Original PEF and Virtual copies developed in LR only, resized in CS3.

Very lovely indeed...

Well I've got one of these too, now. Sadly I wasn't able to buy from Chris@SRS since he didn't have one in stock and I needed it for this weekend - in this case it came from Bristol Cameras for £219 + £10 delivery, and it arrived in 48 hours well-packed. Not up to Chris's extraordinary speed, but perfectly acceptable.

Initial observations:

Quite compact closed up, feels heavier and more substantial than the 75-300, not as heavy as the 80-320, but subjectively feels better built than the latter.

It has quite a long focus throw - 180 degrees from one end to the other, so AF from close up to infinity takes quite a while. If you've already got it in roughly the right place, though, it locks on perfectly well and quickly.

I've only really looked at it at the long end, but early impressions are good. Pixel peeping, it shows a small amount of CA at the edges, as well as a little PF, though nowhere near as much as the Tamron 70-300.

Surprisingly little difference wide open and stopped down to F11, sharpness-wise, which surprised me, so I'll look into that a little more closely. Not at all bad, though.

I'll post some decent pictures when I've taken some that show anything.

Ok, I've taken a few reasonably controlled shots at 300mm, just to see what the centre sharpness is like at the long end. Tripod, 2s delay, all the usual stuff.

This Picasa album shows the whole frame twice at F5.8 (wide open) and F11, and several 100% crops from F5.8 to F32.

All the pictures were RAW, converted using the default settings in ACR, and saved as quality 12 JPGs in CS3. They are all unmodified apart from the cropping, and in the case of the full frames, resizing using bicubic resampling.

It seems best at F16, and drops off after that.

From F8 to F16, though, the difference is very marginal, and although better than wide open, the latter is far from unusable.

Tell me what you think - happy to take some more under different conditions.

I've had mine for nearly a month (1st new lens in almost a year!) but only put it to extreme use this week and I think it behaved very well:

[IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w20/GlynM/Misc/IMGP5539-c2-Vsmall.jpg[/IMG]

Typhoon on approach at Farnborough on Monday.

300mm, 1/350 sec at F11, ISO 100 and +0.5ev

Glyn

Not at all bad. I hope I can do as well at the weekend.

It's not really all that good - I was a bit rushed as it came over the house, but it's handy what having a long zoom already on the camera lets you grab:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/IMGP0080.jpg[/IMG]

Oh, and today's top tip:

When you're trying to take a picture of a fast-moving object, remember to turn off the 2s delay unless all you want is an annoying beeping and a dark viewfinder.

Lovely Chinook.

It looks like you had the same grey conditions as here. I have not been out today but had similar conditions on Wednesday and many of my pictures look more like silhouettes. Although they can be brightened in processing end up being a bit noisy. However your Chinook looks great.

Glyn

Most kind.

It was a bit noisy, so needed a bit of attention. And it wouldn't enlarge any more than this either - it's pretty soft really. But not too bad for the web.