HD DA 55-300 PLM WR RE

This arrived this afternoon:




and will be put through its paces over the next week or so.

First impressions are good - well built, weighty, and no barrel-wobble like on the 18-50 RE. The zoom ring is a bit stiff and sticks a little at 100mm, but it probably won't be that noticeable when mounted.

If anyone want anything in particular looking at, let me know...

Very nice. On another forum I saw some shots and they looked very promising. Enjoy!

I'm sure you will be very pleased with it, it's a big step up on the original as far as handling and focusing goes, won't comment on image QA as I seldom used my old one.

It's not to shabby in FF mode either (OOC dirty office window grabs) depending on the scene.

By heck, those rhomboidal clouds on the first picture are all kinds of odd

By decree of Nicola McSturgeon - Scottish clouds should be different to English clouds and resemeble a Saltaire

Just received this.

Frimware update on K-3ii was straightforward.

Lens feels/looks smaller than I anticipated. When collapsed and on camera body. Just looking at the numbers you might think, not much of a difference and maybe you'd notice the increased width, but it seems noticably smaller.

Build quality - it feels very good IMO.

Only took one random image wide open at 55mm last night, but looked good.

oh something I noticed.. and checked on the ricoh website

this lens does not come with a pouch/soft case

Very impressed having had chance to play with it - but in all honesty, the 18-135 stayed on my camera for most of my recent trip anyway. Some shots for comparison - all are straight out of camera RAW and then converted to jpg in Lightroom with no processing at all. Sharpened, I'm sure the results will be fantastic.



18-135 @ 68mm 1/80s f/10 ISO100 (Part of a panorama, so excuse the weird framing and focal length!)



55-300 PLM @ 300mm 1/400s f/10 ISO125



100% crop of the above

The cross on top ofHallgrímskirkj showed some CA - but it was only a pixel top and bottom and disappeared completely with Lightroom's remove CA adjustment.

If you need a soft pouch there are two S80 - 160s on Ebay right now. There was another one but I got it -- for £1.70

Any news yet on whether this new version of 55-300 still suffers with the problem of auto-focus 'hunting' on moving subjects ? Will be interesting to know cos if it's fixed, more reason to upgrade !

Thanks

I would want to know how well this lens does in AF continuous tracking. Also how much of a difference does it make when using a K-3 II instead of K-70.

Basically I want to know whether the PLM 55-300 could possibly make the K-70 hover anywhere near the Canon 80D in case of action photography like Bird photography, sports etc.

If nobody else with the lens can provide hands-on confirmation about tracking, I'll try to do so in the next week or two. I've sadly not had time to get out with the camera much since I got back from Iceland because I might just have bought a house .

Only a KS-2, mind, so can't confirm on the improved AF capabilities of the K3/ii.

am currently using this abroad in good light on a k-3ii

AF seemed good enough for an airshow... caught jets /helicopters ok at 300mm

though it really struggles when the object is coming straight at you at speed... i think this was noted on the usa forum review

also caught some birds ok on it

the retractability is indeed useful and quick to use when needed

focus ring seems fine in mf, only attempted landscape in mf though

From what I read on the US forum, it won't work on many/most all older bodies (K-3-II and before!) and without a f/w update to FA4 compatibility, and the chance of that happening seems remote at the moment - see here
Also seems to have some A/F problems!