Lens Hood for Pentax 55-300 DAL

I recently bought a Pentax 55-300 DAL quite cheaply from SRS. It had been split from a package - hence the reasonable price. The only downsides are the absence of a lens hood and the lack of quick shift focusing. The plastic mount seems to work as well as the metal ones.

I found the lack of a hood a nuisance and tried a screw on collapsible rubber hood. It worked ok but was a bit of a pain to screw onn and off and even collapsed was rather bulky.

The official Pentax replacement hood PH-RGB-58mm costs £41.99 at SRS which seems a bit steep. Following a mention on this forum of a clone available on eBay for under a tenner I ordered this link on 25th July. It arrived today at a cost of £9.10 post free. I paid the Buy-it-now price but a lower offer might have been accepted.

As far as I can see it is identical to the Pentax hood apart from the Pentax logo. It clips on neatly both in use and reversed. I thought it would be worth bringing this to the notice of fellow forum members who have a DA 55-300 in the DAL version.

Archie

Glad the hood worked out for you. I gotta save for the lens first.

If your budget is tight the DAL version of the 55-300 is certainly worth considering as the saving is considerable - £159 compared with £279 for the DA version at SRS. I understand that they are optically the same.

Archie

The absence of quick-shift is worth considering, before going for the admittedly substantial saving.

It has a long focus throw, the 55-300, which means that AF can be very slow if it has a long way to go.

In particular, if you're using it for moving objects, and you lose the AF point, the lens will quite often hunt to infinity (or worse, the close point). It can then be very slow to find your subject again.

In both these situations, quick-shift is a huge benefit, since you can whip the focus ring round to approximately where you need it, and the AF then has very little to do, so it's quick.

I'd hate to lose it. It would make using the lens at airshows enormously more difficult.

This nice felt-lined hood fits the DA L 55-300 as well:

http://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/2301/Pentax-PH-RBH-58mm-Lens-Hood.html

I think I may have made that mistake, I bought the DAL with airshows in mind, amongst other things. I went to White Waltham with it last weekend and although there wasn't much flying, by the time the lens had focussed, the aircraft had gone!

Is there a good cheap alternative for airshows? Does the 50-200 focus any quicker? Are there primes available at about 300mm in AF or would they be expensive? What would you recommend for under £100?

Thanks

Andy

I'm no airshow expert, but it strikes me that manual focus might be easier than AF. Especially as the subjects are at some distance, so the amount of focus travel needed will be quite small.

Failing that, what about using trap focus with a manual focus lens?

John,

I'm happy to try that, in fact I often use it with my manual focus lenses when I forget to change to MF...and it can work quite well once I realise what I've done wrong.

I'll give it a go. My longest MF lens is a Hoya 70-200 F4 which gives mixed results, might try that too, although it's probably not as good as the modern lens.

Thanks

Andy

Going back to my OM1 days that was not what I found except when the subject was maintaining a more or less constant distance.

I tried it with an AF lens set to manual with little success. If it is a fast jet closing on you at high speed the delay seems significant.

There are really only a very few circumstances where MF is practical at airshows.

- Aircraft on the runway (landing or taking off). It's possible to prefocus and then time your shutter release

- Static displays (duh!!)

- Very occasionally, when an aircraft doing a low level flypast maintains the runway centre-line. Again, it's possible to prefocus, and take the shot when the aircraft goes past the spot (not too high, or the distance will be wrong).


Thing is, flypasts are very rarely bang on the centre-line, and, more to the point, the most dramatic shots are when the aircraft are turning, often hard, where they're close, and their distance from the camera is changing very fast.

As you'll no doubt have noticed, pictures of aircraft in flight only have to be very slightly out of focus to be completely useless, so in practice, I'd say that only the very skilled, and very practiced, MFers would stand much of a chance.

I took about 1000 shots at Farnborough the other week, of which about 40 I'd be prepared to show. A lot more than that are sharp, but either the light is rubbish, or they're too small in the frame, or they're badly exposed. I wouldn't want to bring my chances down even further by trying to use my now woefully out-of-practice MF ability.

AF-C is mostly good enough for aircraft, even fast ones, and letting the camera pick the AF point gives you a lot more leeway as you try to track the moving object in the viewfinder.

Also, keep the other eye open, so that you can see the wider view at the same time as you watch the aircraft through the viewfinder. This helps you find it again if you lose it.

Without quick-shift, you might locate something at the right sort of distance to swing round and point the camera at, to refocus quickly in the event you lose track and it hunts to infinity or the close point.

If you want to try it again sometime, I'd be happy to meet up and give what help I can.

I took this, this, this, and this at White Waltham, but it's not always possible to get this close.

It depends which runway they're using - 29 or 11 are the best ones, and you really need to be with someone who flies from there, else you won't be allowed to get to the best spots.

I would just like to reinforce ChrisA's comments. As a local resident over 3 days at Farnborough I took around 1200 pictures of aircraft in flight with my DA55-300 of which only 38 made it to my "best", presentable, folders.

For two of these days I was at the southern end of the runway where, with luck, you can get the opportunity to shot aircraft in fast & tight turns with the sun behind you.

I found that manual focus is a dead loss for this. Nearly all my photos were with lens close to, or at, infinity focus so if the camera decided to do a focus hunt at a critical point I quickly learnt to take my finger off the shutter button and use quick-shift to get back to the infinity end of the focus range and then let auto focus take over again.

Quick shift for me has therefore become a necessity for airshows and while I have a reasonable longer lens I have given up using this in preference to the 55-300.

Glyn

I use my trusty 75-300 FAJ Pentax and my Sigma 28-300 - seems to work for me.

Tony

Thanks for all the advice. I think it is more practice needed then!

The lens is very new so I'm not used to it yet. Hopefully I'll get some better shots at Eastbourne.


ChrisA...are those photos from last weekend? We were there for the Tiger Moth fly-in, I was with Air Cadets so had access wherever, but I had to keep an eye on them so couldn't wander far. We did get a guided tour round one Tiger Moth by the owner, he put the value at about £70k! If I get over again I will give you a shout, although with traffic it was a two hour trip each way, so may not be soon.


Andy

No, they're from a couple of years go sometime. I'm down there quite frequently and quite often have the camera. Especially if there's something interesting flying circuits you get quite a few opportunities if you're in the right spot.