no rent lenses

But I am not talking about a 600mm lens, I need a 300mm f/2.8 lens maybe 3 or 4 times a year. To have £2000 tied up in a Sigma 300mm 2.8 lens simply does not make business sense.

It is exactly this lack of long lenses available for rental which is seriously making me consider ditching Pentax all together. I am now at the stage of my career where I am shooting major events which needs a longer faster glass than 200mm. In my line of photography I get to work alongside a lot of well know photographers & there are very few that actually own their own kit. Either it is supplied by the paper they work for or they have hired it.

The bodies I own are great, but seriously impeded by a lack of longer reach lenses

A tilt lens more important than a 600mm come on, now you really are getting into serious niche lenses...

Robin, like your flickr stream by the way, good stuff.

IMO once you start talking about £6000 lenses then the cost of the body is a pretty minor consideration. Just buy the lens you need, then get a body that fits it.

Nothing is stopping you from doing the same... a rental for a specific job doesn't mean you need to ditch Pentax for everything else. Its also a lot cheaper - that's why those people you work with rent instead of own!

I was reading through the Terms and Conditions and they're incredibly fair. The lens is delivered the day before the hire starts and picked up the day after.

So you can get a 60-250 (a £1,000 ish) lens for a week's holiday for £82, which is a pretty good deal if you ask me.

(And Flossie makes a good point. You can hire a D3x with a 600mm f/4 for the weekend from Calumet for about £200. Not bad for well over £12,000 worth of gear!)

As I see it, you have several options:

1. Request that SRS get in a long Sigma or similar. Maybe once they have built up a revenue stream they will add such lenses that have less demand.

2. Buy the existing DA*300 and possibly add a (third party) teleconverter.

3. Buy/hire a different system. There is nothing sacred about Pentax after all.

No, I disagree. Anyone shooting landscape can benefit from tilt. Anyone shooting city and architecture can benefit from shift. (And also for applications with product shots, still life, etc. etc.) That is a lot more applications than a 600mm lens. In fact, these are essential features on large format cameras. Though among smaller format brands apparently only Canon recognises their importance.

It is only that our smaller format bodies are so dumbed down that people do not see the usefulness of geometric control. Do you want verticals that are vertical? Do you want infinite depth of field without sacrificing lens acuity? I sure do!

Given that Pentax already have 6x7 and 645 lenses that cover a bigger image circle, all we need is a high-quality adapter. It used to be the Russians made these, but no longer, AFAIK. Such a product from Pentax would be a lot cheaper than a 600mm lens and infinitely more useful to most people.

Thank you!

Back on page 1 of this thread Chris said this:

On Saturday afternoon I took over 400 shots of the powerboat racing at Harwich.
Hardly any (only the start runs) used less than 600mm (900 with crop factor).
I used a F100-300 with 2* TC, A 600mm reflex (often with the TC) & a telescope 1000(-4000) equivalent (none of these numbers include the APS crop factor) .
I'd have loved to have a really long option available! (the telescope doesn't focus well when zoomed in).

I've only had a quick look through so far, I guess it could be under 20% that are sharp enough to keep & I'm quite please with a few of them.
Checking on the charts It seems that none of the boats would have come within a third of a nautical mile of me during the racing. (I didn't bother much when they were over ~1nm away, though I did get a soft image of the plume of spray as the first marathon boat finished at Roughs Tower (~10nm away IIRC!)

For events like this a very long lens (or a helicopter, and a moderatly long lens!) is essential.


Sadly shortly after I left one of the competitor's died, apparently from his boat flipping over at speed.

Mike

http://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/article/12/hire.html

Better late than never Gwyn