Pentax Lens Quality.

This image was taken using a Pentax SMCP-FA 100-300mm Lens. This is the older one with a Power Zoom.

This lens does not appear to get great reviews.

I took this a few weeks ago using my K10D, I was in the backyard messing around taking shots testing this lens. Suddenly out of the blue comes this private aircraft, real fast. The time I had to take the image before I lost sight of it over my house was a split second. I whipped the camera up, hit the power zoom ring and hoped for the best.

This is the shot I got. The lens gets my vote.

What do you think ?

RG.

Very nice shot but having owned one of the FA powerzooms back in the day I'd have to say I was never all that impressed with it. Like many lenses though it should benefit from the cropping factor of APS-C as it'll them lose the corners and edges where performance is weaker.

My first two Pentax lenses were power zooms (28-80 & 100-300 - used with a Z50p) and believe it or not they were one of the key reasons I bought into Pentax (I didn't know much about cameras or lenses in those days)! I never really found power-zoom anything more than a gimmick though and prefered manual zooming. Now I don't have either of the lenses although I do still have the Z50p.

The equivalent lens I have these days is the Sigma 70-300 APO and it's better than the powerzoom 100-300 in every way - including build quality.

niblue.

Thanks.

I aso have two of the Sigma APO 70-300. (One I use On my KM 7D) It's a great lens, however I know I would never have got the shot with it using it's manual zoom.

RG.

What is Power Zoom anyway? I've heard of it but never seen it or know any details of what it is. I always thought it along the lines of the Wide/Telephoto toggle buttons on point-and-shoots.
What does Power Zoom give you such that manual zoom would not have allowed you to take that photo?
(I see myself simply spinning the zoom ring to max, and firing away. Hard to imaging a motorized method being faster.)

amoringello.

i believe Pentax produced these lenses in the late 80's early 90's. I am sure someone else on this forum knows a lot more than I do about them and the time span.

The zoom ring has an optional power feature, one just slides the ring forward for the power mode. The speed is dependent on how fast one moves the ring c/w. cc/w. A very quick movement gets full zoom immediately, at least that is how fast the one I have works.

There is no way I could have gone full zoom that fast manually. The aircraft was moving very fast and I was standing up close to the back of our house on a deck. As a matter of fact I was very surprised I didn't just get blue sky.

RG.

Actually the 28-80 first appeared with the Z-10 in 1991, that was my first Pentax camera, the lens came with the Z-1 and the Z-20..

When the Z-50p appeared in 1995 that came with the 35-80 lens

The Power Zoom lenses (28-80, 28-105, 70-200 (IIRC) and 100-300 FA and the 28-70 and 80-200 FA*) slowly drifted off the scene.

Also, of the various FA 28-105s produced, I believe there were three of which the PowerZoom variant was the first, was the better optically....

Apart from PowerZoom you had the option of Image Tracking Mode, Zoom Clip and Zoom burst. However, the switch to operate these modes was fragile and frequently broke...

I had the FA28-80 and FA100-300 with power zoom which I used to use on my Z1.

The power zoom function intself, I tended not to use as it drained the battery quite quickly. You could use the poer zoom while exposing a frame, so as long as you used a slow shutter speed you could zoom out or in to create a special effect. The power zoom would ensure your zooming was smooth and not jerky. No, I didnt use it much !!

The power Zoom function had 3 speeds of operation depending on how far you twisted the ring. I found the adjustment even on the fine seting to be a bit coarse and it was easier to use in manual mode. Probably the most useful feature it provided was that the lens would go to it's least extension when the camera was switched off. Any of the cameras with the extra power connections that have come back with the K10 could use the function although the zoom clip and image tracking was only built into some of the Z series. They tended to disappear with the demise of the Z1P.

Other lenses include the 28-70/2.8 FA and the and the 80-200/2.8.

Kim