I bought exactly that lens on Fleabay some months back for the same reason. I haven't got around to testing it fully, but the few snaps I did take were not expecially promising.

Now that you've reminded me - - - and it's not raining - - - watch this space.

Andrew

I have a Pentax K fit, XR Rikenon 300mm f4.5 APO sitting in a cupboard. It is plenty sharp, in great nick, has a built-in tripod collar and a rather nice case. It's very solid, heavy and a bit of a pain to hand-hold. It's also very rare - only one or two a year are advertised anywhere and the last few I've seen had asking prices of more than twice Owen's budget - which is very cheap for the amount of metal and glass you get.

I'm confident that it would be brilliant on a film camera - and if I ever decide to start using the Ricoh KR10 that's in another cupboard at home, then I'll definitely be giving it a whirl again. An obvious downside to the XR Rikenon is that, especially at wider aperture openings, it generates a fair amount of purple/blue fringing on high contrast edges (using a K200D) - something that's common to lots of film era long lenses if used on a DSLR. There is a thread - here with a few photos.

I reckon Owen's best bet might be to keep and use the Pentax 55-300mm DA zoom. From what I've heard, it's probably a little better than the FA 100-300mm f4.7-5.8 that I have - and I'd probably buy one if I used 300mm a bit more and I wasn't so mean. If he does manage to source a cheapie oldie 300mm prime, it might well end up in a cupboard rather than being used, just like mine.

Andrew

I'd buy it if I didn't already have one .....

Interesting photo - but nothing like Britain's most boring job.

Many years ago, I went on a tour of (what was then) the Creda factory at Blythe Bridge. They had a conveyorised production line on which several people manually assembled parts to produce Creda storage heaters. One chap had the job of applying glue, using a gun, to the insulation on the front of the heater. The next chap along applied the front panel on top of the glue ribbon. They did this 8hrs a day, 5 days per week. I remember asking the chap with the glue gun whether he found the job a tad tedious. His reply was that it was a bit, but he was looking forward to tomorrow, because he got to swap with guy next to him who applied the front panel.

This seemed pretty boring to me.

Andrew

Tree rats? Well, that is what my next door neighbour calls them.

I have a pretty rare XR Rikenon 300mm f4.5 lens and have done little with it. Whilst it is sharpish it also tends to generate quite a bit of blue/purple fringing at wide apertures. I decided last week that I really must either start using it or sell it to someone who might appreciate it more than I seem to. So, I decided that I'd try my hand at wildlife photography and see if I could capture one or two of the local squirrel population using the Rikenon. Not a chance.

A quick tip for all you photographers reading this. If you put a 300mm lens on a tripod, with a K200D hanging off it, and point it towards a fence 30ft away that the squirrels regularly wander along, there is little chance of a squirrel actually appearing - even if you wait for hours and hours! Is wildlife photography really this boring? No wonder I haven't tried my hand at it previously.

This morning, I had just finished using the K200D, some extension tubes and a Pentax 75-150mm f4 zoom to take close-up photos of some leather faults on a relatively new chair when I happened to notice a squirrel sitting on the fence at the back of the house, seemingly thumbing its nose at me. So, where's the Rikenon? Upstairs, in a cupboard, I think - so I removed the extension tubes and used the 75-150mm zoom at 150mm to blag away at the squirrel. In the originals, the squirrel covers no more than about one sixth of the width of the frame - so the photos below are quite small crops.

So, what's in here then? Pistachios, monkey nuts - yum ....



I quite like these peanuts ....



So, do I eat this or dig a hole and hide it?



I'll go hide it before the birds pinch the rest. Those nuts are mine!!!



It looks like I'll have to try again on another day with the Rikenon.

Andrew

Great idea. You might be interested in this (hand-held, IIRC) "snap" that I took in August last year at Clachtoll in Sutherland, using a K200D and my (Komine) Vivitar 200mm f3.5. I had an 18in x 12ins print made up - and it looks very sharp to me.




This is a 100% crop from the photo with no extra sharpening or other processing



Looking forward to seeing the results from your Vivitar 200mm.

Best of luck
Andrew

There are many variants of the Vivitar 200mm f3.5, by several manufacturers. I have a version of this lens manufactured by Komine (serial number starts with twenty eight) that is quite sharp and, for me, is a keeper. In common with many old (and some not so old) lenses, it can exhibit a little purple fringing in some circumstances.

You can research these lenses by googling "vivitar 200mm shoot out". You will find threads started by "big dawg" who seems to own and have tested most of the variants. There are lots of relevant and potentially useful test photos and 100% crops in some threads.

Andrew

Very boring, totally ordinary - and completely worthless




Andrew

Pentax woes? I have a K200D with 18-55mm ALII kit lens and three other Pentax lenses none of which is under 30 years old and all of which work perfectly.

Woes?? None that I can think of.

Andrew

Errr ........ as I rushed when I took the shots yesterday, I had another go today. This time, I took several shots with each lens, refocussing each time - and then picked those that seemed the sharpest for each lens. After doing that, the difference between the two lenses shrank considerably. Just for the record, the shots were taken as RAW and were processed in PSE8, using ACR 6.2 for RAW conversion. The only other processing was the default sharpening in ACR 6.2

This was the full frame .......



This is a 100% crop from the photo taken by Lens A:



and this is a crop taken from an identical frame by Lens B:



Arguably, some of the cactus spines look a fraction sharper on the Lens A crops. I suspect, though, that this has more to do with the difficulty in focussing accurately than any difference between the two lenses. I also took photos which were focussed on the nearer cactus and also on the rocket blower. Try as I might, I cannot distinguish between the crops - nor can I see any difference in colour or in the rendering of out of focus areas.

My conclusion is that I need to do a lot more testing of different subjects in better light (so that I can use ISO 100 rather than 400) and wheel out the tripod, so that I can be sure that camera movement is not an issue. At the end, I reckon that all I'll prove is that they are both great lenses and there isn't a lot of difference between them.

Thoughts?

Andrew