Looks great except for the engraving of the rental agency - which I realize will impact any resale should I choose to do so in the future.

Would anyone consider buying a rental lens? I may be able to get a deal on a very nice lens, but it was used as a rental. Anything to look out for?

Yeah, but the reason I did that is that I was reading somewhere about how crap the mirror's were and that even with the extra pixels they were still blurry compared to 'real' lenses. I think the person I was reading blabbering about it was in a Nikon forum where they went on and on about a 50mm lens being better for shooting the moon than the Tamron 500mm mirror. I mean give me a break!

I've come to the conclusion that most of the people who get mirror lenses, or the 'cheaper' f1.2 lenses and complain about blurriness are one and the same: beginners who think a lens makes the photographer. They're both very sharp lenses when used properly. And by properly on the f1.2 that means using focus trap or a split prism, and on the mirror it means bracing against something and using high ISO's to get shutter speeds of 1/500th or greater.

Either way, I LOVE my DA*, and would only consider trading for a DA* 60-250mm at this point

This lens just continues to blow me away. Though doing an EXIF review of all my shots 80% are taken @ or below 40mm - mainly with my siggy 18-200mm. How do the Tammy / Siggy 17-50mm and 18-50mm f2.8's compare to the DA* 16-50mm? I may have to get me one of those...

This lens is what photography is all about! Little to no PP done on these either. Just LR3 beta 1 to convert.




100% crop below

V. fair price on the 18-250mm. Just give it a few days and someone will break and buy it from you.

Hell, it could be me, though I hope not because I've got too many other lenses already.

Hrm it is tempting, but for now my counter offer would have to be my eternal gratitude

They can't pm yet as they're new. You can always post shots on www.imageshack.us and then [ img ] and [ / img ] their links here.

I have this lens, and it really doesn't get enough respect. For what it is, and the price you pay, it's really quite good. Most people will try to zoom into 200mm and then take pictures hand held of birds in poor lighting and then be annoyed when they don't look sharp. Smile and nod

If you'd like to donate a DA* 60-250mm to me, I'd be more than happy to test it as well

While the IQ is great - it's not going to replace my mirror lens At least not for big zooms I remember reading somewhere that mirrors were so terrible that you could just crop and manipulate a high quality 135mm lens to get the same out of it. Well, I tried. These pictures at: 18mm to show approximately where I'm standing and the point of interest, the upscaled DA* @ 135mm, my mirror (500mm), and the mirror with a 2x TC on it (1000mm).

The one thing that surprised me is that the TC doesn't seem to give you more than what software can get you. Has anyone else had this experience with 2x TC's? It's also possible that there was motion, and this motion was made worse with the TC. Both shots were pseudo-braced (camera on the ledge, but some shake was visible in the viewfinder).


A sigma 18-200mm @ 18mm for point of reference. Red line shows the no smoking sign in the dead centre.


DA* @ 135mm cropped, zoomed and interpolated.


Tamron mirror lens, cropped, zoomed and interpolated


, Tamron Mirror lens W/2x TC, cropped, zoomed and interpolated.

Wow, look at this great deal on a pre-order for said lens. I think I'm going to go out and sell a kidney for this bad boy!!!

I do wonder what's up with the price tag - I guess if someone does put down £10k for this lens then they will go out and make it by hand or something.