Pentaxsmc DA* 300mm f/4 ED (IF) SDM Telephoto Prime Lens for Pentax DSLR

very very good quality lens. i use it on a k3 and it gives good results. focus is a little slow (not really slow just not very fast), i didn't notice any great focus improvement coming from a 55-300. image quality is miles better though. So if you have a 55-300 and your frustrated with the poor focus speed but happy with image quality this lens probably isn't worth the upgrade, if your happy with the focus but frustrated with the image quality then this is worth the upgrade. 100% crop on this is about the same as 25% crop on the 55-300.Pentax customer service in europe though is absolutely useless, even worse than that. The lens cap broke on my one straight out of the box, no big deal really as you can get a no name replacement for a couple of euro. but i tried to get in contact with pentax customer support to see if i could get a replacement under warranty and there was just no reply. i tried using the contact form on the website and every email i could find. i eventually got a reply from jpss uk who said they passed it onto the correct people in pentax who assured them that they would deal with it. i never heard anything from pentax after that. If it was a major fault i would have gone through amazon for the warranty, who are usually very good, i just didnt want to have to sent the whole lens back for this small fault.

Replaced my 55-300 with this and so far I'm extremely impressed with it. The images are a lot sharper than the 55-300 which is still a great lens for the money but not in the same league as this optic. The ultrasonic drive is near silent and reasonably quick ( a friend who shoots with a Canon 7D and a Sigma 120-300 says the speed is comparable). I get more keepers with this lens and because it has an F4 aperture it lets in twice as much light as the 55-300 at the 300 end. As I'm currently shooting with a K-R I was concerned I wouldn't see much of an improvement over the zoom but I'm well impressed. This lens must be awesome on a K5 or K3.

A superb lens, possibly the sharpest I have in my camera bag.

This is a lens to take you beyond the ubiquitous and very good Pentax DA 55-300, which at 300mm is only f/5.8. By that, I mean that in spite of the 1Kg weight, you can still successfully take hand-held shots, and with more than a one stop increase in shutter speed and a higher optical quality over the 55-300 (especially when wide open), get sharper images. The near-silent SDM focussing is pretty cool, too - though not particularly fast. But I use it most as a "beyond 300 mm zoom" by cropping, often heavily - something that isn't usually successful with the 55-300 wide open. Aim for faster than 1/1000 shutter speeds and/or take other measures to achieve pin-sharp handheld croppable shots.Its range can be further extended by adding the slim Pentax 1.4x rear converter, if 300 mm isn't quite enough (albeit losing a stop). Used to date on my K-5 and my K-3.The only niggle I have is with the big and solid lens hood, which can be fiddly to attach until you get used to it, but that is not worth a one star reduction and with no hesitation after 4 months use, it's five stars from me.

Bought the lense for a safari in Kenya. Incredible sharpness on my K5. Easy to handle. Do not regret one second the investment.

Really well built lens,pin sharp the autofocus is silent also weather sealed. Like the rubber end on lens hood all in all joy to use

This is an excellent lens. The image quality from this lens is superb and it is comparible in sharpness to my 31mm f1.8 FA lens.

super lens...sharp and gr8 looking super fast delivery would use this seller again

Obiettivo fantastico, eccellente sotto tutti i punti di vista, con una definizione e resa cromatica allo stato dell'arte. Talora, raramente, si impunta un attimo nel prendere il fuoco. Nell'insieme un 10 pieno.

This is a very high quality telephoto lens. I also own a much older SMC K 300mm F4 and the comparison is night and day.It produces very good images at any aperture. The lack of lateral CA is in stark contrast to the old K series lens which produces a significant amount of red/blue CA.The autofocus is quiet and smooth and reasonably fast. The focus ring is nicely dampened and only turns when focusing manually. Do not mistake poor sharpness with poor focusing; it is very difficult to nail focus and the depth of field even with distant subjects is not "infinite".The lens is very solidly built and is all-weather. The tripod collar is very solid (way better than the FA* 80-200mm F2.8 whose shoe is very tiny). My only gripe is the hood; older 300mm lenses (notably the K 300mm F4, M* 300mm F4, A* 300mm F4 and the F* 300mm F4.5) have built in hoods. I doubt I will use the hood very much as a result but Pentax lenses generally don't flare very much anyway.Although a DA lens (and so will default to APS-C mode on the K-1), it is perfectly good in FF mode. Again, watch out for depth of field; there is very little of it so unless your field of view is perfectly flat, distant objects may not all appear sharp at once without stopping down.

El rendimiento de este objetivo es sobresaliente. De un tamaño y un peso muy buenos. Construcción impecable. Vale lo que cuesta. Calidad.Saludos

I purchased this lens used (for about $1,000). Pretty pricey for 8 pieces of glass in a metal tube, right?Well, while yes, very expensive, it is far cheaper compared to it's Nikon or Canon counterparts. While Pentax and Canon (and Probably Nikon as well) all offer zooms (possibly primes also?) in their lower lineup of lenses, IQ cannot be beat... I was using a Sigma 28-300 f/3.5 for the longest time. Until that broke on me and so to take its place was either this or the 60-250 (another zoom didn't appeal to me at the time) I thought my Sigma offered good image quality, until I used this... And by god I must say this thing is nearly flawless... I've been using it a lot lately in the local parks to photograph birds and what not, and to be honest I personally think the SDM is a tad slow (could just be because I was shooting through a bunch of branches and the weather conditions have been less than ideal) it's kind of odd not hearing the whirl of the screw drive in the lens. SDM is quiet, smooth, and fast when it wants to be. I am in love with the ability to switch the AF off ON THE LENS! (this is my first lens ever with the SDM in it) another thing I really like is the internal focus, unlike many canon lenses and one of the old lenses (prime and zoom) when you focus you move an element inside the lens rather than moving a whole portion of the lens in or out, and that feature right there is beyond convenient for me. Now if this were a zoom lens, I'd like to have the push/pull zoom/focus. Another thing I really like is that the tripod collar isn't removable, however the foot is. Super easy to put on and off. Another really neat aspect of this lens is the fact that (from what I can tell) there is almost no chromatic aberration, even shooting wide open (For the time I have been using this lens I have been shooting wide open at f/4 & f/5.6) images still come out sharp, and the nice thing is, I can shoot a still object with this lens (handheld) down to about 1/60 which is great. Another great feature of this lens is that it is fully weather sealed.While image quality is superb on this lens (and all DA* lenses) I honestly don't think this can even begin to compete with the Pentax A* 300 f/8 but at about 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of the A*, auto focus, and only being 2.35 pounds (compared to the nearly 19 pounds of the A*) it's a great buy. It also just looks straight up badass. Though, personally, I think the DA* lenses would look better if Pentax adopted the off white colour that Canon currently uses (Pentax did this on the DA 560 and also on many of the A* lenses) and add a tulip hood rather than the bucket hood, it would be nearly flawless.Also, build quality in phenomenal. Image quality is comparable to that of the legendary Canon 'L' Series lenses (which are impressive lenses that also come with an equally as impressive price tag)

300 mm f4 pour Pentax...Pas vraiment le choix en terme de téléobjectif pour Pentax. Cependant, à y regarder de plus près, ce 300mm semblait tenir toutes ses promesses. Je ne regrette pas du tout mon choix. L'objet est superbe, d'une qualité de finition supérieure au NIKKOR que j'ai pu avoir par le passé. L'autofocus est ultra silencieux et précis.Le piqué n'est pas des plus impressionnant sur le K3 mais il se dégage qqch de mes photos. Les couleurs, le bokeh, le rendu général... Suis fan de cet objectif qui est somme toute assez petit comparé à ses grands frères full frame.Je le conseille pour tout les amoureux de la nature.