Hin's Photo Corner

I get this 400mm old prime along with interesting tower flashes that I want to try out. I got a Sunpak Auto Thyristor 522 andd Metz 60 c-1 that are flash with a tower bracket. The lens are not what I am after. I thought it would be another lens that would weight over three pounds. This 400mm is the lightest in all the 300mm and 400mm lens that I have handled. Now that I think of it, it may be too light. Anyway, I tried it out in a lunch break. Handling is not too bad especially in the ease of focusing. Purple fringing can easily be seen unfortunately. My copy comes in a T-mount that is currently comes with an adapter to K mount


Initial Test Shots














Initial Impressions & Notes

• This 400mm is the lightest that I have handled. Though long in length, weight is not an issue for hand-holding.
• It comes with a adjustable tripod collar. I have not tried if I can remove the collar for hand-holding
• Bokeh is not too bad
• Easy to handle
• It has a preset ring with C <----> O with letter C for closing aperture down while O refers to opening of the aperture blades to wide open
• I find focusing achievable in f/8.0 in good lighting without the need to switch to 'C' in preset ring. With some previous encounter with M42 tele-lens, that is not the case as I always need to focus in wider apertures as in f/5.6 to f/2.8.
• Purple Fringing is easily seen in the test pictures.
• Lost of focus trap will take some time to get used to
• Stop down metering is required like other K-mount manual lens.
  

Related:

• Pentax 400mm f/5.6 choices
• Tokina SD 400mm f/5.6
• Pentax F-1.7x AF TC
• Pentax F* 300mm f/4.5
  
• Hin's Camera Gear
  

I try to have a simple write up on how I handle purple fringe (colored fringes along edges on areas of high contrast.) This happens more often on Tamron 70-300 Di LD Macro but it does not stop me from finding the lens dependable as the cost of the lens is so inexpensive and I just learn to work around the problems. In general, I pay more attention to the shots made with this lens

• Avoid backlit area with high contrast
• Use smaller aperture. Use f/8.0 instead of f/5.6 for long end in the zoom
• Use higher iso instead of bigger aperture

And the following picture is sample of purple fringe around the rock area as well as the off focus area with purple color in the bokeh


And without photoshop and other commercial tools, I manage to use the following free software tools:

• XnView
• An free utility for viewing and converting graphic files.
• Accepts Photoshop plugin
• PFree
• A free photoshop purple fringe plugin

Once I get PFree plugin to properly install on my XnView, I can call and execute the plugin on the above picture. I used all the default settings from Pfree and the results come out way better than the original picture, I am happy as a clam for the results

The easiest area to spot the difference is on the rock area. I also have another image tool viewer called Irfanview which works more advanced than XnView and it also accepts photoshop plugins and I will report back how PFree works in Irfanview

Related:

• Tamron 70-300 Di LD Macro f/4.0-5.6
• Tamron 70-300 Di LD Macro Closeup Test Shots
• Tamron 28-75 f/2.8
• Hin's Camera Gear
• Hin's Picasa Demo