I know that some lens options questions are drab and without perfect answer, but I sure could use some advise. My lens selection is good upto 100mm and are MF. I do mostly landscape photos and the incidental wildlife. I'd like to expand my versitility to about 300mm. I've come down to the 300mm 4.5 IFED or the 100-300mm 5.6 - both in the price range I'm looking at used. They appear to be rated similarly, but not too compatable with teleconverters. Is there any strong favor for one or the other of these and am I missing other options? Thanks for the help.

-- roger rouch (rrouch@msn.com), January 23, 1999

Answers

I don't have any experience with the 100-300, but I have the 300 f4.5 EDIF, and I love it. I use it for the same purposes that you will be using it, and can highly recommend it. I have found it to be very good with the TC14b 1.4x teleconveter. I can also get some very interesting results combining the 1.4x with a nikon 2x teleconverter on the 300mm (mostly for sunsets where I want the sun to be large; in which case critically sharp resolution is not so important). In principle, the 300 f4.5 should perform much better with teleconverters than the 100-300. Good luck!

-- Bruce (brideout@sunstroke.sdsu.edu), January 23, 1999.

The 100-300/5.6 is a great example of a lens that has some very good properties, but one serious flaw that keeps me from using it much. The good properties - it's optical performance is very good, it's a constant aperature zoom. serious flaw - no tripod collar.

This is a big, long, heavy lens. Hanging that thing on the front of a tripod mounted camera is sort of a scary proposition. Now if you shot hand-held it's probably ok, but if you're interested in "landscapes and the incidental wildlife," and if you're interested in sharpness you're shooting fine-grained (slow) slide film and using a tripod. I keep meaning to figure out an add-on tripod collar, like the one's Kirk and others sold for the original AF80-200/2.8 which also lacked a tripod collar.

The 300/4.5 EDIF is a very nice lens. I wish it had a 39mm filter drawer like the 300/4 so filters weren't so expensive, but a 72 mm polarizer isn't that much.....

-- Pete Dickson (dickson.pn@pg.com), February 05, 1999.