Lense Reviews

I love my Minolta HTsi Plus, and the matching lens makes a very nice combo. I bought the lens shortly after I bought the camera and it looks great. This two-touch lens is very easy to operate and the autofocus is fast, but sometimes not quite as fast as you might like it. The speed I was refering to in the title is not the Auto Focus speed, but the maximum aperature of the lens. At f4.5-5.6 you don't have a ton of flexibility. As my love for photography has increased I have felt limited by this, having to choose faster film, or longer exposures. If this isn't a concern to you then I highly recomend this lens. Otherwise, there are some great new zooms on the market you may want to look at before choosing.

Played around with someone else's lens. I can't seem to find one in stock anywhere in Silver. All I see is the black one.

Great lens, great results especially with the XTSi.

Good size and rate ratio. I compared this with the Nikon version, twice as bulky, same compass design. Optics very useable. I would wish for a wider field of vision, a compass that superimposes itself a bit better. I'm not sure such a binocular exists, so Tasco good value for money.

Excellent clarity even in low light. Field of view better than most for those of us who wear glasses. Easy to view and read compass. Red light in compass for nighttime use bright enough to see even in daylight. Only 1 problem encountered; that was in aligning the batteries to fully illuminate the compass light. I had to reinsert them several times to get good contact. Once that was accomplished it works perfectly. Overall an excellent piece of equipment for the price. In my opinion Steiner make a better one but it costs 3x as much as Tasco. Unless you plan on putting these binoculars to VERY rugged use (I'm not) these are perfectly adequate for the job at hand--- recreational boating and hiking.

Works great on my Still Camera,hence the 4 stars. But does not work well on Sony Video cameras ( can not judge for other brands ), the Auto-focus seems to have a real problem with it.

The Tiffen (02001) filter set is sure to improve your outdoor photography or videos. I have used Tiffen filters in the past for my Canon Elan IIe with excellent results. So Tiffen was the first brand I turned to when looking for a polarizer for my new Canon S30 digital camera (requires aftermarket adapter to use filters).

Overall the Tiffen polarizer is a great performer. The polarizing ring offers smooth turning in either direction and solid black anodized construction and threaded on both sides - allowing easy attachment of another filter. I found the polarizer easy to adjust with no sticking points.

The included UV filter is great for keep dirt, dust, grime, and fingers from marring the expensive lens of your digital camera or camcorder.

If you like to record outdoor activities, these filters will help protect your equipment and improve your results!

Have recently purchased this lens for my Maxxum St si. The lens weighs much heavier than the Minolta 35-80mm lens which came with my camera but covers a much extended focal length range, possibly all that I would ever want to shoot within. The focusing rings turns as faster as the oneon the smaller lens did.
Though the lens dwarfs the relatively smaller ST si camera body but the overall look of my camera is impressive. Hope the wide focal lenght coverage will equally have a premium optical quality.

I was excited to get this lens and have the capability of zooming in close without having to switch lenses for wide angle shots. It does a good job, is very easy to operate, but I am a bit dissappointed with its ability to focus up close. It can not take pictures of objects closer than 6-8 feet. So I will still keep my 35-80 lens in my camera bag for those shots that I just can't back away from.

Good MF lens, a bit old. The price is unbeatable.
It's actually for old Canon, so you need step ring for EOS.

the Vivitar 75-300 mm it is a great product and takes good pictures. at both near and far ranges. I have a vivitar camera and it take clear vivid photographs. And at this price with the 4. something f stop is more for your money. At usually higher f stops along with a higher price. So you can't beat that price and value. For this type of zoom lens.

I have a two Minolta SLR cameras. An STi and a QTi. I broke the lens on the first and bought the second because it cost almost as much to buy a replacement lens as it did to just buy a new camera. At this price, I can replace the original lens and have two cameras.

I love this camera. I've used several 35mm manual and automatic cameras and find this one easy to use and have gotten consistently good quality photos from it.

This eyepiece came with my Apex 127 Makustov-Cassegrain telescope. It showed excellent views of the Orion Nebula, Jupiter's cloud bands, and the craters on the moon. All at 61x! You definately can't ger a better eyepiece for the money! The only reason this lost a star is because of the lack of a captive setscrew recess to keep the eyepiece from falling out, should the should the knob come loose.

We have been using this lens with several pentax-type camera bodies for the past 13 years and have few complaints. With regular maintenance and care, this has become an indispensible tool in our professional practice. We work with historic buildings, and photo-documentation is critical. Short of excessively expensive photogrammetry, a perspective shifting lens solves those parallax skewed images with a reasonable investment. (I am not sure this model is even still in production. In fact, I don't believe there are many similar lenses made; Nikon makes a 35 mm with wonderful optics, but the extra wide angle provided by a 28 mm is fantastic.) We have used standard 24 mm lenses. We've tried those newer wide zoom 18-28 lenses. But for the ability to capture a shot with close to undistorted parallax, nothing beats a shift lens.

A word on its operation. I won't go into the technical details of the optics, but I have had no complaints unless you try to push the correction out to its limits. Say you are standing on a typical street looking at a three story building. It sits up on a natural rise above the street, and you can only move back 60 feet or so across the street. With a 28mm you still have to tilt the lens up to capture all of the building. You snap it and wonder why it looks so distorted when you look at thge results. The sides of the building are splayed at weird angles and the top of the roof is clipped.

Well, with the shift lens you compose the image right in the viewfinder through the lens. As you spin a knurled dial, the body of the lens shifts laterally off axis and compensates for the distorted view. (The barrel spins independently of the mount in 30 degree increments so you can turn the camera to any orientation.) You hold the camera level and shift until the splayed verticals of the building pull back closer to parallel, and suddenly the top of the building comes into the frame! Don't shift too far or it starts to look fudged; the eye likes a bit of parallax spread. The Greeks figured that out long ago. Now your photos look like those you've seen in the glossy magazines. Add the right filtering and suddenly you have publishable images.

I won't fool you: this lens takes some experimentation to get it right. Like any other adjustable parameter of photography, I recommend taking a few extra shots at slightly different settings (so you don't have to go back again). It is a bit on the heavy side, but with practice and a steady hand it works fine. At 1:3.5 it is fast enough for most lighting conditions with average speed film. One last bit of warning: it does not work on automatic cameras--only fully manual metering. But if you are serious about architectural photography, you'll either already have a manual camera or you can pop... for one of Pentax's plain jane workhorse bodies.

Not for everybody, but you definitely get what you pay for in this case.

The good thing about this lens is low weight. Worth buying for such a low price.

As a photography student I fell in love with this lens the moment that I got it. It has a good zoom without being heavy and doesn't make me feel like a tabloid reporter. The range is perfect for day to day use because it allows you to get close as well as shoot from clear across the street. 28 is a decent wide angle and the 300 is fabulous. A purchase that I would make again. The greatest part about this is that you aren't forced to change your lens over and over to capture different kinds of shots. You can leave the standard lens at home. The camera of fashion photographers, Nikon delivers on quality as always. The lens also adapts to all Nikon models. A good buy if not one of the best that I have ever made for my camera. Of course they already said all of this in the other blurb, but I just had to back them up on what they said earlier.