gregory_rogtalsky

I had one of the original Tamron 300 f2.8s It was white. That was one sweet lens. I never went any where with out it . I hand held most of my shoots with 400- 3200 asa for newspaper pics. The only weak link of the lens was the mount. I think I went through 4-5 at $50 bucks a pop. When the olyimpics where here in 1988 I the downhill and skijumping on kodachrome, super sharp. The nikon 300 f4 af has also been in my hands but it never made my heart go faster. Maby because the autofocus never worked very well with my f4s. Right now I have the 3002.8 nikkor ed if and it may be a tad more contrasty than the tamron . A more important issue is the lens hood to keep out glare and your state of mind . I used to say that I was a focus god. Spend lots of time using your gear and burn film. Get a good moterdrive and shot in quick burst like using a machine gun when shooting action. To me 300 2.8s are normal lens good for just about anything. I like to hand hold mine because I find tripods to slow. If it was my money I would buy the 2.8

I owned a pentax 400 2.8 ED IF for about two years. I also had the matched 2X converter. The lens was super sharp but a real pig to use. The reason for this is that the center of gravity is all the way to the front and the focusing ring is all the way near the back. I sold the lens and pentax LX after a trip to B.C to photograph eagles. We were in a row boat and was hand holding the whole rig while the eagles where stealing fish from opsprey mid air.The eagle win every time because they have faster air speed. It was fun untill I tweeked my wrist . I know it was a dumb idea but there was no other way to shoot the scene as the it happened in the middle of a large lake. I swore that I would sell the thing when I got home and I did. I was unable to get a sharp piture with 2X converter on slow film, but had good results with 400 asa at spruce meadows horse jumping. At 800mm I was able to get away from the other photographers with 300 2.8s down on the feild and shoot from the stands. This was cool as I was able to shoot several jumps Instead of only one. Just before I sold it I shot some tech pan of some street scenes near my house. I had lens on tripod with mirror locked up, and the pitures are scary sharp. I never had the 1.4 converter but tested one outside a camera store one time. It was really sharp but I never had the money to buy. $1500 is a good price as I paid $4000 canadian. Go for it , but do your self a favor and get a wembley head to balence it and put it on a sturdy tripod. By the way mine had the front filter and a hard case. The pentax LX had the best veiw finder I have ever used , as it was really big and bright. I never did get the right focusing screen in the LX and that made it kind of hard to focus in some situations ie.800 f 5.6 Good luck