Adam-T
Veteran Member
Tasco's revenge -- The Cosina 100-400 F4.5-6.7*
"What Looketh like a Toy Telescope May be better than you think?"
£200s worth of pump zoom plastic in shiny Silver livery (the 100-300 was White!) it even has a red ring around the end and a metal lens mount - WOW, must be good .. Before you think that I've totally lost my marbles, I was on the city shooting some stock photos of the racecourse and popped into my dealer for a nosey at the 100-400L IS (which hadn't arrived) , but spotted this - errr "Alternative" so thought i'll have to give it a second go (the first time I used one was ages ago , a used example owned by an Elan-7 owner and it was awful) so thought that I'd try and make the best of it and report here ---- SOMEONE might be interested ..
The lens comes in one of those boxes you'd swear that had been used for Chinese fireworks in a previous life and it comes with a hood (Unlike the £550 canon 100 Macro) don't even think of operating the zoom straight out of the box , I thought it was locked at first, but , nope - it's really stiff, so mount it on the camera and slowly pull it (Don't do this on a Pre-Ti Rebel folks, you'll pull the lens mount out of the camera !) it DID zoom and smoothly , I have to report that it was quite easy by the end of the shoot and would be self-zooming in a week no doubt ..
Anyway on we forge - Luckily I had the 10D with me as F4.5-6.7 isn't the fastest aperture on the planet , so ramped it up to ISO400 for the Dingey conditions .. AF isn't noisy or even that slow for the price and it locked on sure and sweet ..
I shot the below shots handheld - they are the sharpest parts of course, only a couple front focussed, obviously the 10D was too quick for the lens ;-) ... to sumarise the quality - it's not as bad as the last one I tried, sharpness is actually not bad but the lens suffers very weak contrast and CA is terrible, as bad as the Canon 20-200 in fact ..
Given enough light, you'll get 8x10s from this lens after a bit of Photoshopping to up the contrast etc ! - great for 5x7s , I'd class this as a real casual zoom for small prints with respectable sharpness for the price , ideal for those places you don't want to take a 100-400L or 50-500EX - OR if you use this range rarely - don't go shooting sports on it is all I'm saying ..
Canon 10D on standard settings, ISO 400 - 100% Crops Wide open - Slight contrast adjustments to make up for the muggy day otherwise untouched ..
--
Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist
My Ugly mug and submitted Photos at -------->
http://www.photosig.com/go/users/userphotos?id=27855
"What Looketh like a Toy Telescope May be better than you think?"
£200s worth of pump zoom plastic in shiny Silver livery (the 100-300 was White!) it even has a red ring around the end and a metal lens mount - WOW, must be good .. Before you think that I've totally lost my marbles, I was on the city shooting some stock photos of the racecourse and popped into my dealer for a nosey at the 100-400L IS (which hadn't arrived) , but spotted this - errr "Alternative" so thought i'll have to give it a second go (the first time I used one was ages ago , a used example owned by an Elan-7 owner and it was awful) so thought that I'd try and make the best of it and report here ---- SOMEONE might be interested ..
The lens comes in one of those boxes you'd swear that had been used for Chinese fireworks in a previous life and it comes with a hood (Unlike the £550 canon 100 Macro) don't even think of operating the zoom straight out of the box , I thought it was locked at first, but , nope - it's really stiff, so mount it on the camera and slowly pull it (Don't do this on a Pre-Ti Rebel folks, you'll pull the lens mount out of the camera !) it DID zoom and smoothly , I have to report that it was quite easy by the end of the shoot and would be self-zooming in a week no doubt ..
Anyway on we forge - Luckily I had the 10D with me as F4.5-6.7 isn't the fastest aperture on the planet , so ramped it up to ISO400 for the Dingey conditions .. AF isn't noisy or even that slow for the price and it locked on sure and sweet ..
I shot the below shots handheld - they are the sharpest parts of course, only a couple front focussed, obviously the 10D was too quick for the lens ;-) ... to sumarise the quality - it's not as bad as the last one I tried, sharpness is actually not bad but the lens suffers very weak contrast and CA is terrible, as bad as the Canon 20-200 in fact ..
Given enough light, you'll get 8x10s from this lens after a bit of Photoshopping to up the contrast etc ! - great for 5x7s , I'd class this as a real casual zoom for small prints with respectable sharpness for the price , ideal for those places you don't want to take a 100-400L or 50-500EX - OR if you use this range rarely - don't go shooting sports on it is all I'm saying ..
Canon 10D on standard settings, ISO 400 - 100% Crops Wide open - Slight contrast adjustments to make up for the muggy day otherwise untouched ..
--
Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist
My Ugly mug and submitted Photos at -------->
http://www.photosig.com/go/users/userphotos?id=27855
