Opteka lens any good?

[niceguyinne]

Want to buy an Opteka 650-1300 tele for my Canaon EOS Elan II... frankly the price seems too good to be true.. any experience with this lens??

[mjs1973]

Want to buy an Opteka 650-1300 tele for my Canaon EOS Elan II... frankly the price seems too good to be true.. any experience with this lens??

Welcome to the forum. I have no experience with this lens or anything else from Opteka, but I would be skeptical. If the price sounds too good to be tru, my guess would be that you're right. I wouldn't make the purchase unless I was able to give the lens a good testing on my own equipment before hand. My advice would be to stick with something you know and trust when it comes to new glass for your system, the quality in the lens and the images that it produces will be well worth the extra $.


Michael

[Lionheart]

Want to buy an Opteka 650-1300 tele for my Canaon EOS Elan II... frankly the price seems too good to be true.. any experience with this lens??

I've bought plenty of "bargain" too good to be true for the buck lenses in my lifetime. Most of those lenses got donated to charities or are sitting in my closet in a bag waiting for the next trip to the local Salvation Army. My experience is that you generally get what you pay for. Low dollars in=low picture quality out, 99% of the time. It's the 1% that snags the gamblers. Works the other way too. One percent of the time, you pay big bucks for a lousy lens (case in point-my 20mm f2.8, it's ok, but not worth the 399 I paid for it).
Just my 2 shiny Abe Lincolns

[Clemmie]

I guess I got lucky on the gamble, then. I recently bought the Opteka 500/1000 set (foot-long conventional lens, not the mirror one, plus 2x teleconverter) from 47th St. Photo. $110.
Turns out to be a pretty sharp lens.

If you get a two-piece set like mine, I will recommend springing for an extra T-mount. These type lenses have a threaded barrel, which screws into the T-mount - or into the teleconverter, which then screws into the T-mount.

T-mounts have three small 'collar lock screws' to allow adjusting for rotational alignment (getting the focus marks pointed up, for example) when everything is together and mounted. With a single T-mount, like the kit is packed, you'll have to re-align these every time you add/remove the teleconverter - which can be quite tricky.

With a spare T-mount, you can set one up for proper alignment with just the lens (which you'll unscrew from the lens, to screw the teleconverter onto the same threads) - and set the other one (left on the teleconverter) up for proper alignment with 'the works'. Thus doing two alignment setups just once - then being ready for quick changes from then on.

[Lionheart]

I've seen these Opteka lenses on e-bay, but never really gave it a second glance. Burned too many times I guess. Might be nice if you could post some shots from your Opteka lens. $110 is not a bad price if the quality is at least decent. I've certainly paid a lot more for lenses that ended up in the used section of many a camera shop or got donated to charity (the ones that the camera shops wouldn't take-like my Tamron 28-80, which I have again thanks to a too good to resist e-bay bid, now to put it back on e-bay). Most of the cheesy lenses I've had were for my FD mount A1's and AE1's, but I've had a few lemons in EF flavor (mostly Tamrons). Post some pics

[Clemmie]

Post some pics

Why certainly!

http://clemmie.smugmug.com/gallery/305817/2

This link lands you on page 2 of a roll archive, at the point I began my initial test of the Opteka 500/1000 set. Continue on thru page 3 to see all the shots. You'll pretty easily figure out which are at 500mm and which are at 1000mm.