Osawa Mark II 60-300 f5.6 and a New Neighbor

[kenetik]

This Gambel's Quail has taken up residence in my backyard. They are often hard to capture, they get spooked by the slightest sound, run like crazy and when they do fly it goes from 0->Supersonic in no time.



I got out the Osawa 60-300 Mark II 5.6 and got a pic of my new neighbor at 300mm. This is a very nice lens from the early eighties, with good resolution and a very broad FL range. There is CA at 300, you can see it in this 100% crop, didn't attempt to remove it, but I have in the past and you can get rid of most of it pretty easily. I have several 300s now and this one and the Chinon 5.6 give me the best results.

[Lloydy]

Excellent picture, a 60-300 zoom is a big range - great for wildlife and birds but probably not the lightest or easiest lens to use? I like the Chinon 300 as well, it has to be about the lightest lens in 300 ? and is remarkably sharp.

[kenetik]

Thanks Lloyd. The Osawa is actually very light, though it is a bit long. The weight is one of the reasons it's good on the long end. When I load up my Minolta or Konica 300s I have issues with focus handheld just because of balance. It's two touch, so it's not super fast to adjust, and relatively slow aperture wise, but in Arizona there is usually plenty of light. These are still very cheap, I would recommend checking out anything Osawa made with Mark II branding.

The Mark II lenses were superbly designed and manufactured, with everything made by Osawa themselves in a brand new factory in Tokyo. It's unfortunate they declared bankruptcy a year or two after release, pulling their main investor, Mamiya, into the financial mess as well. I am not sure how the older Osawas perform or who manufactured what, but they were the primary third party manufacturer for Mamiya's 35mm, and seemed poised to go bigger when other areas of their business, typical of a big 80s conglomerate, brought them down.

[kenetik]

This lens also has a 1:4 macro at 60mm. Below is a snap from this morning. It's not bad at all, considering again that this is a mega zoom.