Beercan, Soft?

[HFnotts]

I have recently acquired a beercan.
On initial use I have been disappointed with the results from it on the a700.
The lens does not seem to be particularly sharp at max zoom and has a poor performance when used in low, early morning sunlight. In the latter case the sun was at 45 degrees frontal and a lens hood was used.
Is this typical of this lens? If so, why is it rated so highly be Alpha users?

[KevinBarrett]

The beercan certainly has a fair share of quirks and quibbles--it flares like a mad thing, first of all. Specular highlights in the foreground can sometimes blow out in magenta. While it has good bokeh it has some color-fringing associated with it, too. And it certainly isn't at its best at 210mm.

Strong points are easily enough to justify its $250-300 street value, though. Where else are you going to get F/4 at 210mm (in a pinch even)? It is plenty sharp from f/5 to f/14, and f/4 is still quite usable below 160mm.

[bfitzgerald]

Some sample shots might be useful.
No lens is perfect, even the beercan, but it's mostly pretty sharp.
If you are using it in low light, remember SSS is only so effective with some lenses. I had this problem with the 100-200mm f4.5, SSS just does not seem to work very well with that lens.

[Vidgamer]

Individual lenses can have problems. As Barry suggests, you could post some photos, maybe even a 100% to illustrate the problems.

The beercan certainly has a fair share of quirks and quibbles--it flares like a mad thing, first of all. Specular highlights in the foreground can sometimes blow out in magenta. While it has good bokeh it has some color-fringing associated with it, too. And it certainly isn't at its best at 210mm.

A lot of the older lenses seem to have worse problems with flare than newer lenses.

I had a lens that had some color fringing in the bokeh, and I thought it was kind of pleasant. (Would have kept the lens but it was broken, and it was not sharp, so it was just as well... but I did like the bokeh.)

Strong points are easily enough to justify its $250-300 street value, though. Where else are you going to get F/4 at 210mm (in a pinch even)? It is plenty sharp from f/5 to f/14, and f/4 is still quite usable below 160mm.

Well, there is a 70-210/3.5-4.5 that (in used condition, of course) is less than $150, often less than $100. If you don't need f/4 at 210mm, some other lenses may give you f/4 at 120mm, which may be good enough for indoors.


About SSS not working as well, I wonder if being a D lens makes a significant difference? I have read speculation that it does (although, I can't say I've noticed problems with my non-D lenses).