Kowa

A large-aperture super-telephoto lens can be called the standard lens for photographing wild birds, but in exchange for its high resolution it also has the demerits of being large, heavy, and expensive.
Particularly in the 500mm F4 class lenses used by many wild bird photographers, their length of approximately 40cm, weight of around 4kg, and price of 1 million yen means they are not items that can be easily handled. Although small-aperture zoom lenses provide an alternative that covers the range up to 400-500mm class lenses, it is no exaggeration to say that there will be no possibility to achieve satisfactory picture quality using these lenses.

When I came to actually hold the PROMINAR 500mm/TX10 in my hands, while it is true that the total length is a little long at 34cm, its weight at less than 2kg is approximately half that of the 500mm F4 and feels exactly right, being neither too heavy nor too light. It may be easiest to understand the size if I say that with the hood removed it is almost the same size as Kowa’s TSN-884 flagship spotting scope.

The point I was most concerned about was the performance in depicting images, but my first impression was that its depiction ability fully lived up to the reputation of the “PROMINAR” name that it bears, which has become synonymous with spotting scopes. Because I normally use a 500mm F4 class lens as my main equipment I consider this sharpness of resolution as the standard, and pride myself on the severity of my demand regarding resolution. However, I felt that the PROMINAR 500mm realized a sharpness that was clearly better than the other equipment in this class. Most of all, I was delighted by the resolution that can be used from the maximum aperture with confidence. Obviously there will be difficulty from an operation point of view in using manual focus if you are unfamiliar with it, but personally I often use manual focusing when photographing wild birds and feel that this is just a matter of becoming familiar with it.

One other feature of this lens is that it has high system expandability.
While the basic style is to use the lens as a 500mm F5.6 lens by mounting an SLR camera or mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera using the TX10 mount adapter, by changing the mount adapter to the TX07 or TX17 it will be possible to change the lens to a 350mm F4 or 850mm F9.6 lens respectively.
Further, by replacing the mount adapter with the TP-88EC1 prism unit, the lens will become a spotting scope, and it will naturally be possible to use it to enjoy digiscoping. In addition, by using camera adapters such as the TSN-VA3 photo video adapter in the TP-88EC1 prism unit, high resolution digiscoping and videoscoping are also possible.
Even in situations where there are restrictions on the amount of luggage that you can carry, such as in mountainous regions or on overseas trips, as long as you carry the master lens, mount adapter, TP-88EC1 prism unit and the eyepiece it will be possible to cover both photographing and viewing using the single lens and accessories. It will therefore no longer be necessary as it was before to walk around carrying both a super-telephoto lens and a spotting scope.
In this way, the PROMINAR 500mm is able to cover all kinds of situations relating to the viewing and photographing of wild birds with its single lens, having a system expandability that cannot be emulated by camera dedicated lenses and spotting scopes.

Even though the PROMINAR 500mm has large hidden possibilities, because it has just been released it seems that information about it, such as its resolution, user-friendliness, possibility of combination and compatibility with various cameras, has not become sufficiently known in the market.
It is probable that many people are highly interested, but are perhaps waiting to see how it fares in the market.
In this first report, I have described my overall feelings regarding my first impression of the lens. From my next report I will introduce methods of photographing and ways to make the very best use of the PROMINAR 500mm through combining it with a variety of equipment for photographing in different situations.