What do you get with a $99 manual focus lens? Well, the ability to zoom in a great, great distance, but with the challenge of maintaining focus without camera shake. It’s another tool in the toolbox for capturing those normally out of range subjects.

The lens is effectively just a telescope attached to the camera. I was able to focus fairly well on the bird feeder which was about 100 feet away, but the rooftop pigeon at about 200 feet was difficult even with a tripod. The cell tower is about a mile away and I could not get a clear photograph.

The larger moon photo is at 800 mm with the new lens and the smaller was taken with my 300 mm EOS autofocus lens. At $99 I certainly won’t complain.