I think this lens is well worth the price, as long as you understand what you are buying. It is strictly manual. You have to focus and set the arperture yourself. Focusing is a bit tricky. You have to have a good clear view in the viewfinder or the live display to do it well. You need very slight movements on the focusing ring to achieve sharp focus.

I am not totally new to manual camera operation, but am definitely in the learning stage. In my test session today, I had the camera mounted on a tripod on my back deck, in the sunlight. It was hard to see the camera's display and even hard to use the viewfinder. Those circumstances are not the fault of the lens, but do make operation more difficult. I had some success, as seen in the attached photos. The 1000 mm photo definitely could have used a higher ISO and/or a slower shutter speed, to increase the exposure.

My primary interest in buying this lens was to get some better moon shots. I have not yet tried moon shots with it. I have seen some in reviews of this lens by others, and they did well.

This lens is not designed or intended for low light. You have to get into a much more expensive lens to get low light capablility in a telephoto.

Overall, I am pleased so far.

This type of lens is a bit of a challenge to use, but is fun to experiment with. An equally strong automatic lens would be way beyond my budget.

I just added a shot of the moon, taken on 3-19-19, using the 2x teleconverter for 1000mm setup. On my APS-C camera, that's equivalent to 1500mm. The shot was brightened a bit in the computer and cropped somewhat. Otherwise, no post-processing. I'm still learning with this lens.

I purchased this lens because I wanted a lens that could reach out and get great pictures, but didn't break the bank. I read the bad reviews and ignored them because of the good ones. I felt that for $99 even if it is half as good as people say it is it will be worth it. I got it a couple of days ago and just was able to take some test shots today. Keep in mind this is right out of the box on to my camera,. (Nikon D3200). It was easy to assemble, even easier to put on my camera. It feels solid and looks like some the much more expensive lens. I will be attaching 5 pictures. One for reference point. The others for showing you how the lens functions. One I am an amateur photographer and so I have no experience with this or any other type of lens.1. is reference point, 2. if street light with 500 MM, 3. Grey box on pole. 4. Grey box on pole with 1000 MM lens on it, the final picture of a chimney over 2 blocks from my house. This is my first effort, so getting the setting correct will improve the quality of the pictures greatly. I have a really good tripod that holds my camera rock steady. I also use a wireless remote to keep from shaking the camera.

I have an Opteka 85 MM lens and I love the look for the cost it is not super sharp in any way but it works. This lens is heavy you need a tripod or mono pod with it and it is very sensitive so you will need a remote trigger cable to get the picture that you want. I am still messing with my settings on my nikon 3400 to see if I can get better looking pictures. For the price it is not a bad lens. I have a mft mirror camera so I am going to try it on this one to see if I can get better pictures with it but for the price it is really not a bad lens.

This lens was better construction than I expected. I read some other negative reviews, and in my opinion the purchasers were extremely unreasonable in there expectations. Admittedly I have only used it for some test shots, but they came out fine. Remember, this is a very inexpensive 500 - 1000 mm lens. A comparable Nikon is over $10,000. Keeping that in mind, remember that for any lens of this length the viewing angle will be very narrow, and the lens unwieldy enough to require a tripod for anything like a stable platform. Unless you set it up extremely well beforehand, taking live action shots (i.e. basketball shot indoors) will be almost impossible.

This lens has none of the bells and whistles that you get if you pay $5,000 -$10,000. You will also need to be familiar with the fully manual setting, since this lens does not 'talk' to your camera.

Having said all that, based on the few test photos I have been able to take, even on very overcast/rainy days, this lens exceeds my expectations. It is solidly made, (appears all metal construction), I see no obvious distortions even at 1,000mm. I will be taking it to Colorado soon, so will write another review when I have had a better chance to evaluate its performance.

The 500mm without the 2x teleconverter is really nice for the money. This lens is fine if you have enough knowledge about manual mode shooting, it works great in daylight at 200 ISO, and 1/50 Shutter to prevent blur. If you use remote shutter you can get away with slower shutter speeds. The aperture likes to be wide open as it starts at f8, and at f8 you still get good soft bokeh. I get very little chromatic aberrations (without 2x teleconv.) . As rarely as I use a telephoto lens this is perfectly priced to just goof around. Bare in mind I love all this manual, if you are the kind of consumer who's looking for point and shoot sensibilities you might want to avoid this lens.