After seeing a few people asking about the best wildlife lens for Pentax k1000 cameras we decided to publish this article to help any of our readers who own a k1000 and are looking to get their hands on a solid wildlife lens. Unfortunately, in this day and age, options are pretty scarce but we did manage to find one solid contender.
We would always recommend a telephoto zoom lens for any kind of serious wildlife photography as it will allow you to get as close to the animals you are photographing without needing to disturb them. It also lets you zoom right in on the animal to allow you to capture it in excellent detail with great image quality.
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The Pentax 100-300mm f/4.7-5.8 SMCPFA SLR Camera Lens
Although the Pentax 100-300mm f/4.7-5.8 is not the most popular of lenses these days, it had a solid reputation back in its day while some users have chosen to post their own review of the lens (click here to read some of them) online that you can read. The 100-300mm focal length of the lens is ideal for capturing photos of wild animals and the lens offers a surprisingly high image quality too.
The lens will also attach directly to your Pentax k1000 camera body removing the need for you to go out and hunt for some lens converter to get your camera rig working as required. The build quality of the lens can be solid depending on how you source it, if you pick it up from a local second hand or photography store then ensure that both the manual zoom and manual focus rings work fine without issue before purchasing it. If you pick the lens up via the links in this article then you can rest assured that the lens has been fully checked before shipping and is in full working order.

Provided you managed to source a Pentax 100-300mm f/4.7-5.8 that is in decent working order both the manual focus and manual zoom rings should be fully texturized with rubber rings making them both very easy to locate when needed. The rubber rings also ensure that they are easy to rotate in both wet and cold conditions but many lenses in second-hand shops don’t have the rubber rings on them or they are damaged.
The Pentax 100-300mm f/4.7-5.8 is able to quickly focus on the subject of your photograph providing a great level of image quality in a very short time period. This helps to directly improve your wildlife photography by ensuring that you can catch those unexpected, once in a life time moments that would be missed if your lens was slow.Being a telephoto zoom lens with an aperture of f/4.7-5.8 the low light performance of the lens leaves a fair bit to be desired as it offers pretty poor low light performance. On the flipside though, considering the age of the lens it performs very well in both decent lighting and variable lighting too. When it comes to taking photographs of animals, the minimum focus distance of just under five feet shouldn’t be an issue as your subjects are likely a fair distance away from you anyway but we just wanted to make you aware.
When using a lens with such a large zoom range we would always recommend that you use a dedicated source of image stabilization for the lens. Although you can use a monopod if you like, we would always suggest trying to pick up a cheap, decent tripod when possible. Our Zomei z818 tripod review goes over the ideal tripod that may be worth picking up if you are wanting to capture the best photographs possible.
If you are looking to pick up a great little nature photography lens for your Pentax k1000 that will provide some decent photographs with great image quality then, in our opinion at least, the Pentax 100-300mm f/4.7-5.8 is the strongest candidate that is easy to source and get your hands on. We would highly recommend that you check it out and seriously consider additing it to your collection of camera accessories.
Click Here To Read Independent Third Party Reviews Of This Product!
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The video below offers an additional third-party, independent review for the Pentax 100-300mm f/4.7-5.8 to offer our readers an independent opinion of the product.
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