mirror lenses

I want to get myself a 500mm mirror lens (since I really can't afford

a proper telephoto prime).

 

There are a number of third party suppliers that produce

similar-looking 500mm/f8 lenses, but I have just come across helios.

 

I tend to be dubious about russian equipment, but they offer a f5.6

500mm mirror, and the extra stop of light could be really useful.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts/experience?

Mirror lenses are fixed aperture so a f/5.6 will have less DOF than an f/8. Unfortunately, you have to make the trade off when you acquire it.

Save your money. If you get a 3rd party mirror lens, the chances are high you will get poor results. If you like wasting money on 'film' to get one or two or three good images per roll, you can go with a 3rd party lens. If you get, i.e. a f8 500mm Reflex-Nikkor, the results will be like shooting with a 50mm lens: each frame will be good .. remember to use a good tripod or monopod. The 'prime' mirrors lenses seem to be better engineered.

 

 

 

 

In the past, I had a Cosina 500mm mirror, a Tokina 500mm mirror, and now have a 500mm and a 1000mm (both Reflex-Nikkors.) The Nikkors work.

I have used mirror lenses made by Nikon, Sigma, and Tamron. The 600mm. Sigma and 500mm. Tamron lenses are quite good, and I recommend them. As everyone will tell you, there are downsides to the use of mirror lenses, including their slow fixed aperture (and hence difficult focusing), and also the doughnut-shaped out-of-focus highlights that can appear in images. Contrary to what many people believe, however, optically their sharpness is quite adequate for most people's purposes (no, you don't get the equal of a color-corrected refractor long lens costing thousands of dollars). The trick is to find ways to achieve the sharpness that the lens is capable of. A sturdy tripod, the use of beanbags or other vibration-damping techniques, and high shutter speeds (meaning fast film or high digital ISO settings ) become essential here for most of us. I did have a friend years ago, however, who was uncannily steady hand-holding his Nikon 500mm. reflect tele. He could get amazing sharpness with this lens at 1/250 of a second hand-held. Not me!

 

As for the Russian lenses, the problem you will encounter is quality control. Some owners of these lenses swear by them, and others have apparently been stuck with samples that are "lemons." Also, they tend to be made with M42 screw mount as standard, meaning that they need adapters for other mounts. For Nikon, they are virtually useless, as any such adapter includes a cheap glass or plastic element that enables focusing to infinity. Not good.

It's ashamed that the Russians are having quality control problems. They invented the mirror lens. It was a Maksutov cassegrain design invented around 1944. The first widely imported Russian mirror lens was the MTO, a 500mm f8.

I've used a Vivitar 500 and tried a Samyang. Go with the camera maker's lens.

Regards,

Mike

I too have used several cheap brands.They really aren't worth the effort in my opinion.I agree with the comment above-you take heaps of pics and only a few really work.And it's not just camera movement causing the problems but also very low ability to handle contrast.Stick to the camera brands or at the very least go for the sigma 600mm (still current model) or better still the tamron SP 500/8

I use a Tokina 500/8 mirror occasionaly. It's not my favourite - you need lots of light and fast film to get decent results.

 

I also have a number of old FD mount telephotos - for the sake of comparison a 400/5.6 Tokina, which appears to produce much better results (in general) than the mirror. My point is - look around for older telephotos before you buy a 3rd party mirror. There is some pretty good Pentax glass out there (around 400mm) which may be a better bet. Depends on your camera though - you may not be able to mount an old screw mount telephoto?

Mirror lenses also give you those disturbing donut shaped out of focus high lights. Look for a used preset Spiratone 400/6.3 or Tele-Astranar 400/6.3 from the 1960's and 70's. Later production was multi-coated but the lenses are of fairly simple construction and quite flare resistant. They sold new in the $35 to $40 range, about $150 to $200 in todays shrunken dollars, but were highly aclaimed. I've shot a couple of record album covers with mine, and that was back in the days when records were 12 inches across so the cover printing had to be about 13x13 to allow wrap-over on the cover. Nobody complained about the sharpness! You can find these lenses on Ebay for next to nothing.

Some more input from an old "telephoto freak." The non-APO cheap telephotos will give you decent results --IF you stop down at LEAST one stop and better still, 1 1/2 to 2 stops. Wide open you WILL get chromatic aberration that is noticeable and an image that I would argue is inferior to that of a good 500mm. mirror lens. This need to stop down renders a 400mm. f5.6 tele *effectively* as slow as a mirror lens unless you are planning only to end up with a tiny, non-enlarged print.

 

The "doughnuts" in the mirror lens images bother some people, but in my experience they are present only some of the time (I can't give you a percentage) and are objectionable only occasionally.

 

That said, I would suggest that the original poster investigate used color-corrected teles such as the excellent Tokina 400mm. f5.6 APO SD ATX (is that all the abbreviations or did I forget some?) It's a compact, very sharp tele that because of its small size actually autofocuses fairly quickly. These come up for auction on ebay quite regularly and go for a price that hopefully the poster can afford.

 

The Sigma second-generation 400mm. f5.6 APO is decent, but not quite as good. The last Sigma 400mm. APO Macro was about as good as the Tokina and focuses closer, but it's larger and heavier (and more expensive).

I have a Spiratone 400/6.3, and have had a 250/5.6, 300/5.6 and 500/8.0 mirror lenses of comparable cost/quality to the Spiratone glass lens (which is to say, 'cheap'... a Lentar, a Quantaray and a Samyang).

 

The mirror lenses are all pretty mediocre performers, the mediocrity seeming to run in proportion to the focal length; the 500 was just unacceptable. The 400/6.3 Spiratone, on the other hand, while it does have some chromatic aberration, is quite sharp.

 

There is NO aperture at which the Spiratone will not outperform all three of the mirror lenses by a mile.

 

rick :)=