Grazing Guanaco

I like this composition & DOF , how he is partially behind the bush. A little more sharpness on his head would be perfect.

I took this with a 12 year old Minolta 500mm, f8 mirrored lens. I

call the lens Captain Stubby because it is less than 7" long and

about 3.5" in diameter. I've had a few photographers sort of laugh at

me when they see me using it, commenting that the mirror construction

prevents you from getting a first class image. This is one of my

better shots with the lens and I was using a tripod. I'll appreciate

any comments from users of non-mirrored long lenses about how much

difference they make in image quality.

The same image taken with a premium telephoto lens would be by far more sharp, crisp and detailed. Mirrors are inferior in terms of quality to lenses and should be avoided if possible. To give you an example of the quality difference I'll...move to the astronomy area and to telescopes. A premium apochromatic refractor which has exotic glass like fluorite or extra dispersion glass costs aproximately 600$ per inch of aperture. A reflector telescope (the one which has mirrors) costs 60$ per inch of aperture and is best suited to observe objects with low surface details like nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. In the other hand refractors due to optical quality are the only way to observe tiny difficult planetary details on Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon which a mirror can't distinguish. It's the same thing in photography. Using a mirror you lose precious clarity and sharpness which makes after all an image stand out. I hope this helps. Greetings from Greece