500 mirror

anybody know anything about a 500mm makinon it comes with rear fillter,s is it any good?

IMHO, none of the available 500mm mirror lenses are brilliant. The best is probably the Tamron 500mm SP BBAR.

OOF bokeh looks odd, a doughnut shape, which I personally don't like. They are also fixed aperture, usually f8.

Without proper use/storage, the mirrors can be destroyed by fungus as well. I bought a Tokina 350mm mirror lens a few years ago and could barely see anything through it for fungus.

Second vote for the Tamron as the best of the readily available 500mm mirror lenses. Used properly, you can get stunning results:

This first one shows the bokeh, but in relatively moderate form (it doesn't get much better than this with a mirror unless there is nothing in the background):





My first PPG photo was from this lens:






Bokeh not an issue when you shoot with sky as the background. This lens is pretty sharp:





I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Tamron as a cost-effective occasional 500mm lens, but you do need to work to get the best out of it. I don't think I'd bother with cheaper mirror lenses - in particular, the contrast seems to suffer dreadfully.

Jon

cheer,s pete wish i could aford you 500 mm pentax!!

thanks all, looks like a tamron then or mybe 600mm sigma:

i got Tamron 500mm it takes abit of getting used to but i find it find only used it two time up to now i do need to use it a bit more

I wouldn't recommend these new lenses, which seem to be worse than the older Tamron or Tokina, at the same price. The Vivitar Soli Cat and Sigma 600mm are also suppose to be good. Don't confuse with newer Vivs though.

In its day it was rated as a good budget mirror lens, better than much of the similarly priced mirrors. You'll find many posts about it on Google, most asking about it admittedly, but a few rating it. I did have a link to a comment that it was one of the best 3 or 4, but I can't find it now. That said it is still a mirror lens! Plus: light, easy to handle, will fit in your camera bag. Minus: hard to use with no aperture control (although you can avoid the use of rear filter with DSLR by adjusting ISO), not easy to focus manually due to slowness of lens, bokeh is an acquired taste, cheap (vs equivalent traditional prime).

I think the banks are doing mortgages again

I also have the Tamron 500mm mirror, and it's pretty sharp for the price. I've just recently compared it to my Sigma APO EX 70-200 f2.8 with the matched 2x converter and sharpness is pretty similar. Not bad when the Tamron cost about 20% of price of the Sigma with TC!

Having said that I think JonSchick's images above are incredible, really fabulous shots with what some people consider a second rate lens.

PS the most annoying thing about the Tamron mirror is that it focuses a little beyond infinity. Someone on this forum said that most mirror lenses do this, apparently it is to allow for expansion in the mirror in warmer temperatures.

Most modern AF lenses do this too. Took me a while to get used to it when manually focusing.

K.

Hi, I'd always been put off a mirror because of the 'donut bokeh' issue but see that Jon says it's not an issue with sky as background (which Jon having said it I can see the logic.)

I presume however that in shots of water/ surf / sky backgrounds (like my 'avatar' picture) there would be terrible 'donuting' from the white surf. Can anyone confirm or counter this?

Many Thanks,

Yes, you will get very noticeable doughnuts around the OOF sparkles in the water.

Yes - the trick with mirror lenses is to avoid any situation where there are spectacular highlights in the background - these will all cause bright doughnuts. The smoother the background, and the more distance between your subject and the background, the better.

Thanks guys - I had wondered about buying one to try but you have saved me wasting that money. I need to keep saving for a 'traditional' 500 then.