IST DL Mirror Lenses

The Sigma is supposed to be a good lens - as good as the Tamron, perhaps even better. £500 is steep though as on Ebay they'd typically make £70 or so.

Of course this is a brand new boxed lens, sitting on a shelf. No idea how long it has been there and therefore how old it is.

According to the Photodo tests, the Tamron scores 3.6 and the Sigma just 2.5

Anything over 2 is good, over 3 is very good and 4+ is excellent.

http://www.photodo.com/nav/prodindex.html

Photodo appear to conduct pretty comprehensive MTF tests and some of the world's most highly regarded lenses do score well and so I think their charts are a pretty good indication of performance characteristics eg:

Tamron AF SP 90/2.8 macro scores 4.3
Tokina AT-X 90/2.5 macro scores 4.6
Pentax F 50/1.7 scores 4.4
A 85/1.4 scores 4.6
FA 43/1.9 LTD scores a slightly surprising 3.6
and the FA28-80/3.5-5.6 (which we know is not one of Pentax's best) scores a mere 2 points.

Looking at the scores as a whole and comparing with the competition, Pentax do pretty well

We had a family day out to an island in the middle of the river Forth yesterday and as its home to a large bird population (as well as a historic abbey and some wartime fortifications) it was the first chance I'd had to use the mirror lens properly.

Fitted to the DS the handling and balance was fine and handholdable speeds were no problem with the ISO set to 800. The quality from shots of static seabirds seems pretty decent, however capturing birds in flight was a lot more difficult and more practice will be required to get a better hit rate. I also had my 80-200 F2.8 Tokina and a 7 element 2x convertor and with AF-C available my hit rate with in-flight birds was a lot better. Even wide open (handheld again) the results using that combination seemed more than acceptable.

I am hoping to get my hands on a Tokina 500 mirror ad will post some "first" shots on my website when I have the lens.

Tokina RMC 500mm F8 mirror. Ok I got my hands on one in good condition.
I will post a link to quickly taken two pictures, both hand-held at F8 1/180 using built-in flash + a halogen room light in background. I have had the lens for about 1 hour or so. Will go out in the next few days, and hopefully taken some images in the sunshine and try and use 400 ASA. When it is uploaded in a few minutes the link should be:-

http://web.mac.com/stevenbutterworth/iWeb/Butterworth/Test-Photos.html

Comments please!

What I've found so far is that the Tokina mirror lens is capable of good results as long as your accurate with the focus, something not as easy on my DS as it is on my Z1p (because the Z1p viewfinder is much, much better than the DS one). That makes moving targets very hard work, however with static subjects it's usually ok. At shorter distances the focus depth is pretty small and the lack of manual focusing aids in the DS viewfinder means that it takes some concentration to confirm that you are focusing on the right area.

river Forth - did you have any static bird samples that you could put a link to here?

Here are a few examples I shot that day using the 500mm Tokina:













These were all shot handheld, mostly using ISO 800 I think. None of the ones I took of birds in flight with the mirror lens were sharp enough to use as I wasn't accurate enough with focusing. I did get a few reasonable ones using an 80-200F2.8 and a 7 element 2x convertor:




Regards
Steve

Just been out in the garden and took a few more shots with the Tokina, to give some idea of its versatility:










It's close focus capabilities are quite impressive, however it's difficult to focus accurately as the DOF is very small when the subject is that close.

Regards
Steve

Yes I noticed how difficult it is to focus very close-up. the secret then is to take the picture so the bird or subject is sideways to the lens, then the whole bird or whatever is sharp. I can hardly wait for the sun to come out and for it to stop raining!!!!!

You have done this with the first photo from the garden, taken it when the bird was sideways to the lens. I think also in that position close-up you get less out of focus doughnuts. Would you agree? Also on the bee and flower shots you can crop of course, which also reduces the out of focus distractions.

Some cracking shots there Niblue, the sun never shone for me like that.

Niblue,

Well I got three out of a group of 8 pictures hand-held at 400ASA, which I am happy with - the Mallard shows I have still to practise on hand-holding or get the tripod! They are not as good as your Gull photos that is for sure, but they were taken at 800 ASA and are really fantastic. Next ones I must go up to 800 ASA or get hold of a decent tripod or both.

All my Mirror lens test photos will go here:-




Thanks for sharing your excellent examples, I hope one day to get just as good ones.

SPB: On my first outing with the mirror lens I also took some shots of a swan and they were very similar to the one you posted up. Most of the well composed ones I took that day were a tad out of focus though (one would have been a cracker as it had water dripping from the beak after the bird had brought its head back up from under the water), so for the second outing (the one when the gull pictures were taken) I concentrated a lot more on exactly where the focus point was and my success rate jumped quite a bit, although without viewfinder focus aids it's not easy to focus correctly on the subjects eye. I also had a few which were affected by camera shake which is why I later tended to err on the side of caution and use a faster ISO. Given this was on a DSLR I also took lots and lots of pictures as that pretty much ensured I'd get some right!

The third time I used the lens was for the garden shots and again my success rate with focusing improved so it does seem to be that a little practice is what's need - so I'll be looking forward to the results of your next shoot.

Niblue

Well practice is the order of the day then. I like the lens though and it feels good in use on the DL.

On another subject, I bought myself a large bulb-blower today to blow some dirt of the focussing screen - I hope never to get stuff onto the sensor.

Given up now. The dirt is on the top side of the screen, where I cannot get to. The bulb blower is OK for the front elements and the camera body.