Russian 500mm mirror lens

Is this likely to be any good?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250106887257&a...

might be OK, not likely to be great so personally I wouldn't pay £50 for it (it has a reserve, which on Ebay has to be at least £50).

let's see 500mm x 1.5= 750mm
750 x 1.7 = 1275mm (with af 1.7 teleconverter) at approx f10
my experience is in moderate to b right light the af will work.

compare that to the cost of a comparable telescope, and my guess is you can't go too far wrong....just don't get your hopes up about selling many 16x20's

I used to sell these - one thing to be careful of with this lens is the potential fouling of the camera prism/built in flash....

Chris

That's a good point.

I should have said that I'd use it on the K10D. Not bothered about the flash for obvious reasons, but would you be able to see through the viewfinder with it on?

I've used a Sigma 600mm mirror lens on the '10 and it was fine. Does this one have a larger diameter?

How strange - I have just bought in a 600mm Sigma Mirror!

It's all to do with the actual mount on the lens itself. On the Russian lens the M42 mount is a lot closer to rear of the lens - the Sigma has a longer space between the mount and the rear of the lens (if that makes sense!!)

Chris

Hmm. The eBay entry for this one says it's a K fit.

But the mount does look pretty small in relation to the lens.

And if it is a 105mm filter fit, that's quite a bit bigger than the Sigma which is 86 or 87 IIRC (and F8 too, ISTR, so it wouldn't be surprising if this thing is F5.6 and so bigger.

Well, it's relatively bright for a 500mm mirror lens and the quality is bound to be at least as good as the Centon f8.
Mirrors are quite a simple design and although the Centon is a poor performer, it was considered good value at a new price of around £100.
This one looks to be as described (as new) and assuming that it does fit OK on the K10, I would think that it would be well worth a bid or two.

The Tamron SP500mm f8 is an excellent performer and works perfectly on my DL but it is slower. You should be able to pick up the Tamron for around £50, so I wouldn't pay much more than that for the Rubinar.

agian, with your dslr, you will probably be forced to use a teleconverter to get that lens on the body. I doubt they'd goto the trouble to make a 5.6 (increased glass size increased cost) without trying to get decent performance (as well, most people assume Russian built anything was inferior, but truthfully, they made some outstanding espionage, surveillence, and technological equipment.).

Well, it's moot now, since I've purchased the 600mm Sigma that Chris@SRS mentioned a few posts back. It's a stop slower at F8, but 100mm longer.

Watch this space for more full moon shots when I get a chance... I took these with a Sigma 400mm - it'll be interesting to compare the results...

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Public/IMGP2385-1b.jpg
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Public/MoonPretotality.jpg