Testing my 500mm Tamron Mirror

I just got a used Tamron 500mm mirror lens for my K-x from the classified section of the forum, and tried it out at the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power this last weekend. I was a bit worried at the requirement for a tripod, various web comments about it being f8, but I was quite pleased with the results. Probably not the best technical shots, but acceptable to me at least.

These two are handheld, first of all:

[IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a149/hpfirenza/cpop2011/IMGP1673-web.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a149/hpfirenza/cpop2011/IMGP1686-web.jpg[/IMG]

And then I remembered I wanted to play with the "catch in focus" feature on the camera.

[IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a149/hpfirenza/cpop2011/IMGP1821-web.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a149/hpfirenza/cpop2011/IMGP1832-web.jpg[/IMG]

So overall, a pretty good buy. If anything it worked better than an auto-focus especially for the track shots, my AF zoom was continually trying to decide whether to focus on the near bales, the far bales, and very rarely on the car in between them.

Feel free to critique the above, any comments welcome.

Told you it was good when used with care!

You've done well with these - and probably also lucky with the cruddy weather, which reduced the likelihood of spectacular highlights and bokeh problems. Made me realise that maybe the Tamron is a perfect lens for your average British summer

Cheers,

Jon

Nice job ! I have one of these and think it is a great piece of kit for the few pounds they cost. The Tamron is probably the highest rated 500 mirror. Easily the cheapest way to get to 500mm.

agree and agree... I really wish pentax would bring out an affordable 500 5.6 da-af mirror lens... or even a 300 f4 that I could clip onto my 1.7 af converter...

big fast teles may be what people demand, but I'd bet an affordable compact lightweight mirror would sell en mass....
digital has changed the landscape of the industry... with high iso and stabilization built in, a 300, or 400 or 500 mirror that is no bigger and even lighter than the 16-45 would sell like crazy...

Problem is, there seems to be a prevailing attitude in some very noisy quarters that mirror lenses are always useless.

I was recently given a Makinon 500mm f8. My assessment would be "Not too bad". Cropped shots from my 50-135mm are possibly better but that's comparing a £640 lens with something which you could buy a new version of for £100 or so (Samyang make something which looks identical).

Incidentally, one trick I used to deal with the hunting for focus problem: Prefocus on the tarmac where you want to photograph the car, then keep the shutter button half pressed. When the car is in the right place, press the button. This should stop it hunting and get around any problems with slow AF.

sometimes a company has to look at how the technology has changed and make the right choices regardless of a few vocal, set in thier ways, die hards, may feel about it. FWIW, Apples new final cut pro ROCKS!

I think one or two people have a rather nice Pentax mirror lens. Other good designs are a 600mm and a 350mm, both of which may appear under a variety of names.

The problem lies with 500mm f8 mirror lenses of which there are a couple of reliable ones but many very poor ones at low prices.

I don't really see a small mirror lens from Pentax being likely, but sometime or other I'm always expecting something that will take things up to 400mm. There seems to be almost universal desire for maybe an 80-400mm or 100-400mm zoom. Pentax must have noticed this.

On the other hand, maybe they are privy to actual sales of other manufacturers and it really isn't as buoyant as we think.

There were 2 versions of Makinon 500mm f8 mirror lens for Pentax - a dedicated PK one and (later I think) the general fit one using an adapter. The fixed PK one was the better one, indeed reputedly one of the few good designs at mainstream prices. Tamron was widely rated the best of the bunch, followed by the Olympus (which most likely never came in a PK mount ) then the PK Makinon.

As John states there were a flood of mirrors available around late 70's early eighties. They were straightforward to design compared with a normal lens, at a time when the better lens design software was pushing the memory limits of the compliers and (mini-)computers of the day. So nearly everyone in the lens business had one. Unfortunately the marketing at the time was more on "cheaper than traditional lens" rather than "lighter than" or "more compact than" so both design and manufacturing quality (consistency) tended to generally suffer as a result.

Pentax ones were good, but much pricer, but included focal lengths like 400-600mm, 1000mm & 2000mm. But 500mm is about the limit to hand-hold IMHO due mostly to the limits imposed by light weight and small size! So I settled on a Makinon bought from a duty-free island in the 'Med in '79 I think...

Also on Pentax building some, I believe Ricoh use to offer a couple of "fast" ones: 500mm/f6.3 and 600mm/f8.

I had a Sigma 600mm f8 in pk mount. That was also a pretty good performer. I sold it to part fund my 100-300 f4, but it's definitely a lens I'd buy again at the right price (just under the current cost of a Tamron 500 as it does seem slightly less sharp than them).

I was trying that, sometimes it worked and sometimes it would hold it for ten seconds or so, then give up. I'm used to having to do that from when I used the Casio compact, which although a fast compact (for its age), was nowhere near fast enough to capture a moving race car. Trouble is, sometimes it's really hard to make it hit the specific bit you want.

I remember when I was first looking at lenses, which would have been late 70s or early 80s, and recall something like a 1000mm mirror lens being advertised for about £45! Can't remember the name, I recall it sounded a bit cheap, but it was on my "I want" list at that time. Back then I wanted a Konica Autoreflex T4, based mainly on getting the brochure and seeing all the stuff they made for it.

Mine's the T2 mount version (I think - there's an adapter there which looks like a T2 to me). There is a strange tide mark in the rear lens elements which I can't work out how to dismantle and clean, but very little dust. I did adjust the adapter to place infinity on the top, rather than on the side as the last owner had it!

I have the Tamron and have some respectable bird shots with it. Nevertheless I am amazed that the catch in focus or manual focus gave such good results of something moving fast towards you. I've found the hairline sensitive focus difficult unless I have time. Well done!

I'm not sure I want to admit this but I have four mirror lenses as part of my lens collection.

I have both versions of the Tamron 500mm (55B & 55BB). The older version having a tripod mount.

I also have the smaller Tamron 350mm F5.6 and the Sigma 600mm F8 with integral PK mount plus tripod mount.

The Tamrons are probably just a bit sharper but my favourite is the Sigma, giving that little bit of extra length and not having to worry about fitting the AdaptalII adaptor.

Glyn