Hi Ken - I agree you have to use it with care.

The shots I posted in this thread were all taken using a lightweight monopod, with shake reduction left swtiched on - that's the minimum to get a decent result.

I find that you can leave something like the Manfrotto Modo monopod left collapsed on the camera quite happily while you are walking around, so it's a reasonable portable solution.

With the monopod and SR, I still try and keep shutter speeds to a minimum of 1/250, and only occasionally stray below that - the success rate declines dramatically!

Hi Simon,

Curious to know why you might not have considered the 15mm DA Ltd? I've decided that I am firmly in the camp of "small in beautiful" except for the odd occasion where a tele lens is required. And for a day's walking, the ability to stuff the DA Ltd in a pocket rather than cart around any of the more bulky alternatives is very attractive to me.

I don't have this lens myself, but am tempted to consider picking one up in NY towards the end of the year. It seems to me that owners almost universally love it, and reviews have found it controls distortion very well. Downsides are that it is not as fast as the 14mm/2.8 lenses (but I doubt that such a lens would generally be used wide open anyway, and I think the lack of bulk more than makes up for the slower aperture) and needs to be stopped down to at least f5.6 before you get the best out of it. My suspicion is that you always do that for your landscape shots anyway?

The other issue is whether 15mm is wide enough. Having tried the 10-20, I realised that UWA is not really my "thing", and I rarely used it wider than around 15mm - so 15mm would work for me, but clearly not for everyone.

Just a thought....

Jon

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.

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

Used to have a Lubitel and it was pretty good - some vignetting and softness around the edges, but got some nice atmospheric black and white shots out of it.

Mine cost about £15 brand new years ago, and it sold on Ebay for £60! To be honest, I think the buyer was absolutely barmy, and I wouldn't pay more than £30-£40 for one.

As for the price of the new version that Lomo has produced: totally ridiculous and best left for people with more money than sense!

It's a very good lens. If you got the original all metal one with the ribbed focussing ring, it's a classic and beautifully made - but make sure you get a hood for it. The front element is quite close to the front of the lens, whereas in later versons it was rather more recessed. The later version performs at least as well optically and looks rather more modern, but had put on a bit of bulk and a bit of plastic. Still very good though.

You have the option to pair these with either a matched extension tube for true 1:1 macro, or the matched adaptall 2X TC "F", which gives you a 180mm true macro lens. The quality even with the TC is still very good.

The Nokton when it was relaunched was one of the best value primes out there in PKA fit - a stunning lens that is easily built to "Limited" quality. Mine got me completely hooked on to fast primes. If the 90mm is as good as the other CV lenses, it'll be a good one.....

Now received - thanks for selling!

Arrived in great condition and judging by first few shots tonight, a very nice and compact lens. One advantage of the old MF lenses is that they are so much smaller than their AF counterparts! Looking forward to giving it a proper workout over the next few days....

Cheers,

Jon

I would look for a good old manual focus lens. Auto focus not terribly useful for macro anyway. Tamron 90s are pretty easy to come by in the price range you are looking at (the earliest Adaptall 2 ones are 1:2 instead of 1:1 but perform very well with the matched SP teleconverter). Vivitar made two very highly regarded macros around this focal length. I will reserve judgement on the SMCM 100/4 until I've given the one I just got from Hefty a whirl!

To get right back to where you started - I use a Manfrotto Modo (ie cheap!) monopod with Tamron 500mm lens, and it makes a huge difference. The pod itself is small enough to leave collapsed and attached to the camera when you are walking around, but has allowed my to get decently sharp shots with that lens down to 1/125 sec. I leave SR switched on when I use it.

I have nothing to add about Jessops that hasn't already been said!