"Big Daddy" came home today

480sparky · Mar 20, 2013

David444 said:
Nice find, how much did you have to give for it?.......

I'm not saying.... It might make you cry.

BrianV · Mar 20, 2013

I have the Reflex-Nikkor 500/8n for work 20 years ago, the original for home use. I've had the latter for almost 35 years now. These are with the original, the "n" version is better. The new one is multi-coated, and focuses much closer.

cgw · Mar 20, 2013

480sparky said:
cgw said:

Don't think I've ever seen a Nikon lens sell for such wildly varying prices as these. .....

Click to expand...

That's because there's a lot of different models and versions.

As for the donut bokeh, sometimes its unavoidable. But sometimes you can mitigate and even eliminate it.

Think there were only 3 modern versions. My point was simply that I've seen 'em go for peanuts after collecting dust on a shop shelf or bid through the roof in eBay pissing matches.

Nikon Canada has one of these at their service counter:

http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/c200011.html

480sparky · Mar 20, 2013

OK, best I can do for tonight........

SOOC:

100% crop, after editing:

Yeah...... I know.... you're gonna say it looks like crap. But hey! It's focused at 5 feet! And it's a 100% crop!

Aloicious · Mar 20, 2013

its a mini-telescope with an F mount on it. that image doesn't look too bad for 'it'll make you cry' money, which I'm guessing is a very low amount, definitely usable if you're not going to be using alot of 100% crops, which with the D600's 24MP shouldn't be much of a problem.

480sparky · Mar 22, 2013

Well, today wasn't the best weather to get out and give it test drive, but I did manage to take a short walk around the back yard and take these on a cloudy day:

sleist · Mar 23, 2013

Boy, that is some "squirrely" bokeh.

Pick your backgrounds wisely.

480sparky · Mar 23, 2013

sleist said:
Boy, that is some "squirrely" bokeh.
Pick your backgrounds wisely.

That's the nature of the beast. The lens, that is. I just wanted to check the sharpness.

Patrice · Mar 24, 2013

480sparky said:
sleist said:

Boy, that is some "squirrely" bokeh.
Pick your backgrounds wisely.

Click to expand...

That's the nature of the beast. The lens, that is. I just wanted to check the sharpness.

That is in fact the nature of the beast. This lens uses a catadioptric optical design, a folded optical path using mirrors. This one being a 'Maksutov-Cassegrain' has a thick meniscus lens at the front which brings the light onto a curved mirror at the back which then reflects the light onto a smaller mirror at the front and finally gets reflected to the back through a small tube. The result of this folded optical path is a much shorter physical length than would be otherwise needed for the focal length. The doughnut of the OOF elements is caused by the rather large obstruction of the secondary mirror at the front. This obstruction also causes a loss of contrast. As a camera lens the projected image needs to be flat and to achieve this a second glass element is added to the optical path at the back of the assembly to flatten the image. Focussing is done by moving the back mirror which means the focal length of the lens changes with different focus distances. All these types of lenses have fixed apertures determined by the shape of the primary mirror. A bonus of using mirrors is that all light wavelengths get reflected and not refracted so chromatic aberrations (fringing) is usually not a problem.

Some excellent modern instruments of this type can be had at reasonable prices in telescope shops and make excellent long focal length camera lenses. The focussing mechanism of these instruments, either as lenses or telescopes, is not very fast and is always manual. There are third party suppliers of focus motors for the telescope versions but still work at 'geologic' speed compared to an AFS lens. These do not make good fast action sport lenses.

Nice little lens there Sparky! Make yourself a visual back for it and you'll have an excellent spotting scope as well.

480sparky · Mar 24, 2013

Patrice said:
........Make yourself a visual back for it and you'll have an excellent spotting scope as well.

Why make one when I can buy one?

Patrice · Mar 24, 2013

True enough, but if you make one you can use different eyepieces.

480sparky · Mar 24, 2013

Went out into the snowfall today just to play around again.

Patrice · Mar 24, 2013

Nice images coming out of that 'mini scope'. (Makes me want to dig mine out of the cupboard and onto the font of a camera again.)

480sparky · Mar 24, 2013

Patrice said:
Nice images coming out of that 'mini scope'. (Makes me want to dig mine out of the cupboard and onto the font of a camera again.)

Thx. I'm not really a 'long lens' kinda guy. But it is a challenge to shoot with this..... I'm using a monopod.

Having owned a Tokina 500mm years ago, and currently have one along with a Siggy 600mm, I learned to 'focus through' the shot... using the D600 on Continuous High shooting and just holding the shutter button down while adjusting the focus ring ever so slightly. I take about 8-10 frames and choose the best in post.