Do they sell any cheap/affordable 600mm lenses.

[Raw photographer]

Ok what might you want for it in Canadian. I can get a tamron 200-500mm for about 750.00 canadian.

But i do like the sigma better.
Thanks.

 

[Scott Whaley]

I believe the conversion rate is $945.

 

[Raw photographer]

Ok thanks i will think about it.

Thanks again.

 

[dxqcanada]

Ok what might you want for it in Canadian. I can get a tamron 200-500mm for about 750.00 canadian.

The Tamron is not a bad lens ... a little slow but IQ is not bad for the price.
My wife has one ... tamron 200-500mm in Lenses | eBay

 

[ac12]

BTW, you stated "affordable"

I went with the Nikon 500/8 mirror because at less than $150, it was much more affordable to me than the $1400 Nikon 200-500 AF zoom. As little as I use a LONG lens, I could not justify $1400 for the 200-500. The 500 mirror was about 10% of that. For a 90% cost savings, I could live with manual focusing.

The neat thing is, with a Nikon to micro 4/3 adapter I can also use it on my Olympus. 500mm on a micro 4/3 = 20x magnification. And the Olympus has IBIS, so I have a stabilized 500mm lens.

 

[Derrel]

I bought one of the last of the old style 500 mm F8 Nikon mirror lenses for $130 about two summers ago. Well it is pretty sharp I had a lot of difficulty in focusing it even on slow action. For still subject? Not a problem. Vote for things in motion and for various targets, it was
Extremely difficult. Last January for my birthday I went to the Oregon coast and took along the 500 mirror and a couple other lenses. It was a beautiful day, but not especially bright, and I shot quite a bit with the 500 on the Nikon D800. I was pretty disappointed in my hit rate, which was around 12 to 15% I would estimate. I had a lot of out of focus shots. I have had the same problem with other mirror lenses, over the decades. In addition to the Nikon 500 mm/8,I currently have a 600mm f/8 Vivitar Series 1 "solid cat", which is sort of a cult following Lens, and a Celestron 300 mm/5.6 from the mid-1980s. Mirror lenses are small, fairly ligt, and pretty easy to carry, but they do suffer from Relatively small maximum apertures, which makes focusing at times extremely difficult.
It has not been mentioned here, but most mirror lenses have pretty noticeable light fall off,which is pretty pretty easily correctable in late room, by adding a preset in the Vignette control panel. Even high-quality mirror lenses often are prone to a little bit lower contrast that are refractive lenses,but once again with modern digital software this is fairly easily correctable by elevating the clarity and or overall contrast.

 

[480sparky]

Two things to be aware of with mirror lenses.

1. No aperture blades. By their very design, they are strictly a one-aperture lens..... wide open. A 500 f/8 will be f/8 and f/8 only. You can't 'stop it down'.
2. Doughnut bokeh. Yep, you don't have bokeh dots, you get bokeh rings. Some folks like it, others hate it, some never notice.

 

[Derrel]

Two things to be aware of with mirror lenses.

1. No aperture blades. By their very design, they are strictly a one-aperture lens..... wide open. A 500 f/8 will be f/8 and f/8 only. You can't 'stop it down'.
2. Doughnut bokeh. Yep, you don't have bokeh dots, you get bokeh rings. Some folks like it, others hate it, some never notice.

Many mirror lenses shipped with small, rear-mount filters;often, but not always, one was a neutral density filter, as a way to get a bit of flexibility to work around the always-wide-open nature of a diapraghm-free lens.

http://www.mirrorlenses.co.uk/img/tamron_positioning_rear_lens_filter.jpg

 

[Soocom1]

This is a photo I took this afternoon with that 500mm Macro russian mirror lens.

I tried several times to get the flowers in focus, but as the previous poster stated, you get a donut boke and what was so frustrating other than the wind was in inability for some reason to get anything outside the center of the pic (between the flower pods) into focus.

Mirror lenses were popular in the 1980's Hollywood movies with the "photo-sniper" stuff, but they are dedicated lenses that require alot of knowledge and patients to work.

 

[ac12]

Derrel
I "think" some of the low contrast of mirror lenses is due to the absurdly short lens hood. If there is off angle light hitting the inside of the barrel, that would reduce contrast. The "hood" on my Nikon 500/8 is less than an inch long.

So the question becomes, how long should the hood really be, to be effective.
Not being a math/optics expert, I plan to do trial and error with black construction paper.

I had been thinking of making a "wrap on" hood with a velvet (or similar) lining.

 

[Derrel]

I wondered about the hood issue years ago. I used a thread-in Mamiya 360 rubber hood, on the Celestron 300/5.6 A hood almost as long as the lens. Did not help much.https://www.adorama.com/us 111284...clid=ADL-d0fdc077-2b0a-4310-98b2-1e51f2a4bc7d

 

[ac12]

DRAT
I found a lens hood formula that seems to validate the short hood for 35mm/FF/FX format.

H=S*d/f+L

H = Hood_diameter ID (87mm measured)
S = Film_diagonal (42.4mm computed)
d = distance_hood_projects (30mm estimated)
f = focal_length (500mm)
L = diameter_front_element (84.5mm, backed into)​

converts to
d = (H-L)/S*f

Using H=87, L=84.5, S=42.4, f=500,
The question is how much of that front glass is used? I tried different value for L to make the formula work, and came up with L=84.5mm, to get a 30mm hood length.

For APS-C/DX, the formula computes a 44mm hood. Only 14mm longer.
And for m4/3 the formula computes a 58mm hood.

Doing a DiY extension wrapped around the hood, things get interesting; because now the hood ID is 91mm (OD of the metal hood), due to the thickness of the metal hood.

• Now a FF/FX hood measures 77mm.
• A DX hood measures 115mm.
• And a m4/3 hood measures 151mm

Now to tinker with a paper hood, and see how long a hood I can make, before it visibly vignets.

The other idea is to put a black mask over the front of the hood, matching the sensor format of 3:2.

 

[Raw photographer]

Wow alot of info. Thanks for the awesome help. I might get a mirror lens later on this year, im not in any financial position to buy one right now but knowing it's an option is great.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[ac12]

Wow alot of info. Thanks for the awesome help. I might get a mirror lens later on this year, im not in any financial position to buy one right now but knowing it's an option is great.

Thanks for all the help.

Mirror lenses are not expensive, if you are not buying a new Celestron (or similar).
But do the research, so you don't get a bum brand.

I have no idea about quality of the current stuff coming out of China and Korea. The advantage is the better design, manufacturing and coating technology that wasn't there 30+ years ago. But still, the design and manufacturing has to be up there or the IQ won't be.
Come to think of it, I have not seen a good/proper review of any of the recent mirror lenses.

 

[Raw photographer]

True very true.