I found an old used lens......

[Lonnie1212]

Hi Folks,

There is a guy in my community with a SIGMA Mirror Telephoto 1.8 600mm Multi Coated Lens for NIKON for sale. He is asking $60.00 for it. I have a Nikon D3200 dx camera and a Nikon D610 fx. Could this lens be a decent purchase? Would it need an adapter?

 

[480sparky]

You'll have a hard time focusing it accurately. 500mm cats have razor-thin DOF. With no aperture ring, you can't just 'dial in' more DOF by stopping down. You basically are best to use focus bracketing.

You'll have odd-looking bokeh as well. And it won't be near the IQ as a true glass 500mm.

If it's made for Nikon F mount, you won't need an adapter.

But..... for the price, it might be fun to play around with.

 

[photoflyer]

If you like to tinker, this will be great fun. If you get it, post a few shots here.

 

[Derrel]

I remember these. It is a 600 mm F / 8 catadioptric or mirror lens. Most of these were made as 500mm f/8 designs. I have a Celestron 300 mm f/ 5.6 from 1986, and I have a Nikon 500 mm f/8 from around 1975.

I think $60 is a fair price for this lens. These are really quite hard to focus and I think on the D3200 it will be quite a chore to focus on anything that is moving, even slowly. The D3200 has a fairly small viewfinder image, but it does give you live view, and that might help a little bit. As far as this lens being useful for anything moving I would rule that out. These are fairly lightweight lenses and are relatively easy to hand-hold.

 

[Derrel]

Here is an aps-c shot made with a Nikon 500 mm mirror lens from around 15 feet. Look carefully and you will see that the depth of field is extremely small.

 

[Lonnie1212]

Okay, I think I can see what you are are talking about. The first part of the plant is in focus. But just a few inches back it is slightly out of focus.

 

[Derrel]

If a Nikon rear lens cap fits on this lens perfectly, and I think it should, then you should need no adapter for either of your Nikon cameras. My shot was made with the Nikon d610 in aps-c mode, which was by accident.

I think that $60 would be money well spent on a 600 mm mirror telephoto. I paid $135 for the older Nikon 500 mm f/8

I have used the Vivitar Series 1 " solid cat", which has somewhat of a cult following. The Vivitar Series 1 600/8 was made by Perkin Elmer.

 

[ZombieWatercrest]

I have this same lens for minolta mount, which fits my Sony a55. Got it for I think 150ish from b&h.

I’ve had great fun with it. It takes patience to get the focus right, it is a very narrow depth of focus you’re dealing with, 20 feet away and you’re looking at a little songbird and still trying hard to get the tail and beak in focus, then he hops left and disappears out of focus again.

Note that it’s a fixed F8, not an f1.8. That means you need a lot of light right off the bat, but then you have great distance with it which means you need a faster shutter speed, and probably to crank the iso up a bit above where you might be with your other lenses.

You can use it hand held when there’s a lot of light, but it’s easier to use a tripod and remote release, or the 2 second delay. The problem is it’s manual focus, so you have to be hands on to get the subject then let go and hope your subject stays still while you hit the timer or set off the remote.

Focus peaking I’ve heard is helpful, but I don’t have it. My alpha lets me zoom in to get a better idea of focus, but everything is so close by that point that it’s hard to keep the subject in frame. Focus stacking with multiple images might be an easier way to be sure you get what you need.

Another issue is that you’re taking pictures of things you can hardly see with your bare eyes, so unless you know what and where you’re looking, you might see something then have to run back 20 feet to get it in frame. Minimum focal distance is 6 feet for macro. A spotting scope/binoculars might be helpful if you aren’t staging the shot yourself.

At that price it seems like a steal. At the very least it’ll make you appreciate all your more modern lenses, and if you’re patient/lucky you’ll end up with some great shots of far off things.

 

[Derrel]

Here is a slightly out-of-focus 500mm F / 8 Mirror lens shot. I shot this from my parked car window about 45 to 50 yards away with a Nikon d610 and I cropped the image quite a bit. Because the focus is slightly off I elected to go with a sort of Japanese watercolor type processing to somewhat hide the slightly missed focus. In January of 2018 I took the lens to the Oregon coast and shot about 100 photos and I missed the focus just slightly on 90% of them. Focusing this lens is really a difficult thing. If your subject is moving, even a little bit, it is very difficult to get good Focus, or at least it is for me.

 

[ac12]

YES, I would get it.

• But then I'm a mirror lens junkie.
  
• The original design purpose still holds. It is a small light lens, vs. a standard "stovepipe" refractor lens.
  
  • That makes the logistics of carrying it a lot easier.
  • Mine easily fits into my camera bag.
• It is also a LOT cheaper than an equivalent refactor lens. My Nikon 500 was about 10% the cost of a modern 200-500 lens. So for a lens that it not used much, it becomes easier to cost justify.

• First make sure that it is a NIKON mount.
  
  • I do not think that lens is a T-mount.
    
  • I do not think you can adapt other mounts to a Nikon F mount.
• Make sure the the optics are clean. Especially NO fungus.
• There are a lot of JUNK mirror lenses, so you do have to do your research to determine the good brands. I think the Sigma is a good lens.
  
• 12x magnification is HARD to hand hold. So plan on using it on a tripod or stable rest.
  
  • For moving subjects, I use a gimbal head on my tripod.
• As Derrel said, manually focusing with a dSLR is not easy.
  
  • The focusing screen on a dSLR is NOT designed for manual focusing, as it is on a film SLR. It can be done, but you have to be more careful.
  • You can get an eyepiece magnifier.
  • Some dSLRs have an electronic focusing aid, where it turns on an indicator when the image is in focus.
  • Some people who have never used a manual focus lens, have trouble manually focusing.
• Subject motion
  
  • My experience is, a mirror lens is relatively easy (for me) to use on a stationary or SLOW moving subject.
  • But difficult to follow focus on a medium or fast moving subject.
• Lens hood
  • It looks like the lens does not have a hood.
    
  • If you can decrease the off axis light, it should increase the contrast of the lens.
    
  • You can easily make a hood out of flat black paper.

 

[Derrel]

Mirror lenses are pretty well-known for having somewhat low contrast compared to All Glass telephoto lenses. The front element of this lens is pretty much exposed to the sky and as a result you will probably find that you need to boost image contrast somewhat when processing your images.

As was mentioned above, you could make your own lens Hood out of craft paper or some type of container such as maybe a cottage cheese or sour cream tub, painted flat black.

Because you are stuck at one aperture, f/8, this lens is great for using with automatic ISO in manual exposure mode. Set the shutter speed to 1/800 of a second or so and dial in f/8, and select a low and high ISO value that you feel comfortable with for your camera's sensor. In this way the camera will raise or lower the ISO value to give you the correct exposure for your shutter speed and the fixed f8 aperture.