500mm mirror lens

[Homer Simpson]

A mate has just spent his bonus on a top of the range Nikon kit and is offloading a pile of Oly kit.

I have first dibs

He raves over a mirror lens & I have it to try out - hoping for some sun tomorrow.

Its an Opteka 500mmm 6.3 - anyone have any experiences

Plus what would be a fair price?

[David M]

Re: 500mm mirror lens

A mate has just spent his bonus on a top of the range Nikon kit and is offloading a pile of Oly kit.

I have first dibs

He raves over a mirror lens & I have it to try out - hoping for some sun tomorrow.

Its an Opteka 500mmm 6.3 - anyone have any experiences

Plus what would be a fair price?

[ringneck]

Re: 500mm mirror lens

David might be right if this is what it is....an F8 ?

http://forum.fourthirdsphoto.com/showthread.php?t=40954

[David M]

Re: 500mm mirror lens

David might be right if this is what it is....an F8 ?

http://forum.fourthirdsphoto.com/showthread.php?t=40954

I think Opteka was one of the brand names slapped on Samyang lenses, if so there is a f/6.3;

http://www.samyang.pl/index.php/en/samyang-500mm-mc-if-f63-mirror

It's white bodied so it must be good.

I had the (well regarded at the time) Tamron 500mm f/8 for a while but I'd never consider a mirror lens again unless I wanted the doughnut bokeh for a particular effect.

[Greytop]

Re: 500mm mirror lens

David's right, I dabbled with with a OM 500mm mirror lens many moons ago, eventually sold it. Apparently it was well regarded as one of the better ones but in my experience it didn't even come close to my 50-200 and EC-20 combination. You will experience poor light gathering, extremely narrow depth of field (tricky to focus) and that lovely doughnut bokeh
On the positive side they are obviously compact for a 500mm, which is what attracted me and cheap of course.

[jima]

Re: 500mm mirror lens

I tried a Russian mirror, a Tamron mirror and the Olympus 500mm mirror and while perhaps good in their day, on the E-series none of them compared even closely to the modern Oly digital lenses for sharpness and contrast.