Falcon 500mm f/8.0 mirror lens

M

mgdaviso

Messages
254
Name
Mike
Edit My Images
Yes
LOL - under a hundred - do you even have to ask?
 
From everything that other people have said mirror lenses are crap.:)
 
awp said:
LOL - under a hundred - do you even have to ask?
Click to expand...

Without being rude, not everyone has £500 to spend on a lens.

I've had to scrimp and save every penny to buy my canon 50mm and that was £70.
 
not being rude - you won't get a 500mm lens worth using for £500 either - try £5,000
 
smalls said:
then i wouldnt waste £100 on the falcon, wait till you can afford a better quality lens.

as the saying goes: buy cheap, you end up buying twice, save for the better lenses
Click to expand...


The other saying is "cut your coat according to your cloth" ;)


One thing you should know about mirror lenses is that the "bokeh" they produce has a horrible doughnut effect :gag:
 
awp said:
not being rude - you won't get a 500mm lens worth using for £500 either - try £5,000
Click to expand...

not at all - are we saying the image will be rubbish?

How do we know?

Has anyone tried lesser models? what were the problems or what sort of problems would you expect?

sorry for dumb questions from a n00b.
 
I am a bit of a reflex (mirror) lens fan. Even a relatively cheap one will have far less chromatic aberration than even the most expensive normal lens. I even normally don't mind the donut highlights. Some times they can even add to a photo. Most of the good ones are quite old these days. Though saying that the Sony 500mm f8 is not bad at all. Its a bit slow as its only f8 but if you use it with a body with built in stabilization so you could use it handheld. But as people have said cheap is cheap.

ASS! I just remembered I was watching a old Sigma 500mm f4 on ebay I forgot to bid on. It went for £67 darn.
 
Take a read and make up your own decision, but you would need very good light to acheive decent images because they are slow, most being f8.

http://www.photozone.de/mirror-lenses

Links Conclusion: Yes, mirror lenses produce pictures and under carefully chosen conditions they may even produce pretty good ones. However, these situations are rare. For example the shots above were taken in a local bird zoo where you can get very close to your subject - in real life you'll most likely end up with situations like in the eagle picture (the 2nd picture) and therefore with unsteady background blur. Most mirror lenses suffer from a rather mediocre optical performance. This may all be fine for personal purposes and for documentation but most likely you'll not be able to sell such pictures. Therefore a classic (refractive) lens like a 400/5.6 fix-focal or even a xx-500mm zoom is usually a better solution for a more serious approach. Nonetheless mirrors are quite cheap and fun to play with.
Click to expand...

Peter
 
thanks everyone who has responded already, but the original post question hasn't really been answered yet (other than don't buy it because it must be rubbish), so if anyone has experience (good/bad) of buying one of these, then your opinion of its worth would be appreciated. If not, then fair do's...

If I had £700 to spare I still wouldn't be buying a lens with my hard earned cash.

Edit: to add - Peter, thank you for your informed link. cheers.
 
If you want to buy it go ahead but I think all the good advice you've been given suggests it's not worth the money. No lens at that price (500mm) is going to be any good - I suppose it depends on the standards you want to work to.
 
Zilog - thanks I'll take a look when I get home as can't get flickr at work.
 
mgdaviso said:
thanks everyone who has responded already, but the original post question hasn't really been answered yet (other than don't buy it because it must be rubbish), so if anyone has experience (good/bad) of buying one of these, then your opinion of its worth would be appreciated. If not, then fair do's...

If I had £700 to spare I still wouldn't be buying a lens with my hard earned cash.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I don't think you will find many people that have had experience of these lenses because of the bad press these lenses get, but if you do a google search then you'll find sites like this link, so have a read and make your own mind up, but these are very slow lenses and you'll need (very) good light to get good results.

http://www.mirrorlenses.co.uk/
 
I think that the quality of image you'll get will be slightly disappointing if you're going to run comparisons with other offerings on here that are taken with the £5k+ lenses....I suspect that you already knew that one.

If it's within your budget and there's no likelyhood in the near future of buying "length" at normal prices...then go fit it. You'll have to be patient and also be choosy about which days (bright and sunny) that you take it out. It'll certainly be better than shooting with your 50mm and then cropping but don't expect a Ferrari at Fiat prices.

Bob

PS...had one years ago and will never have one again
 
I think that picture of the young boy is pretty bloomin decent looking for a 500mm lens at £100.

It's a very decent price to open up a new world of shooting and I'd be hard pushed to think of better way to get a radical lens for less cash. Certainly ready to go in an EOS mount.

If it was my hard earned, I'd probably take a punt. The worst that can happen is that you'll have to stick up for sale here for £70/80 and get some other mug to take it off you........









......I can already see myself getting tempted. :lol:
 
I've no specific experience of that styleof lens, however, I have a Skymax 102 Maksutov Cassegrain telescope, and I believe the design on those mirror lenses is the same. One of the issues, is the central obstruction, caused by the secondary mirror, this has an effect on the image contrast. I know from my Skymax, the mirror alignment (collimation) can be knocked out, and this has a really bad effect on the image quality, (I'm still trying to collimate my scope...) I've tried a couple of experiments with my Skymax shooting birds, and the IQ was not good (probably the collimation), in fact I've had much better results with my EFS 55-250 and cropped. However, I will experiment again once I've got my mirrors collimated (although, given the weather, it may take far longer than you have on the auction).

I hope that helps.

Btw, the 55-250 can be had for about £190... http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/prod596.html
 
To OP...

Probably well before you were born I bought a Makinon 500mm f8 Cat - and spent many hours of fun with it getting some decent pics too, I even tried it at motorsport (yes with film so I only shot 2 rolls!) and had a nice 10x8" done of some youngster called Damon Hill thrashing whatever single seater it was at the time :)

And I liked the doughnuts too - it was considered an interesting feature then

Oh - and it was slightly less than £100

I even had a play with a Sigma 600mm F8 with my D2Xs a few years back, but no metering and no autofocus seemed too much of a PITA these days

As Dazz says, try it, if you like it great, if not it may cost you £30ish to pass it on

Have fun - but do report back and post images too if you buy it :thumbs:

DD
 
mgdaviso said:
thanks everyone who has responded already, but the original post question hasn't really been answered yet (other than don't buy it because it must be rubbish), so if anyone has experience (good/bad) of buying one of these, then your opinion of its worth would be appreciated. If not, then fair do's...

If I had £700 to spare I still wouldn't be buying a lens with my hard earned cash.

Edit: to add - Peter, thank you for your informed link. cheers.
Click to expand...
I have a Tamron 500 f8 mirror lens on a 50D, for the money its good, very good. However I wouldnt let anyone post a mirror lens to me as they are very easy to damage/dislodge the mirror which ruins its ability to focus.
You'll have to manually focus, but it will confirm with a bleep when in focus. It will expose OK in one of the Auto modes.
Tamron did an Adaptal version and you can get Adaptal/Eos adaptors easy enough.

Matt

showphoto.php
[/url][/IMG]
 
If you want to try one without breaking the bank, there are quite a few S/H one's on Fleabay at the moment, also some conventional manual focus 500mm lenses for not much money.


Dave.
 
From what I have seen of the Optech ones, the mirror lenses are OK (not great), for shooting static well lit objects (lots of pictures of bell towers etc.).
For moving objects focusing can be difficult to nail.
At lower light, f/8 aperture can be a little small.

That said, whenever I see the optech '1600mm' on ebay, I am very very tempted.
 
mgdaviso said:
Without being rude, not everyone has £500 to spend on a lens.

I've had to scrimp and save every penny to buy my canon 50mm and that was £70.
Click to expand...

How long did it take you to save for the 450?!

I'd save up for the 55-250mm IS, you can get it second hand for about £130. Scrap the mirror lens idea, even their best results still look pretty crap.
 
MatBin said:
I have a Tamron 500 f8 mirror lens on a 50D, for the money its good, very good. However I wouldnt let anyone post a mirror lens to me as they are very easy to damage/dislodge the mirror which ruins its ability to focus.
You'll have to manually focus, but it will confirm with a bleep when in focus. It will expose OK in one of the Auto modes.
Tamron did an Adaptal version and you can get Adaptal/Eos adaptors easy enough.

Matt

showphoto.php
[/url][/IMG]
Click to expand...

Matt - the exif on that image shows 50mm f2 1/640 iso 200 :thinking:
 
smalls said:
if you need the reach of 500mm i believe the best budget is the sigma 150-500 which costs around £600-700, if you need the reach save up for that lens
Click to expand...

I'd argue that the Tamron 200-500 bests it; but your choice at 500mm comes down to three zooms and a couple of primes. The primes are much better, but you knew that already, for the price.
 
Perhaps a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG with 1.4x or 2x Teleplus TC will offer a cheap and more flexible option? You can buy the Sigma for around £140 new and add the TC when funds permit.
 
coldpenguin said:
From what I have seen of the Optech ones, the mirror lenses are OK (not great), for shooting static well lit objects (lots of pictures of bell towers etc.).
For moving objects focusing can be difficult to nail.
At lower light, f/8 aperture can be a little small.

That said, whenever I see the optech '1600mm' on ebay, I am very very tempted.
Click to expand...

I think you mean Opteka, not Optech, they make camera straps.......
 
RichardtheSane said:
50mm F2 is the default that my 50D reports when a shot is taken with a lens that doesn't report any data back.
Click to expand...

Does make life confusing sometimes doesnt it :)

Matt
 
Laudrup said:
How long did it take you to save for the 450?!
Click to expand...
To paraphrase the words of the late, great George Best; the redundancy money was blown on booze, women and gadgets. I wasted the rest.....

thanks for everyones input so far - it's certainly given me food for thought.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top