Mmmmmthinking about a mirror telephoto.

Mark1 wrote in post #8359001
I think im going to pull the trigger on one. Dont know what one yet. But I will get something. I will be glad I did when I see Bigfoot!! And really that is all I want it for. If I use it more than 4 times I will shock myself. Which is why I am looking so cheap. I do mainy product and do not have anything longer than 200. So A "good" lens will kinda go to waste.

DigitalDabbler wrote in post #8356077
Many many moons ago I had an indian 600/4.5 reflector on an AE1. Provided I moved the toothpick to correct for DOF/focus gradient, the resultant image was pretty good. Maybe I got a good one. I seem to recall a headshot at 200 metres.

I could be wrong, but I was pretty happy with the IQ and bokeh.

C:\>

macroimage wrote in post #8356831
Camera shake is a big problem since the lens is very light and the focal length very long. If you use a tripod, use mirror lock-up and a remote release and try holding your hand over the top of the camera to damp vibrations. Using a monopod works quite well with mirror lenses. Keep shutter speeds high, faster than 1/1000s unless you have things very well braced. The lens is very light, pressing the shutter button will wiggle too much. High ISOs on sunny days are generally needed.

Focus very carefully. Keep practicing. Watch very carefully in the viewfinder while you focus to see the plane of best focus moving back and forth over your subject to set the focus distance. Don't just look for sharpness changing, try to see the plane of focus and place it where you want. Depth of field is very shallow even at large distances. Make sure that the dioptre setting of the viewfinder is set correctly.

To give the illusion of sharpness, try to get good light and side lighting to help bring up the surface texture of the subject.

Use a lens hood as Catadioptric lenses wash out even worse than their already low contrast behavior.

As usual using raw gives you more to work with. There should be almost no chromatic aberration from your mirror lens but there may be some light fall-off to the corners especially with full frame. You can correct this in the raw converter or later in photoshop.

In post processing bring up the black point, tweak the exposure and adjust the tone curve to bring up the midrange contrast a little. Bring up the colour saturation to taste. Then resize down and sharpen appropriate to how much blur remains on the sharpest part of the photo. Don't sharpen the whole image. Remove sharpening for all of the out of focus parts to avoid bringing up the noise from using high ISOs and to avoid making the bokeh worse. Finally consider a bit of extra blur for the out of focus parts if you don't like how they were rendered.

Adjust your expectations too. Don't expect huge blow-ups and deep crops to look great. Under optimal conditions and good processing an acceptable, moderate sized, picture can be created with some effort.

Mark1 wrote in post #8339289
Bower is one of three names for the exact same lens. They literally make Bower for a week, change the name plate then make Vivitar for a week, etc..etc. I forget the other name. Basically it is the Chevy truck/GMC truck thing.

I am not expecting.... well .... anything really. But a 500mm lens for shots you stumble upon and dont have anything longer than 200, it might be nice to have. That is all I really want it for. I have no plans for useing it for production work. Just as a "just in case" item.

I didnt think of looking on eBay. Im sure one can be found there. And if it is $80. There is no real reason not to.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #8356676
Well the Russian Rubinar 1000mm mirror lens I used, I was able to get pretty darn good images, never mind the manually intensive nature of getting these shots:

Again the review post I did is here: https://photography-on-the.net …=537136&highlig​ht=rubinar

First shot shows what I was going for, the 2nd is with the mirror lens.

jacobsen1 wrote in post #8390302
where'd you buy that?