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Mirror Lenses
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Hi Everyone,
Does anybody have any dealings with mirror lenses?
I have read some reports about them but just wondered
if anyone has used them.Seems like a cheap alternative to the big expensive glass
but there are drawbacks.Alan
The biggest drawback, and reason they are a cheap alternative to big glass, is the very poor image quality.
Hi Alan
Mirror lenses are cheap in comparison, they are very light. BUT they have a fixed aperture usually of f8 which is extremely debilitating. You have very little scope for changes in depth of field other than moving closer or further from your subject. The background out of focus usually shows little doughnut shaped rings, a trait of the mirror setup which can be distracting and they are manual focus.
Somewhere in the depths of my cupboards there is a sigma 600mm f8 canon fd mount mirror lens, I used to use it many years ago but soon got fed up. if you were closer i would say come and have a play with it before wasting your money.
You would in all honesty be better off saving for a telephoto lens, I have just ordered and am still waiting for the nikon 600mm f4 vr lens, costly but a fantastic lens for wildlife photography. Prior to ordering this I have been using 70-200 with a 1.7 x converter which gives on a full frame camera a 119 – 340mm f4.8 and yes it is very sharp.( 178.5-510mm lens on a cropped sensor) I would say a shorter telephoto with a converter is better quality than a mirror lens. generally x2 converters are a bit softer than 1.7x or 1.4x. Some wildlife guys stack converters on long lenses, I have not tried it yet but will give it a go when my lens arrives and the sun comes out!
hope this helps
Phil
Thanks lads,
Yea the reviews i have read all say the same regarding quality and useabliity.
Phil, thanks for that, I have the 70-200 f4 L lens but found after trying to shoot
surfers i just didnt have the reach.
If i use a 1.4X converter I only get 98-280 f5.6 i think which is not too much of an
increase in zoom i think.
If i use a 2X converter i get a nice 140-400 zoom but a sad minimum aperture of F8
and no auto focus.So i am in a bit of a fix as to what to do with limited finaces to pump
into expensive glass.I was also looking at maybe some big glass in the FD system and getting
an FD to EOS converter for full frame. ok I wont have auto focus and
manual focusing will be tedious but wondering will it work?Alan
Hi I cannot comment on the fd/eos adapter, do not know anyone using it, I know its possible.
A cheaper option might be to get your hands on a second hand canon digital with a 1.3 or 1.6 crop to give you better reach with the lenses you have.
Try using the centre focus point on your 5d with the 2x converter on the 70-200, the autofocus may work on a really bright sunny day, usually the reason it will not work is because of the loss of two stops of light and not using the centre focus point. It may mess up your composition but surfers moving quickly are hard enough to focus on manually.
Phil
Hi Phil,
I got a loan of a mirror lens and took about 3 shots late yesterday evening
managed to get 1 ok one.
i posted it here if your interested.https://www.photographyireland.net/viewtopic.php?t=21954
Hi Alan
that shot does not look too bad, maybe a bit soft in its focus, you can just about see the doughnut shaped rings in the dew on the out-of-focus grass in the foreground. It must of been a seriously dull day for an exposure of f8 1/25th sec at 3200 ! hence the low contrast, low saturation and slight blueness to the shadows.
It looks like that lens would do a pretty good job on a bright sunny day which hopefully the next week will be full of ?whats the cost of that lens ? I think the sigma lens is 500-600 euros, you have to weigh up how much you use it verses what you can afford, this lens may well turn out to have value for money, on sunny days anyway.
Got my 600 f4 VR lens on thursday night, weighs a ton (well 5kg, feels like a ton after handholding for 15 minutes!) it is really sharp as you would expect from a nikon. will post a shot if I can get out today and find the otters or kingfishers.
cheers
phil
Thanks Phil,
I think my friend bought this for about €150.
yea the evening was very dull at about 7.Jeez 5kg’s thats heavy! sounds good.
I know absolutely nothing about Nikon, sorry.Nice to see some results though.
Alan
aoluain wrote:
Thanks lads,
So i am in a bit of a fix as to what to do with limited finaces to pump
into expensive glass.I was also looking at maybe some big glass in the FD system and getting
an FD to EOS converter for full frame. ok I wont have auto focus and
manual focusing will be tedious but wondering will it work?My advice: don’t bother. For one thing big fast FD lenses won’t be that cheap. Canon’s official FD-EOS converter is the best quality option but it’s rare as hell, only works with a few big teles, and will cost you an absolute fortune if you can even find one. There are cheaper FD-EOS converters out there but they all act like weak teleconverters (about 1.3x or so) and have poor quality glass in them, negating all the advantages of big fast sharp lenses. They get a bit better stopped down, but that’s not what you buy an f/2.8 L tele for is it?
Seriously, you will do better with almost any old school lensmount other than FD on an EOS. Nikkors will be no problem, same with M42s, OM Zuikos or Tamron Adaptalls (easiest and cheapest to go Adaptall—another mount—EOS for adaptors, I use Adaptall—Nikon F or OM and adapt those to my 30D). You can get off-brand Adaptall-EOS adaptors from eBay vendors but I’m not sure about the quality; heard of a few sloppy fitting ones. The original Tamron made Adaptall-EOS is another rarity that sells for stupid money.
You WILL find that almost any pro grade 300-400mm teles are now very expensive, Tamrons, Zuikos or whatever. If it’s 300mm+ and f/4 or faster expect a wallet-lightening experience. Fleabay sellers are wise these days.
As has been said, mirrors are cheaper, but usually much slower, hard to focus, have nasty bokeh and are not all the same (Tamron’s 500mm SP one is quite good). Nice and light though, and still realistically priced. If you can prefocus for action shots you should get fair results.
The best way to use FD lenses is to get a T90, which was Canon’s last and greatest manual focus SLR: it’s virtually everything that the pro EOS models are but takes FD lenses. Shoots film of course, but does it extremely well, and you’ll get a serious pro camera with a big fullframe finder and proper focus screen for a fraction the cost of a 5D ;)
Hey steve thanks a million for that.
I have a T90 actually and some FD lenses but I dont process film myself which means
lashing the film in the post to Dublinto get processed kind of “out of my hands” feeling
or “i only press the button”.I had thought of getting a Nikon adaptor and lens all right but I know nothing about nikon.
I was looking at the original canon FD mirror which is cheaop at about 150 euro or just
getting a 1.4x for the EOS.Alan
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