Those love-hate lenses

Goldfinch says, "That's some mighty fine bokeh you got there."



Been having a lot of fun with a 500mm mirror the last couple months, the lens isn't sharp, it has zero depth of field (and thus very hard to focus), it is cheap ($50), it makes weird rings of light when out of focus (bokeh), but it also is light enough to put in a backpack and beats the heavy, long, expensive ($1,500) glass of the same focal length. Usually.

Nope, nobody up there today...(taken May 1, same lens and heavy cropping)

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Vince
it has zero depth of field (and thus very hard to focus)]

And not chance of using the Scheimpflug principle?

Mirror lens? Which one?

I have a Tokina 55B 500mm f8. Like you say, its very hard to focus and isn't all that sharp, but it's sooooo much smaller than any other 500mm!

The worst problem with mirror lenses and film cameras was the lack of apertures. But digital has made their usage easier, since we can change ISO on the fly now. Need to keep your shutter speed high, but the light dropped? Increase your ISO, something you really couldn't do with film, unless of course you carried 100, 400, 800 and 1600 speed film, but most people did not.

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hotrod4x5
The worst problem with mirror lenses and film cameras was the lack of apertures. But digital has made their usage easier, since we can change ISO on the fly now. Need to keep your shutter speed high, but the light dropped? Increase your ISO, something you really couldn't do with film, unless of course you carried 100, 400, 800 and 1600 speed film, but most people did not.

Not using roll film helped. But I've never seen a mirror lens for a 4x5 camera.

Shot this with the 500 mirror (it's a rather obscure Korean lens called "Prospec" ). The Belden's was about 8 feet away at Upper Soda Springs campground. You can see the bokeh in the background and the lack of depth of field. You are right about the handy switching of ISO. I had forgotten about it and was shooting flash pics inside the Standard Mill at Bodie, then remembered I could push to 3200 and with the monopod took good pictures just with the ambient lighting.