Tamron 500 SP mirror lens is not very sharp, has funky doughnut bokeh and requires ISO 800 even on a sunny day to shoot hand-held, but I am having a blast with it anyway:
staticInc wrote:
I'm impressed though. How do you manage to focus action scenes like the fighters so accurately? Amazing shots.
Best regards,
si
It is very forgiving. Even if you miss focus a bit, images still look OK. Its only aperture is f/8 so the viewfinder is pretty dark, but still usable during the daytime.
davenfl wrote:
The sharpness is certainly acceptable, nice shots.
Dave
At 100% magnification it becomes apparent that per-pixel sharpness is not there. Downsized and sharpened - no problem.
systemlayers wrote:
I hate donut holes in most cases but sometimes it can be avoided or put to good use.. Third is nice but the other two it's really distracting for me.
For me the donut bokeh is fitting right into those scenes. With the first sample it is not as overtly visible as in the second. It gives an ancient look, especially to the fence or whatever it is in the background, which looks more like a chain this way.
And in the second picture the donut rings seem to resemble the lion's iris. Very interesting after all, and IMHO quite fitting.
I have the Tamron 350 f5.6 and Nikkor 500mm C mirror both are nice I like shooting them when I have water in the background for me the donut bokeh works well there.
What would you guess is the value for this lens? How much would you pay if you'd found one in excellent condition?
A local store is having one but requests about $600 for it (in a somewhat used condition) and something is telling me that this is completely overpriced...
CheshireCat wrote:
Great shots ! Love the donuts behind the lion !
By the way, is it the first (55B) or second (55BB) version of the lens ?
The Adaptall2 ring for my copy should be here on Monday, now I just need to find a lion
This is a 55B version of the lens.
Here is a 100% crop showing that this lens is no match to 5D Mark II sensor: http://s57.radikal.ru/i156/1003/b8/3f0ba6a88eb1.jpg
Well, comparing ANY 500mm lens from the film days that is still very very good. And really fairly excellent all things considered anyway - considering that's unsharpened. I think the only downside for me would be the fixed aperture. The doughnut bokeh is kind of interesting to me. And even the fixed aperture doesn't seem so bad when you consider that it costs less than $5,000 and weighs about 1/20th of the refractors of the same focal length.
I use it for things I cannot get close to:
Prostitutes:
Bees:
Sexy Girls on the Beach:
North Korea:
and finally Turtles in the middle of a lake:
I want the 350mm f/5.6, but I've not been keeping an eye on eBay. In the last two weeks they've sold from $206-$650. Also the 500 is WAY sharper up close than far away.
Great pics! Yes, that bird seems to be very sharp. I use my Tamron for the same reasons, but interestingly, people notice anyway
I used to have Russian Rubinar 500/5.6 mirror lens and it was sharper than Tamron at infinity and faster (f/5.6) too, but it was also much bulkier and heavier, so I've sold it.
Does anyone have experience with Vivitar Series 1 mirror lenses that are abundant on eBay nowadays? Are they any good?
Ataboy wrote:
Does anyone have experience with Vivitar Series 1 mirror lenses that are abundant on eBay nowadays? Are they any good?
AFAIK those Viv S1 mirror lenses are rebranded Samyang lenses. They are not spectacular though. There are a couple of reviews on the net and what I've seen confirms most of the reviews, namely "limited" IQ...
I've got a newer Vivitar 500 f/6.3. Despite it being a cheap lens with mediocre picture quality, at best, it serves it's purpose when called upon. Usable images can be had from it under the right conditions, it's not heavy, and it can be focused while hand held...despite having a paper thin DOF and no IS. Best of all, if anything happens to it I'm only out $180 and not thousands.
Some of us like donuts.
Preliminary tests with my 55B copy on a 5D2 confirm the lens is sharper up close than at infinite.
Using tripod and remote, I could get similar results as Ataboy got in the lion shot... but as soon as I used Live View (equivalent to MLU on the 5D2) the IQ increased dramatically in close focus shots (i.e. 100% crops with a little PP are very similar to the bird shot taken by TWoK).
