Royce Moss Loc: Irvine, CA

Keep seeing these Opteka long range lenses for really low price. Can they be any good? Hard to believe at such low prices.

Mac Loc: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia now Hernando Co. Fl.

I've been seeing that name too, but I don't know anything about them.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

They are manual lenses. Long focal ranges. I have been aware of them for 3 years now. I almost bought one. They are worth the price. But, the optics will only be average..Vivitar had similar long focal range lenses too. Same results. Average.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

There are several manufacturers that make lenses like this. I once borrowed one from a friend for a couple days just to try it out for myself. Can't remember which manufacture it was, but it was a 800mm to 1600mm zoom. At 800mm it was f8 and I don't remember what it was at 1600mm.

First tried it out on a full frame body at 800mm and the results were poor contrast, but reasonably sharp. I was able to improve the contrast in post processing. At 1600mm, it was a joke and had some flex in the middle that wasn't much help.

Using an APS-C body, it was much harder to use as the poor contrast made it hard to find correct focus.

I am attaching an image of the moon taken with the full frame and processed a bit to make it look better. This is probably the best picture I was able to accomplish with this lens. Maybe because I was pointed up and the body didn't flex as much.

And also an image taken across a lake with the houses on the other side about 1 mile away. Again, I processed it. Also showing the original.

If you want to buy something to play with, and you realize what you're getting, go for it. But if I owned one, I can't imagine using it anywhere. Please keep in mind that these examples took some effort to make them turn out. The lens tended to vibrate a bit and I needed to deal with that too. And using the APS-C body, everything was all the more difficult with the apparent increase in focal length.

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MT Shooter Loc: Montana

They can be a fun toy, but don't expect high quality images from them.
I recently retired and closed my camera store, I threw about 40 of those lenses directly into a dumpster.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

I can believe this! The images I posted were a lot of work to get them as good as they turned out. The lenses were cheaply made and I had a real vibration problem I had to deal with and found a way to minimize it. When I compare what its like to use my 150-600mm lens to this lens, it was night and day difference.

And most people interested in this cheap lens likely do not have a full frame body to try it with. Using the APS-C, the narrower FOV made everything worse and I got frustrated. And it could have been worse. I didn't try it with a m43 body! That would really have been pushing it.

My interest was purely to see for myself what it would be like to use this lens. And I saw!

But I was surprised also in that I didn't find CA problems with the lens. Probably because the lens was f8 at 800mm. And I found anything beyond 800mm unusable. Besides the extreme focal length, there was just too much flexing in the middle of the two halves. When I was able to control the vibration caused by the wind, I found low contrast to be the main issue.

With effort, with sensible camera settings, with a very sturdy tripod, with a remote shutter release, with very critical focusing, with dealing with the vibration in the lens itself, it is possible to obtain a so-so image.

uhaas2009

Maybe to try a haze filter with this lens ? Just an idea.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

You get what you pay for, and you don't get what you don't pay for. I wouldn't waste my money.

jcryan Loc: Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic

I bought one recently before going on a safari. The lens is completely manual with a fixed aperture that varies with focal length. While it is a bit difficult to use and getting a clean image can be tough I did get a few shots that would have been impossible without the extra reach.

True, you get what you pay for, but for the price it can be fun to play with.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

You should have given those 40 lenses away, rather than throw them in the dumpster.

olemikey Loc: 6 mile creek, Spacecoast Florida

I have the 650-1300 version, Bell & Howell (there's a name from the past) and several t-mounts for it....my favorite use is as a spotting scope/telescope (I even bought some telescope objective lenses and 90 deg. mounting pieces for it), made it more useful and fun to fool with. To beat the flex I mounted mine on a finished/painted wooden plate (from the mount to the next stepup in barrel width), then a tripod plate, no flex that way. Bought used, I completely tore it down and spit shined all the glass....it will make a decent photo, but is not a perfection machine.......

You would probably be better off with a decent little (highest quality you can get) mirror lens.....so much easier to handle, I have an old Vivitar 800/f8 mirror that does a fine job (for what it is) attached to my A58 Sony I can get to 1600mm with CIZ, doing Jpegs, and have In Body Stabilization helping. . for RAW I'm stuck at 800, as I doubt a tele-extender would be worth mounting.

The big lens is has been used on wildlife shoots for spotting, and I often leave it set up for folks who stop to look through (on a non-working body).... it does look impressive, big white lens!!! The images posted by JimH123 are a good example of what you might get. AND, you need a stout tripod and a trigger, that makes for way better photos, especially if on a non-stabilized body.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

I gave away about a dozen on my "free" table, no one wanted any others. Just junk so that's where they ended up.

avemal Loc: BALTIMORE

I have a Opteka 6.5 fisheye lens for my Nikon d500. Works wonderful. No problems.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

You may want to check out the Opteka 500mm f6.3 manual focus mirror lens. It will have better clarity than the Opteka zoom lens. I have this lens in the Brand Name of Phoenix, fixed f8. Discontinued. A couple of these lesser priced long focal range lenses, are virtually identical, but have a different Brand Name.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

What type of camera are you interested in using with a long lens?

With my Sony cameras, I can use a Minolta 500mm f8 Reflex lens which is a mirror lens that is auto focus.

An example taken with a handheld Sony A99 full frame body is attached. Compared to the borrowed lens I was talking about, this one is a piece of cake to use. One downside of mirror lenses is the out of focus background may look like little donuts. And Sony limits the focus point for this lens to only one in the center.

2nd image is a turkey vulture in flight taken with the same camera and lens.

3rd image is done with an APS-C Sony A57 to show that this can be done hand held too.

4th image is showing close focus with the mirror lens. Again the full frame Sony A99.

5th image is switching to a Tamron 500mm mirror lens which is manual focus only. The body was an Olympus EM1 with a 2x crop factor make this look like a 1000mm focal length. This lens is easy to manually focus.

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