Peekayoh Loc: UK

Here are two more with crops, this time on the FF Sony A99 but still hand held. I think these show what is possible with a good Cat lens in the right conditions.

Peekayoh Loc: UK

Oops

Peekayoh Loc: UK

The real differences then come down to price and weight. The Sony/Minolta Cat weighs in at 665gms so you can slip it into your bag, just in case; can't do that with a 3000gm 500mm Tele. Price, well no need to expand on that.

If you want the ultimate in IQ, the Tele lens is what you need, if you want a (relatively) cheap and lightweight lens that is easily transported, the Cat fits the bill.

jeryh Loc: Oxfordshire UK

I use a 500mm F8 AF Sony lens all the time- It is excellent for wildlife
photography with certain provisos; One is the requirement for good lighting, and the other for either a tripod, or a steady hand/ good technique.
They are commonly known as Mirror lenses, and they work by folding the light, and consequently are very much shorter and lighter than conventional lenses

lovitlots Loc: Tottenham, Ontario, Canada

I'm not sure where you get your information but... Mirror reflex lenses where designed to give you telephoto lens that where much smaller than a the usual telephoto offerings. You can get cheap ones where the optical quality wasn't the the greatest and you can get pro quality ones as well. Rollei offered one about 30 years ago that was a 1000 mm f5.6 lens. It had no chromatic aberations and was an excellent piece of glass. It's major down fall was the price. At that time $29000 but it did include a trip to Germany to pick it up. The lens was made by Zeiss. It was also manual focus as Auto focus was just making it's debut at the time. Sony and Minolta also made excellent mirror reflex lenses but not as fast and not as expensive. I'm not aware of all the brands that were out there but there were some excellent offerings. The two features that seem to upset some photographers is there's no adjustable aperture the the out of focus high lights bokeh looked like little donuts. Some photographers didn't mind it and some did. But you can make great photos with them, it depends on the photographers skill. And if you lugging a long telephoto into the wilderness you may really appreciate the weight savings which is considerable.

mikegreenwald Loc: Illinois

This is the most accurate reply here. Having hauled a bunch of equipment around Africa and a few other places, The Nikon f8 was much appreciated. In my mind though, the DO lenses available in a few places have replaced the cats. I own and use the Canon 70 - 300 DO with very satisfactory results. It is very close to "L" lenses in quality, light, & faster than the available cats. No halos either. I wish it were available in longer lengths.

gessman Loc: Colorado

Excellent examples! A picture is worth a 1000 words, or perhaps more. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that those with a camera that has stabilization built into the body enjoy the extra benefit of that which gives them a huge leg up because stabilization often permits the effect of gaining up to 4 f/stops of light which could effectively make this a, what, f2.8 lens, just about right for some pretty fair low light shots which would enable the shooter to get early and late day wildlife shots.

My cat lens was a Nikon, I may have mentioned, and with the plethora of adapters could be used on any body which extends its utility immensely. Nikon are good and can be bought for under $300 on ebay which is a vastly easier decision to make for many amateurs who don't want to shell out upwards of $5,000 for a lens that will only give them a few more percentage points of image quality (IQ).

Thank you for providing this evidence that these lens are a viable alternative for many interested people with limited resource or perhaps limited desire. So many of the comments in this thread are simply elitist, a word I try to rarely use in a derogatory manner, and asinine.

EDIT: I just noticed your exif data said that you shot the two non-cropped versions at shutter speeds of 1/125 and 1/200 respectively, both handheld and shot at iso 100, which effectively were shot at 1 and 2 stops below where you should have been following the old, pre-stabilization, rule of shooting at equal or greater than the focal length of the lens, a real advantage to those with in-body stabilization, Sony, Pentax, whoever... I would also call attention to the fact that in the first shot and there was movement with the girl walking and not noticeable blur. The depth of field is quite adequate also to cover the girth of a deer, certainly the largest bird I am aware of, depending on distance. As someone else pointed out, operator skill has an awful lot to do with the quality of the images one gets with these lens.

lovitlots Loc: Tottenham, Ontario, Canada

There was a posting on here, which, unfortunately I can't recall, where a photographer bought one of the "those" cheap reflex lenses. I'm not sure of the brand but I think it was one made by Samyang. It looked a little soft but quite frankly one of the better Blue Heron shots I've seen on here. So the skill of the photographer made a photo word with the lens that he had. So I whole heartedly agree with you statement.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

And I can do that with my SX50 :)

Peekayoh Loc: UK

That's a good point and for many people a major reason to buy into the Sony system, stabilisation is a real plus as I get older. Another is peaking and magnify which makes focus acquisition much easier.

No problem! Much as the spread of information through the Internet has been a force for good, the downside is the spread of misinformation and ill-informed comment. Challenging those people often devolves into a slanging match which I try to avoid; probably doesn't help.

I'm a bit old school having cut my teeth on film so it takes quite a lot to move me off iso100. It was early days with the camera when I took those shots, now that I am more used to the a99, I would definitely choose different setting and would be happy enough to go to iso800 or iso1600 if pushed.

The shutter speed for the two shots you mention could well have been 1/1000th and 1/1600th at iso800; that makes a big difference to hand holding a long Cat lens or, as you said, extends their effectiveness in lower light.

Peekayoh Loc: UK

Given that they are so expensive, in what way do the DO lenses replace Cat lenses?

The DO lenses were pretty much a failure, the 70-300 DO you mention is easily matched by the much cheaper and somewhat lighter 75-300 IS USM. In any case, it's too short to compare with the Cat lenses discussed here. The 400/4 DO lens is long enough to compare but the price and weight rule it out of any real comparison.

In terms of size, weight and price there's nothing to match a good Cat lens.

mikegreenwald Loc: Illinois

We will just have to disagree on this one. Certainly a 300mm max is not equal to a 400 or 500 mm lens in that parameter. However the faster speed and lighter weight are positives. I get consistently good results from my Canon DO IS lens, and find the one stop faster speed helpful too. My old Nikon 500mm f8 was and is a good lens too, but I find the donuts objectionable, and I no longer use the lens.

Peekayoh Loc: UK

I have no wish to denigrate your lens choice and the thing that counts most is that you're happy with it. Where I did/do take issue is offering your DO lens as an alternative to a Cat, it's simply too short at 300mm and my Sony/Minolta Cat anyway weighs less if not by much.

As both gessman and I have pointed out, that one stop speed advantage whilst undeniable is less of an issue with today's low noise sensors. The doughnut thing is something else and one of the negatives to set against the cost, weight and reach advantages; doughnuts are not always present or always objectionable but it is a consideration and will spoil some shots.

I don't know what camera you have now but it may be worth trying that Nikon Cat out again, you may be pleasantly surprised, if not, you can sell it for a decent amount of cash.

rborud Loc: Minnesota

Hurray for the Nikon Cat, use mine often!
Rborud

Peekayoh Loc: UK

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