graybeard

I am looking to buy a cheap, used third party (probably) 400 or 500mm lens. By cheap I mean $100 or less, pref $50 or less. There are a bewildering number of them out there, with names I am not familiar with. Among others Asunama, Tele-astranar, Rokunar, Spiratone, Tamron, Quantaray, Kolimar, Soligar etc etc. Please don't tell me to forget it and buy your favorite $10,000 lens. Are any of these preferable to others? Are some to be avoided at any cost? Mirror vs. Refractor ? Whatever feedback you want to give me. Thanks

jim quist Loc: Missouri

it is doubtful you will get anything other than a mirror lens. I have one. It is either right on or out of focus. I call it a "fair weather" lens because the only time I can use it is on a bright sunny day. My eyes don't do manual focus very well, perhaps you will have better luck with one.

graybeard

I realize I will have to make concessions I wouldn't have to make with automatic and digital good quality lenses. I am looking to get acceptable, not perfect, images I wouldn't otherwise be able to get. Light gathering capability and sharpness of image are things I will have less of than I would like. All I hear about mirror lenses is the focus problem. Kind of a turnoff. The big old long lenses weigh a ton, but are what I am leaning toward. Thanks for your reply.

mcveed Loc: Kelowna, British Columbia (between trips)

Believe me, if there were any 400mm or 500mm lenses out there for under $100 that produced any kind of a recognizable image we would all have one. If anybody on this forum knew about one they would run out and buy it. If you can get a 500mm Tamron lens for $100 grab it.

Sherman A1 Loc: St. Louis, MO

Precisely! I paid about 10x that for my Sigma 150-500 a few years ago and it is a superb lens. It can be found for less now, but still not for $100.

djtravels Loc: Georgia boy now

Dang! I just GAVE AWAY a Sig 50-500. Wish I'd known about the need here, but my dau-in-law came first.

Did I mention that I'm now past 80 and got tired of lugging the big guy around.
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbdown: :thumbdown:

Gitzo Loc: Indiana

graybeard;.......first of all, and most important, what kind of camera are you going to use it on when you get it? most of the lenses that you mentioned, you may get one for some ridiculous low price, and still not get your money's worth. If you're shooting with a Canon D SLR, forget it....you're out of luck!
(Old Canon lenses that were designed for film cameras, do NOT work with today's digital cameras.
(all the more reason to shoot with Nikons now. )

If you have a Nikon body, (film OR D SLR ), you can use it with with almost any Nikon lens made since WW 2. (or way, way back; ) If it's anything else......you're probably still "SOL" ("sure out of luck" )

Tamron makes some very good lenses, however, anything of 400 to 500 mm that has an aperture better that maybe f8, and is advertised for $100 or less, I can tell you that you won't "be getting much" for your money. Long tele lenses cost a lot of bucks for very good reasons; Also.....don't order ANYTHING from some dodgey outfit in NYC with a Brooklyn address or you'll REALLY get disappointed!

Once again.......the one avenue to shooting with a very decent long lens for anything like what you have in mind, is to have a decent Nikon body, (either a film camera or a D SLR ), and find someone on eBay who has a 30 or 40 yr old Nikon 300, or possibly even a 400 mm prime lens. You will be shooting using manual focusing, and also setting the aperture manually; (which was the ONLY way to do both things for about the first 30 years I started taking pictures. )

I have a Nikkor 300 mm / f4 prime that I use frequently with and without a 2x TC (tele-extender ), usually with a D-300s;

I have no idea what you want to photograph, that you have determined that you need a 400 or 500 mm lens; so consider this; when you're taking a picture of a mountain (or anything else ) with a full frame camera and a 400mm lens, you will be "magnifying" the "subject" 8X; so the "subject will "appear" to be 1/8th as far away as it really is; (I'm guessing that you already know this ); what you may or may not realize though, is, you are also "magnifying" EVERYTHING ELSE; (the air pollution, the moisture, haze, smoke, etc etc ) that's in that 10 miles or 20 miles between your camera and the mountain (subject ). In a nut-shell, that's why using telephoto lenses requires a lot of knowledge, experience, and usually, very expensive camera gear.

Mirror lenses; it would require a 200 page book to explain why mirror lenses never really "got off the ground"; actually, there were a few very expensive one made; Nikon made a couple that were VERY pricey; (but never very successful, for a couple of reasons, the main one being that they had no control over the "aperture"; (you shot "wide open" or not at all ); I would definitely NOT recommend buying a "mirror" (o "reflex" ) lens.

As for your "Are any of these preferable to others"? probably not.

"Are some to be avoided at any cost?" I would change "some" to "all".......

"Mirror vs. Refractor"; Please understand this; using a mirror (or several mirrors ) to "make things appear to be closer" is a completely valid concept; (about 99.9 % of all astronomical telescopes use one or more mirrors to do this. ) But for the most part, astronomers have a completely different objective that terrestrial photographers do; Photographers are for the most part, taking images of "things" that are "very near"... usually for just a few millimeters away, to a few kilometers away".....and you CAN "magnify" subjects that are this "near".

In astronomy, most of what is being studied (or even photographed ), is light years away, all the way up to "billions of light years away"! Out of all the stars in the entire known universe, the closest, (proxima centauri ), is 4.3 light years away. It's theoretically impossible to "magnify" ANY star, (make it have a measurable diameter ), because they are all much too distant; what we can do though, is to make them appear to be much brighter; and the way to do that is to collect more light from them. With any optical telescope, from a 1 inch to a 100 meters.....every time you double the diameter of the "objective", (regardless of whether it's a lens or a mirror ), it "collects" FOUR times as much light; the more light, the further the astronomers can see into the universe.

Some time after I became interested in all of this, the largest telescope in the world was still the 100 inch reflector at Mt. Wilson in California; then thanks to the tireless efforts of one Dr. George Ellery Hale, the great 200 inch Hale reflector on Mt. Palomar was built, and they could study things that were hundreds of millions of light years away; If you were to observe proxima centauri with a pair of binoculars, then observe it with the Hale Telescope, it still wouldn't appear to be a bit "bigger".....it would however appear to be a few million times "brighter". (big difference )

Now, the Hale instrument is still doing valuable work, but in size, it's now a mere "drop in the bucket"; with the two Kecks in Hawaii, and the VLA in Chile, they can now "see" and study objects more than ten billion light years distant; are they satisfied now? Nope; Now they're planning the 100 meter instrument to be built in Chile. The 200 inch mirror in the Hale telescope is app. 17 feet in dia. The 100 meter will be more than 300 feet in dia. (It's all about collecting more light and not "magnifying" anything. )

Incidentally, and as an interesting aside, if you are ever traveling east or west across New York State, and you go through the small town of Corning, N.Y., Route 17 that you're on will take you within 1 city block of the main corporate offices of Corning Glass, which bis where the huge 200 inch mirror for the Hale Telescope was made; when they poured all of the molten glass into the mold, there were hundreds of "core blocks" held in place by steel bolts, (which gave the lower 3 feet thickness of the huge mirror it's "honey-comb" structure; right after they poured all of the glass, the intense heat melted several of the bolts holding the core blocks in place, and several of them "floated" to the top, completely ruining the whole thing, and they had to start all over again from scratch. When they completed the second mirror blank and shipped by train to California, they mover the ruined 17 ft in diameter blank into the Corporate Office, stood it up on edge, put a lot of bright lights behind it, and anyone passing by the Corporate Office can go in and look at it during business hours, or even see it when driving past with a load of new cars, as I used to do hundreds of times over a period of 25 years, between 1974 and 1997 when I retired. For many years it was the single biggest piece of glass ever cast; that's no longer the case now that there are a lot of much bigger telescopes, but I can assure you, driving by at night, and seeing a huge, round glass "disk" almost 4 feet thick, and weighing "tons and tons".......(with lights shining through it ), it STILL looks like one hell of a big chunk of glass! ) and well worth going "off route" one city block to look at it.

You can't blame the optical engineers who design cameras for thinking that using a mirror for a camera lens would "be a good idea"; it actually was a good idea, but unfortunately, the devil was in the details as they say, and it just never did "pan out"! (at least for small, hand held cameras. ) The Hubble Space Telescope is essentially a "great big camera" and it does a marvelous job! (at least for a few more years yet ), with it's almost 100 inch mirror.

Blasthoff Loc: Life halved NY and IN

I think I know the lenses your referring to. They sold under various names, there were two, a 400mm and a 500mm. They are long, preset simple 3 element (I believe) design using T mount adapters. I actually have one on the shelf, a 400mm. I'll give you the skinny on them.

If you have to go really cheap, these are better then any "cheap" mirror lens. They are NOT coupled to your cameras meter. You focus with the aperture wide open then stop down manually to both meter and/or shoot. It is a deliberate and slow process that is a pain to use, but it does work. On the practical side, you'll only use them on sunny days and there are NO quick shots. Stopped down to f8 or f11 is not all that bad but you will find you'll leave it on the shelf more often then not.

Bugfan Loc: Toronto, Canada

You can't argue with physics and optics. That's like convincing a speeding struck to stop instantly on a dime, it just doesn't happen.

I suppose there is the odd 500mm lens for under a $100 made out of coke bottle bottoms or maybe plastic lenses, but that will not get you a quality picture.

I agree that it's not good to spend ten thousand dollars for a lens unless you're using it all the time and you have enough equity in your house to get a mortgage, however you do have to also spend more than $100.

Your only hope, I think, is perhaps an old used film lens if you can find one that fits your camera. I know that's possible with Nikon but I doubt that you can do that with Canon or any other camera maker. You might have a chance with that kind of lens but I suspect you're still looking at more than $100 though perhaps not much more.

Keep a couple of things in mind though. Those old lenses are completely manual, you adjust the aperture and you do the focus and you set exposures manually. That's not an issue once you get used to it, many of us grew up with film and we did that all the time. But it does slow you down of course. Be aware as well that in the seventies there were a lot of really cheap telephoto lenses that were really terrible competing against really good glass. I'd stick with a well known brand like Nikon if you have a Nikon body, that way you'll at least get a good quality lens.

Good luck!

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

If a manual focus lens is acceptable, you can get a 400mm lens from eBay for under $60. You will probably need some patience, but you should be able to score a decent condition 400mm lens within a two month period if you keep a close watch.

500mm will be more of a challenge. There are fewer of those turning up on eBay, and when one does appear, aggressive bidders usually drive up the price to well over $100.

One of my favorite places to pick up "oldie-but-goodie" lenses is at camera shops. The shopkeepers are usually happy to sell off those old manual focus lenses collecting dust in inventory.

graybeard

"recognizable image"? Sooner or later I will get a cheapie, and I almost guarantee it will give an image that is recognizable. Perfect? No doubt, no. But it will be recognizable, and taken at a distance from which, without this lens, no image of any kind would have been taken.

graybeard

Well, you have given me a lot to reply to. I guess you and others have convinced me not to get a mirror lens. I kind of bristle at this Nikon Nikon Nikon mantra. I don't believe it. I don't live in or operate out of Brooklyn, but really, is everybody there a crook? As for Tamron, I bow to your greater knowledge and remove them from the caca list. My background, 40+ years, is in Manual Film SLR's. I am new to both automatic and digital. I have a Canon T3 and some of my lenses are old M42 screw mounts, which I couple to my camera with a M42/Canon EOS adapter I bought for $5 from China. There, I have touched all of the snob buttons out there. Cheap, China, Nikon etc. I am a Philistine, not an Artiste, freely admitted. I have already used a Mamiya/Sekor F1.4 screw mount satisfactorily. I have a Canon 55-250mm, but I wanted a lens with a longer reach. I know I will seldom use it, and that it, along with tripod, will turn me into a pack mule but I WILL get recognizable and acceptable images. I appreciate and welcome your feedback.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Maybe a little different approch?
Maybe a scope or telescope could be found at a garage sale or thrift store (Goodwill?).
Then get a really nifty adapter.

graybeard

Thanks for your to-the-point reply. I know that they are manual, no auto-focus, no light metering but I have tried and succeeded with the concept, and at that long range I know there are no quick off the hip shots. The fact is, 80% of my pix are taken with my 18-55mm lens, usually roughly at 20-35mm. Most of my TP pix can be taken with my 55-250mm, which also is fully auto, but there are those rare long long range shots I would like. Hence, the 400-500mm and, because of its rare use, the need for cheapness. To further complicate matters, I will try using my 2X and 3X converters on it, giving me up to 6000mm ! Yes, I know, that is not likely to give me much of an image, and I will have to work hard to get it. But I have a lot of old equipment I want to try out. I have already branded myself a Philistine, you may brand me an idiot as well. My wife would agree with you. But then, she started all of this by giving me a digital SLR for my birthday.

graybeard

Good advice. Solid and practical. I will keep it all in mind.