authorizeduser Loc: Monroe, Michigan

Anyone have experience with this lens?

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Mirror lenses in general have limitations. You have got to use a tripod, as things will be uber blurry hand held. I had a Ritz camera (what was the brand name) mirror lens years ago and remember how difficult it was to get good shots.

http://advancedphototech.wordpress.com/lenses/mirror-mirror-a-guide-to-choosing-and-using-mirror-lenses/

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Not completely true. Sure they are challenging, especially on an APS-C camera. DOF can be a real problem, and most are manual focus, but they are light weight and can be hand held if the light is good enough. They tend to be softer than a refractive lens, but can have a role to play. Either way a 500mm lens on an APS-C camera will have its challenges as a result of the narrow field of view, and with a reflex that is compounded by the fixed aperture for DOF.

Experimenting, with a Canon FD 500mm f/8 reflex adapted to a Canon T3i, handheld...

Scoutman Loc: Orlando, FL

Go to Flickr and enter the terms in your topic heading. You will find examples of shots taken with this, or comparable, lenses. I would search YouTube for similar results.

authorizeduser Loc: Monroe, Michigan

The reason I ask if anyone had any experience with the Tokina 500mm f8 lens is a friend has one at our local club. While is does mount and seem to work on my D300, when mounted on a D7000, d7100 or d7200 the lens is not recognized. Display shows EE and we are at a loose why. There is an incompatibility somewhere. The lens is fully manual and has no contacts of any kind. I set the lens up as a non cpu on my D300 as a 500mm f8.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

I didn't know Tokina made such a lens. I remember years back, Phoenix Brand, made a similar mirror lens that required a T-mount adapter. A friend had one, paid about $100 or less for it. He used a tripod and in bright sunlight it wasn't that bad. Of course it is not a Canon or Nikon lens. I would check DP Review and see what they say about this lens.

moonhawk Loc: Land of Enchantment

I had one way back when. It was OK, and far better than the Nikon older version I acquired later.

Thae donut shaped highlights were an annoyance, but reach and bang for the buck were very good.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Here are a couple hand held shots using the Minolta 500mm f8 mirror lens. The main difference with this lens is that it can auto focus. The first is using the full frame Sony A99. The others were using a Sony A57 with a 1.5x crop sensor. But they are all handheld. I find that the mirror lens, because it is much lighter than my Tamron 150-600mm lens is actually easier to shoot hand held.

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Leitz Loc: Solms

Have those whose camera's the lens doesn't work with check their user's manual under "Non-CPU Lenses."

garygrafic Loc: South Florida

As previously stated, the donut shaped bokeh is rather boring, but for the money......they can't be beaten

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I've used several different 250mm, 350mm and 500mm mirror lenses over the years, but don't recall ever using the Tokina.

My favorite was the Tamron SP 500mm f8 (There was a Nikkor that had the same specifications and looked absolutely identical, except for a permanently installed Nikon F mount and a different design on the rubber grip of the focus ring... I suspect it was a rebadged Tamron). There were at least two versions of the Tamron SP 500mm "cat" lens.... 55B and 55BB. I don't know the differences between them or recall which I had.

That was a Tamron Adaptall2 lens, so interchangeable mounts allowed it to very easily be used on almost any 35mm camera system. I don't know about Nikon CPU vs non-CPU... but I do know Canon Tamron-EOS mounts can be bought "chipped". I've got one now on a vintage, manual focus Tamron macro lens. Cost about $40 new, including shipping from China (either via eBay or Amazon, I forget which). A lot of other mirror lenses simply use a T-mount, which also are made to fit nearly any SLR/DSLR mount, easily interchanged and available in "chipped" versions. The "chip" is supposedly programmable so that the camera will recognize the lens in a limited way (merely recording the focal length and max aperture in the EXIF). It also enables Canon's Focus Confirmation to work, which can be very helpful whenever using manual focus lenses on modern DSLRs.

I handheld the Tamron mirror lens only rarely. It was a pretty long focal length to try to do that.... plus with film I rarely used faster than ISO 200 film, more often used 100 or even 50... so was limited on shutter speeds. It had to be an exceptionally bright day to get much above 1/500 with ISO 200.

Today with the higher usable ISO on DSLRs, where much faster shutter speeds can be used, the mirror lens would be much more hand-holdable.

This was shot using a monopod (ISO 200 slide film)....


You can see the out-of-focus highlight "donuts" in the above photo... somehow they seemed less obnoxious with the Tamron lens, than some other mirror lenses I'd used.

This was shot using a tripod (also with ISO 200 slide film)...


Above photo also illustrates another of the nice features of the Tamron SP 500mm... It is extremely close focusing to about five or six feet (1.7 meters). This gives roughly 0.33X, 1:3 or one-third life-size magnification.... which is exceptional for a 500mm lens (For comparison, Canon's $9000 500mm f4 IS II focuses to 12 ft/3.7m, giving about 0.15X magnification. In fact, the highest magnification long telephoto Canon offers today is the 100-400mm Mk II, giving 0.31X. The Canon EF 300/4 lens is another close focusing tele, to about 5 feet, giving 0.24X mag.)

The Tammy 500mm was pretty darned sharp and had little distortion or vignetting. I also really liked the way it (and most other Tamron SP lenses) render colors.

The Tamron SP 500mm uses ND filters in a couple strengths to reduce light (since there is no diaphragm to "stop down"). These screw into the rear of the lens.... I think the rear filter size is 25mm or 30mm. The lens also can be fitted with 82mm in front... which is unusual for mirror lenses. It came with a set of filters (one sky, one ND, and several common color filters for B&W film). The Tamron 500mm also has a removable tripod mounting foot and came with a matching lens hood. If either of those are missing, they're hard to replace!

One of the coolest catadioptric lenses I've ever seen was the Konica Hexanon 1000mm f8... The entire mirror assembly is "fixed"... focusing is done with a small bellows at the rear. But, the neatest feature was that it had a Waterhouse Stop aperture system, where you could dial in smaller f-stops. There also was a Hexanon 2000mm f11 cat lens.... but only two copies were ever made and none were ever sold. They were huge (about 35 lbs, if memory serves) and very expensive: you could buy a modest house for the same money. (The 1000mm cost about what some cars sold for.)

I experimented using the Tamron with teleconverters, but was never very happy with any combination I tried (I had a couple 1.5X that worked very well with more standard telephotos).

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Impressive - and thanks for sharing. ........Someday I will get that lens .......and a A99 !

GeneS Loc: Glendale,AZ

Big differences with the Minolta 500mm f8 or the sony version are
auto focus on A mount sony cameras
Sony cameras have in camera stability.
I use my Minolta 500mm f8 on the sony A77
only real cons to this lens is not good for low light, and
no where near as good as the sony "G" 70-400mm lens,
But for the price, gets the job done better than other
500mm mirror lens

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

I have a collection of mirror lenses (but not the Tokina 500).
- Rubinar 300 f/4.5, 500 f/5.6 and 1000 f/10; all built in Russia and built like a Russian tank. The 1000mm is about 5 lbs.; not light! All three give reasonable image quality.
- Sigma (Black) 600 f/8; excellent mirror lens! Best image quality of the ones I own.
- Sirius 500 f/8.8; lightweight, small mirror lens. A real fun lens for the $50 I paid.
- Rokinon 800 f/8; cheap lens and cheaply built. Sort of terrible image quality BUT remember it is 800mm and I normally shoot handheld...
- and a number of reflex telescopes (4) that are really mirror lenses but somewhat larger...

Minolta/Sony makes/made? an excellent mirror lens, Nikon at one time made a nice mirror lens as did Tamron.

A professional photography would probably never buy a mirror lens BUT they are inexpensive, some can give reasonable quality, the bokeh is weird, most work best with APS-C (or smaller) sensors, most are manual focus, all should be used off a tripod... However, they are a lot of fun!

bwa

dmsM43

I've been using the Canon FD version on my Olympus E-M1, and it works pretty well with focus peaking. The last time I took it out, I used it handheld with both the E-M1 (which has in body stabilization) and with a Sony A7r. No problems as long as you keep the shutter speeds up for the Sony. The lens is quite sharp actually, and the doughnut ring bokeh depends on the background, and in some cases, is hardly noticeable. I understand that there may be software to fix that problem when needed.