[ivanvernon]

A few handheld results with K-1 and Mamiya Sekor 645 C 500mm f 8.0 reflex.

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[mlynch53]

I shot this red-bellied woodpecker at my backyard feeder hand-held, too, using a Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror lens on my K-S2.

Pretty happy with the result!!

Mike

[Thagomizer]

Cross posted with the Yard Birds thread.

Here are more shots taken with the MTO 10/1000 on KP, 800 ISO.

Cooper's Hawk. This is the male.



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Not too bad, if I do say so myself. It's definitely a lens you take for specific work, rather than on spec.

[prsjnb]

The image of the Yellow wagtail was taken hand-held. The others were taken with the aid of a tripod-mounted gimbal head.

Thanks for looking

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Last edited by prsjnb; 05-20-2021 at 11:25 AM. Reason: Additional text

[mlynch53]

American Robin in my back yard singing his evening song as the sun heads toward the western horizon.

Pentax K-S2 and the same Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror lens.

Mike

[Dartmoor Dave]

I picked up an old Sirius 500mm mirror recently on the grounds that it would be crazy not to for a mere £29. It'll really only ever be used for the local airshow once a year (in a post-covid dreamworld), but for now here's some test snaps including quite literally my first ever bird photos. Bird photography experts might want to shield their eyes from the horror.

This one is not a bird, it's a longhorn calf. But telling the difference between bird / non-bird is about the limit of my avian identification skills.



I'm almost certain that this next one is a bird of some kind, on the basis that it's got wings and it's sitting on a tree. Cropped to vertical from a horizontal shot at ISO 3200, so. . . you know. . . noise.




And a non-pony variety creature on a part of the moor that's mostly all ponies, so I'm going to guess bird on this one too. Also cropped from horizontal but at ISO 800.




Let's face it, the Sirius 500mm is never going to worry 150-450mm owners. But the 150-450 costs seventy times as much, so for my very basic needs the cheap Sirius is just fine.

[marcusBMG]

old Sirius 500mm mirror

Got yourself a surprisingly orange chaffinch, and a pipit (I'll let the experts debate what kind of pipit..), and a really surprisingly good mirror lens there, much better than I would expect from a generic name one. Do you have a pic of the lens?

[Dartmoor Dave]

Got yourself a surprisingly orange chaffinch, and a pipit (I'll let the experts debate what kind of pipit..), and a really surprisingly good mirror lens there, much better than I would expect from a generic name one. Do you have a pic of the lens?

The surprisingly orange chaffinch is from a combination of a very golden golden hour last night and my refusal to ever use AWB.

I haven't taken a snap of the Sirius of my own, but I hope I can be forgiven for borrowing this one of an identical item from a UK dealer who is asking a frankly over-optimistic £89. It's an f/8.8 T2 mount lens and I've added a 67mm metal hood that I happened to have handy, which no doubt helps the contrast a bit.



Taking the lens off the camera this morning I noticed what looked like a rear filter, so I unscrewed that for a quick test to see how the lens did without it. Turns out that it was an ND filter, which seems like a daft addition to an already slow lens, and the quick test snaps that I took show a slight improvement in sharpness without it. So I think I'll be leaving the rear filter off. The test snap has been sharpened slightly in the reduction to web size, otherwise the poor old lens will look worse than it actually is.

[mlag]

Bruce – Many thanks for your most complete response. You brought up some interesting points.

I also did a bunch of Internet research today including a number of YouTube videos. The more I learn, the more I think I would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The single f/6.3 or f/8 aperture and the very thin depth of field would probably offset the lens being smaller and lighter. I suspect I will soon have to limit my long lens business to my 55-300mm.

I agree that going mirror might be as tricky as carrying your big tele zoom... the reduced contrast & fixed aperture & shallow DoF of a mirror have their own challenges.

I have two mirrors : a cheap f6.3 500mm walimex and the pentax zoom f8-f12 400-600mm. I like to play with the mirrors, but I don't consider them as my standard tele lens: I feel my heavy and long vintage pentax-k 400mm f5.6 is easier to shoot handheld - albeit heavy and equiped with mount for tripod use - than these lightweight mirrors. The succesfull picture hitrate of the 400mm is defintely higher than the mirrors !


But as an aternative long tele solution, I also use my pentax-m* 300mm f4 with the 1.7x AFA teleconvertor. It yields 510 mm f6.7, and is smaller and easier to carry/handle than my 400 mm.

The TC+300 weighs ~950 gr and ~160 mm long
The 400mm 1250 gr and 277 mm long


So my alternative for a lighter, longer tele :
- use a TC convertor with a light tele (prime) : a 300 mm with a 1.4x or 1.7x gives a range 420 or 510mm
- it will be more compact than the equivalent focal length lens
- the TC tends to increase (magnify) the optical imperfections of a lens ( hence my advice for a prime or a quality zoom as base lens)
- the disadvantage is one stop less light for 1.4x, 1 1/2 stop less for 1.7x and 2 stop less for 2x convertors. Hence f4 aperture of the base lens is good (lower is better)

Note: the 1.4x TC is available new, with support for modern lenses (with focus motor, lens info contacts etc...), the others are vintage models and fully manual focus and metering.
If you already own a good base lens, the convertor addition is relative modest in price.

The other thing you might consider is a light monopod. Still easy to carry, giving more support for your long lens, but still flexible enough for that handheld shooting feeling.

2.12.0.02.12.0.0

[mlag]

Some results of todays mirror shootout with pentax 400-600 mirror zoom.
Note that i can set the focus length on my camera to 400 500 or 700 , but not to 600 , so i use 700 for 600 for this lens.

2.12.0.0

[marcusBMG]

I have acquired a minty example of the charmingly petite 300mm f5.6 mirror, found as numerous marques. Mine is an optomax.



I made a hood out of a gravy granules pot and a 67mm filter, deglassed.


This mirror is a very decent performer.

[marcusBMG]

Some pics with newly acquired MTO 500A 550mm f8.5. K3-ii. #1 came out much better than I expected. #3 the great Orme is a mile away.

[Ash]

A couple at near-infinity focus:

[RobA_Oz]

A couple at near-infinity focus:

Those are nicely-captured, Ash. The boy in the second is in good focus, while the two girls exiting left aren’t much behind, but are beyond the thin DoF. Which mirror lens were you using?

[steamloco76]

Tamron 55BB 500/8 on K-70