Originally posted by barondla Imtheguy, can't wait to see your tele Q images. Think the 500 4.5 will be incredible. The mirror will likely fare less well because of its smaller aperture and mirrors tend to be less sharp. The mirror should have little or no ca so it may do better than expected. The Q shows no mercy with ca! When buying a new lens for the dslr cameras it will get tested on the Q for ca.
have fun
barondla
Ask and ye shall receive. Although it was too short a day to get in the 800mm mirror shots, I have some comparisons for those (like me) that had no idea how well the Q would handle big glass. I did not go with a heavy setup, just my normal carbon tripod and the 2 sec timer. I forget to turn off SR so have no idea how it was handled when using the Q and adapter since it never asked for FL.
In keeping with the thread title, I must add that an RD400 Electro-Dot Sight came with the package but I felt comfortable zeroing in on subjets without it. However in keeping with my ability to make the setup look extra geeky I will mount the sight in the future.
Here is my first shot out of the box and mounted with the Sigma 500/4.5. Distance was 6m and aperture was f5.6. DOF seems like 5mm so I may have to use my neighbors feeders as mine are too close.
100% crop of a screw in the feeder to show the detail really is there in good light.
Since the screw is the size of a Finch's eye, why not try a Finch? DOF is too small but where it focused I was impressed. Uncropped at f5.6 from 6m.
Lets get some distance and maybe can fit the subject into a frame. There is a pipe that Egrets stand on during low tide that gives me a steady 37m distance to work with. Q with the da*300 this time. Still could not quite fit in the frame.
Here is the same da300 but with K-5 for comparison at same distance. No cropping or processing, just trying to show the basics.
....and here is the K-5 and 500mm from 35m out.
Next, I will try some side-by-side comparisons to see if the Q and 500mm can stand up to the K-5 and 500+1.4x teleconverter once I resize both to be equal. I just need a fluffy Egret that will hold a pose for 5 minutes or so. Ok, will try the 800/8 mirror but hold little hope for that other than massive magnification.....and yes, the Egret did catch dinner once I quit distracting it.