Hey all,
I just picked a
500mm mirror lens up off eBay and have been playing around with it a bit. I pooh-poohed the idea of difficulty focusing because, after all, I'm a
real photographer from back when we had to mix up our own emulsions from the caribou we hunted with our stone hand-axes...anyway, after decades of work with manual-focus lenses, I figured, how hard could it be?
Hard, as it turns out. Of the 50 or so images I shot the first time out, I had maybe 5 in focus without undue shutter blur. You would not think that ducks bobbing on little foot-high waves would move around enough to muck with your mind, focus-wise. (But if you would not think that, clearly you've never tried to hand-focus a 500mm f/8 catadioptric!)
With other lenses, I'll sometimes use the trick of setting the autofocus point, then using catch-in-focus while I slowly rack the focus ring. Here, though, the shutter was firing the instant I pressed, even when things were WAY out of focus. I seem to recall C-I-F working with M lenses. Am I missing something?
TIA,
rw
(
Here's one of the few keepers.)