| Latest Review Posted | Vivitar Mirror Lens 500mm F8
This lens is made by Samyang and also sold as Phoenix, Opteka, Quantaray, and probably others.
I have used the Sigma 600/8 mirror, which is definitely better, but is quite a lot bigger, heavier, harder to find, and usually more expensive. Even though the Sigma is still smaller and lighter than most long true telephoto lenses, I wanted something more portable still. The Samyang-made Vivitar is one of the few such lenses in current production, and is enough smaller than than Pro-Optic 500/6.3 that I didn't really consider the latter (other reviews had seen suggested they would be similar in image quality).
This lens is not great, but for what it is, it's not as terrible as some reviews - mostly from people who don't understand mirror lenses in general - might suggest. With any mirror lens, you have to accept the manual focus, the small fixed aperture, the low contrast, the sharpness not at the level of lenses most of us are used to, and the donut-shaped bokeh. You have to be prepared for the shallow DOF that comes with this focal length, and you have to be able to control camera shake, which isn't easy on a 500mm lens with an aperture of f/8 but light transmission more like f/11. So even the best mirror lenses can be hard for many people to get decent results with.
As I said, this Vivitar is not as good as the Sigma, but nor is it all that much worse. Images I've seen from the Tamron suggest it too is noticeably better. But while you may see reports that the Vi... |
