Suddenly got the GAS for a mirror lens

[Steve Ricoh]

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Have a ‘butchers’ at these images:

https://www.35mmc.com/29/11/2023/500mm-mirror-lens-with-film-by-simon-king/
 

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[dpitt]

Nice read.

Two things:

1. I totally disagree with " don’t think the brand really matters, as the image quality seems to be fairly universal across all the available mirror lenses I’ve seen"
   Currently I own a Tamron 500mm F8.0, a Leica 500mm F8.0 and a Tokina 650mm F9.3. They are all mirror lenses and very different! They tend to have less contrast and sharpness compared to normal primes, but the Leica excels and shines. It easily outresolves the longer 650mm tokina, and the Tamron does that too, although with much less margin.
2. I did not see the typicall bokeh rings in his samples. Some people buy these lenses for the special effect it gives. Some hate it. I just bought my first one (the Leica one) because it seemed cool at the time, getting that much reach in such a small package. I sort of picked up the other two 'by accident' in a group. They are not for everyday use, bit can be fun from time to time.

Edited November 29, 2023 by dpitt

[BernardC]

27 minutes ago, dpitt said:

I totally disagree with " don’t think the brand really matters, as the image quality seems to be fairly universal across all the available mirror lenses I’ve seen"

Here's a relevant video. It's in two parts, the second part should show-up as a link when you watch the first.

Summary: the worst mirror lenses are extremely poor. You'll get better results by cropping a much shorter lens, like a 135mm, or even with a "super zoom" point and shoot.

I used to have an M42 Sigma 400/5.6 from the 1980s, purchased at a close-out price (<$50). It was fun, but I eventually gave it away. My best series used extension tubes to shoot very close crops of faces with a direct flash. It worked in that case because the softness and low contrast provided a dreamy look.

These days I stick a doubler on a 200 if I need the reach (which I hardly ever do).

[dpitt]

@BernardC It needs to be a very good doubler and 200 to outresolve the Leica 500 F8 R. You should try it once.
If your Sigma is anything like my Tamron or even worse, the Tokina, then I can fully agree.

I must admit that the APO Telyt 180mm F3.4 R  with APO 2x converter was close in resolution to the 500. And better contrast overall.
My best results were with the APO 2x and the APO Telyt 280 F2.8 R.
But both these lenses are very special, even compared to other excellent R lenses.

[BernardC]

21 minutes ago, dpitt said:

It needs to be a very good doubler and 200 to outresolve the Leica 500 F8 R. You should try it once.
If your Sigma is anything like my Tamron or even worse, the Tokina, then I can fully agree.

It's a Mamiya APO 200/2.8 with the matching doubler (they were sold as a set), left over from an old medium format system. Any of Leica's APO 180mm lenses should also be quite good with the appropriate doubler.

I haven't tried Leica's 500, or Zeiss's mirror lenses for Contax and Rollei, but they have to be substantially better than my old Vivitar. As the video explains, a lot of the performance differences are due to manufacturing precision. You get what you pay for.

[Mr.Prime]

bloody hell, this is a dangerous thread - you just made me order a Rokkor 500mm mirror lens off of ePay. And no, I'm not paying Leica prices but I can live with that.

[Steve Ricoh]

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20 hours ago, Mr.Prime said:

bloody hell, this is a dangerous thread - you just made me order a Rokkor 500mm mirror lens off of ePay. And no, I'm not paying Leica prices but I can live with that.

Do you plan using a digital camera with the mirror lens? Simon King did well with his film camera, but reading Ken Rockwell he mentions SLRs being quite difficult at f8.

[Mr.Prime]

No, I plan on using it with film. My go-to camera for the early decades of my life was a Minolta SLR. The mirror lens I've ordered was designed for Minolta and so it will be used with that.  I don't really need a 500mm lens, but I am now able to indulge and buy one to play with - something I was not able to afford to do back in the 80's when I was a youngster. Heck, as I said before, it wasn't even on my mind until you came along !

I can understand that f8 is far from helpful with an SLR viewfinder. It might be too dim to make good use of the split prism focusing aid that's part of the screen. But I don't really care, I'm just making up for a lost opportunity from my youth. For any kind of hand-held use it'll need really bright lighting anyway. For shots of things far away, such as the moon (tripod), I won't need a perfect viewfinder as it'll be focused at infinity - may need to first calibrate where infinity is because I understand mirror lenses can shift with temperature.

It can't be easy to get accurate focus with a rangefinder either, the calibration would need to be fantastic. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Mr.Prime

[spydrxx]

At one time I owned a 500 Leica R mirror lens, a Tamron, a Canon and a Nikon. In the end I kept the Tamron and sold the others. I did a series of moon shots on a tripod and  surprisingly the Tamron distinctly outperformed the others. Eventually trying to focus at f/8 on a SLR with declining vision became too much of a challenge and I sold the Tamron too.

[dpitt]

This is not exactly the moon, but it is my church tower 300m away. It was shot handheld with a TL2 and visoflex + Leica 500mm mirror F8, so 750mm eq at 1/1000 sec, ISO 800
The picture below is a center crop from the image as illustrated in the second image.
Minimal processing, no noise reduction or enhancement.
If you look at the little ridge to the right, you can just see the anti-pigeon wires. They are about 2mm in thickness.

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Edited December 2, 2023 by dpitt

[Mr.Prime]

It just arrived!

Quite satisfying to have a mirror lens in my hands after 40yrs of curiosity!

I hope to get some film behind it sometime this winter.

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[Steve Ricoh]

16 hours ago, Mr.Prime said:

It just arrived!

Quite satisfying to have a mirror lens in my hands after 40yrs of curiosity!

I hope to get some film behind it sometime this winter.

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Looks in perfect condition. Very nice.

[Mr.Prime]

I'm wondering how to assess the images  - the finest grain film I have is Pan F, which is slow so no hand-holding. We're so used to pixel-peeping with digital cameras these days that the idea of evaluating a lens with a roll of film has become a lost art. I've lost that art, if I ever had it in the first place. A roll of HP5 at box speed is 3 stops faster than the Pan F and has good dynamic range. I don't really want to burn a roll of film to try out this lens, that's 36 frames of potential greatness so I'll choose something based on other priorities.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Mr.Prime

[Steve Ricoh]

I think the mirror lens is mainly for the effect, the extremes of foreshortening, I wouldn’t be that interested in analogue ‘pixel peeping’, and would probable use something like HP5+ and maybe push a couple of stops. I like grain, having little interest in ‘perfect’ images. 

[250swb]

I had one in the 1980's, can't remember the make but probably Tamron, but other than it being an impressive 500mm for its size (but not its weight) it was utter garbage to use. Very difficult to focus at f/8 even in daylight. I was doing the political party conferences at he time as a journalist and the speakers would always be very well lit on stage because you got very sharp contrast, but the nightmare was in daylight and trying to photograph the likes of Arthur Scargill (the Miners union leader for those outside the UK or those too young to remember). Fortunately it was easy to get in amongst the crowd and use a different lens, but standing off with a 500mm mirror lens was a disaster. The difficulty with f/8 is the inherent DOF and trying to decide where the exact focus point is on an SLR that already drops the light level in the viewfinder by one stop at minimum.

[Pyrogallol]

8 hours ago, 250swb said:

I had one in the 1980's, can't remember the make but probably Tamron, but other than it being an impressive 500mm for its size (but not its weight) it was utter garbage to use. Very difficult to focus at f/8 even in daylight. I was doing the political party conferences at he time as a journalist and the speakers would always be very well lit on stage because you got very sharp contrast, but the nightmare was in daylight and trying to photograph the likes of Arthur Scargill (the Miners union leader for those outside the UK or those too young to remember). Fortunately it was easy to get in amongst the crowd and use a different lens, but standing off with a 500mm mirror lens was a disaster. The difficulty with f/8 is the inherent DOF and trying to decide where the exact focus point is on an SLR that already drops the light level in the viewfinder by one stop at minimum.

I was at the 1986 TUC Congress and saw all those famous union leaders of the time, Arthur Scargill, Eric Hammond, Brenda Dean etc. Lots of arguments that year over the miners and the Wapping newspaper disputes. I have pictures from that time but none of those people.

The free-bee document case I got there now holds 8x10 darkslides.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Pyrogallol

[pgk]

I remember 'testing' a Nikkor 1000mm reflex lens when I was studying. It was quite good BUT required me to use the solidest, heaviest Gitzo tripod that the college owned and, since I used it on top of the multi-storey college building in central London, results were hit and miss depending on vibrations prevalent when the shutter was tripped. I think that we decided that this was due to its relatively low weight and consequent lack of intertia. My conclusion was that they required very careful focussing, as high a shutter speed as possible (often tricky with slower films back then) and if at all possible, a very sturdy tripod. They were popular for a time (1980sish) but seem to have fallen out of favour. Mirror lenses can be out of alignment (the mirror needs to be very accurately fitted) which has not helped and has tended to give them a poor reputation, possibly somewhat unfairly. Some were 'solid and of these I think that the Vivitar lenses were actually made by Perken Elmar in the USA, and these still have a good reputation although of course there may be a little bias amongst some😉.

[KFo]

I had a short term lust (before GAS had been identified ) for a 500mm mirror lens back in the 80s also.  I fiddled with one in a camera store mounted on a Nikon F3HP(I shot Olympus in those days).  It was a tripod only beast; although I tended to have a tripod and a Domke with me often back then.  After a few minutes I realized that I'd never have a real working handle on such a long lens as cool as it seemed.  I had a 70-210 zoom already and almost never used it.

Even then I wanted a light and compact camera system. 

Edited December 8, 2023 by KFo

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[dpitt]

@BernardC

Finally!
I have been waiting for days of cloudy, dark weather  to have an opportunity to test what we discussed. The question of how good the Leica 500mm F8 mirror lens resolves, compared to the excellent Apo Telyt 180 R with APO Extender 2x (360 mm)
I have thrown in my 500mm F8 Tamron too. The tests were done as fast as possible to have the same light (sort of), taking advantage of a small gap in the clouds. All were shot at ISO 3200 F8 A-mode with the TL2, so we have 750eq  for the mirror lenses competing with 540mm eq of the R lens. No enhancements or correction whatever on the DNG files.(imported in C1P)

So I cropped the center part of the frame to show about the same feature of the church tower, at 300m like this:

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Leica 500mm F8

[dpitt]

Second part
Tamron 500mm F8

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