Sunday, October 23, 2011

Trying out a Cheap Lens

I bought this Opteka 500mm f8 mirror lens from a local guy selling camera accessories online.  It was just a curiosity rather than a need.  It was not an easy lens to use.  For a 500mm without any kind of stabiliser forget about hand held shots. A camera stand and a remote release is a must for this lens.  This pictures was taken from the Kinabalu Golf Club in Tanjung Aru, Kota Kinabalu Sabah.


Despite using a tripod, this is not a sharp lens and contrasts a bit low.


At maximum infinity focus is a blurry and you need to turn back the focusing ring back a bit to get the focusing right.


Contrast is on the low side and appears hazy.


Depth of field is shallow and the out of focus foreground has weird out of focus effect of the mirror lens.


This is a very light lens and easy to carry around.  It is only slightly bigger than a 18-105mm Nikon but it is much much lighter.  However the lightness and a f8 maximum aperture means I still need to carry the extra weight of a tripod.

The focusing turn is very limited and very difficult to focus.  You need a super sensitive fingers to rotate the barrel in minute fraction at a time. Forget about action shots on this lens.

My opinion; don't be an idiot (like I have been) wasting good money with this lens.  It is too soft and lacks details.  It is simply not worth the RM500.00 I paid for it.  I had a better result cropping the picture with my old plasticky Nikon AF75-240mm f4.5-5.6D lens.  If  I really need a long lens, my 300mm zoom lens (on my DX will translates to 460mm), which is almost 500mm has superior optics.





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