A7 with 500mm mirror lens

[Michael_j]

I had an opportunity to try my A7 with a 500-mm Olympus Zuiko OM mirror lens yesterday. I won't post any pictures because the lens which had just been 'repaired' was clearly faulty, vignetted badly and wouldn't focus beyond about 100yds. It's on its way back to the repairer.

 

However I was quite impressed with the handling and the in-focus pics were quite good. No 'doughnuts' but a rather nasty bokeh I thought.

 

Any forum members able to comment on using these lenses? I understand that the Oly Zuiko is well regarded and that the Son/Minoltay is the only autofocus model. 

 

 

 

[addicted2light]

I used a Tokina 500 mirror lens when I still shot with the Canon 5D mk II, for a specific project. Basically I was trying to exploit the peculiar bokeh of a catadioptric lens, but in the end I abandoned the work because I didn't particularly liked the results. And a lot of time was wasted in retouching the "light rings" caused by every tiny reflection. 

 

These lenses are light, and my sample was really quite sharp on the Canon. But when I tried it on the A7r and on the Nex 7 I first thought it was broken: it was almost impossible to get a decently sharp image, even just looking in the finder.

 

Besides, the depth of field with a mirror lens is paper-thin even at a certain distance. And without an aperture you don't have any way to extend it.

 

Honestly, if I were you I would pass, especially considering that you can buy a 500 "normal" lens for not that much more money, nowadays (a zoom or a cheap "unknown brand" lens, obviously I'm not referring to a Nikon supertele )

[LeButler]

Quick comparison of the 500mm Samyang f8 mirror lens and 70-200mm FE f4 on an NEX 5N:

 

Manually focussed on where the bottom brush meets the hub - not particularly hard on either lens. f8, 1/320, ISO 400 on lightweight tripod (high shutter/ISO necessary due to the wind thisevening)

 

 

With the images cropped to the same field of view, the 500mm does manage to resolve more detail than the 70-200mm at 200mm which I guess is good given it costs one tenth the price of the other lens.

That said, as you can see the colours are horribly murky! And people rarely like the bokeh of mirror lenses...though just occasionally it has a nice/positive effect.

 

Identical settings for both shots, zero post-processing other than cropping. 70-200 first:

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