And the results are...
Oct. 22nd, 2016 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ffutures...Not quite as I expected, but close.
Further to my last post about lenses, I did a comparison test today. I started out with my long zoom at 50mm, 300mm, and 300mm with a x2 converter, then tried the mirror lens (500mm f8) and the long lens (500mm f8-f22), all pointed at a block of flats a few hundred yards away.
To cut a long story short, the mirror lens is the worst of the three, with the results blurry and a bit grey. The zoom lens is a little better at 300mm with the x2 converter, better still (but obviously a smaller image) without the converter, but neither is particularly wonderful - not hugely surprising since zoom lenses are always a compromise and tend to give their best results towards the mid range, and converters don't get on well with zooms, but a bit disappointing. I didn't try manually setting aperture etc, which might have given better results. The cheapo 500mm lens did better than either of them at F8, a lot better when I stopped it down to F16, and I think the results would have been better still if I'd used a more solid tripod - the one I have is about 30 years old and getting a bit shaky. The long lens pictures are slightly off level because of another problem; because of the arrangement of furniture in my front room there wasn't room for me to get behind the camera properly with the long lens, so I had to use a right-angled viewfinder and didn't notice it was slightly out of position.
So the verdict, I think, is that the mirror lens goes to eBay and I keep the long lens for occasional shots of birds etc. - probably won't use it much but I don't use the mirror lens much. Its big disadvantage is that MINIMUM focal distance is about 12 metres, whereas the mirror lens could focus to 2 metres, but I don't think I've ever used that capability.
Zoom set at 50mm - the block of flats at the back is the target for the other photos
Zoom at 300mm
Zoom at 300mm with 2x converter
Mirror lens 500mm
Long lens 500mm
Further to my last post about lenses, I did a comparison test today. I started out with my long zoom at 50mm, 300mm, and 300mm with a x2 converter, then tried the mirror lens (500mm f8) and the long lens (500mm f8-f22), all pointed at a block of flats a few hundred yards away.
To cut a long story short, the mirror lens is the worst of the three, with the results blurry and a bit grey. The zoom lens is a little better at 300mm with the x2 converter, better still (but obviously a smaller image) without the converter, but neither is particularly wonderful - not hugely surprising since zoom lenses are always a compromise and tend to give their best results towards the mid range, and converters don't get on well with zooms, but a bit disappointing. I didn't try manually setting aperture etc, which might have given better results. The cheapo 500mm lens did better than either of them at F8, a lot better when I stopped it down to F16, and I think the results would have been better still if I'd used a more solid tripod - the one I have is about 30 years old and getting a bit shaky. The long lens pictures are slightly off level because of another problem; because of the arrangement of furniture in my front room there wasn't room for me to get behind the camera properly with the long lens, so I had to use a right-angled viewfinder and didn't notice it was slightly out of position.
So the verdict, I think, is that the mirror lens goes to eBay and I keep the long lens for occasional shots of birds etc. - probably won't use it much but I don't use the mirror lens much. Its big disadvantage is that MINIMUM focal distance is about 12 metres, whereas the mirror lens could focus to 2 metres, but I don't think I've ever used that capability.
Zoom set at 50mm - the block of flats at the back is the target for the other photos
Zoom at 300mm
Zoom at 300mm with 2x converter
Mirror lens 500mm
Long lens 500mm
