Matthias Wilke wrote:
> under the adress
> http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Matthias.K.Wilke/003.html I have posted
> [snip]. The two lion pictures are a little bit great
No, they're just great. *Nice* pussy cats. I can see why you
wanted a long lens. It must have been hard to compose
in a zoo without the depth-of-field tool.
There is supposed to be one of these Russian lenses in
possession of a birder here in Melbourne, also producing
great results.
Mirror lenses in general don't deserve their bad
reputation. The one I have is a Tamron SP 500mm f8, and
has been yielding excellent results. (But I paid much
more than US$95 for it!) I am not surprised at your bad
experience with Sigma - I had one too, and we are not alone.
The OM1 and OM2N are not very suitable cameras for mirror lenses.
Animals tend to blend into their surroundings, so automatic
exposure on the OM2N works well (stepless shutter speeds). Birds,
on the other hand, are usually shot against sky or water, and I
substitute meter on some foliage and then shoot on manual, losing
the stepless speeds. In theory the exposure could be 1/2 stop out,
but I got away with it with the film I used. Velvia is said to be
much less forgiving. I need to do some more experiments with a
faster film. On an OM4 one could use the spot meter on auto, which
is still less convenient than manual if the bird is moving. Is
anyone at Oly listening? The OM5 should have detents at 1 stop
intervals on the shutter ring, but be accurate to 1/6 stop. And
have mirror lockup.
Because the lens is itself so light, vibration is a serious
problem - even someone walking too close in the hide has
caused obvious unsharpness.
The Tamron lens also has UV filters front *and rear* which
come off in nonobvious ways. On my example, they were very
dirty and cleaning did wonders for the contrast.
The doughnut bokeh is only a problem for those people
who approach a picture with preconceptions. I can see this
might rule out use of mirror lenses by professionals,
who have to get their work past art directors.
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