Hi Charles,
Two things I didn't see mentioned in the other answers:
 - Someone mentioned that f8 is a 'reasonable' aperture. At 500mm, f8 
has very little depth of field, making certain shots impossible. 
Conventional teles may require tripods (as does real sharpness), but 
the f-stop required for adequate DOF and associated shutter speed 
often require it anyway.
+ Mirror lenses usually focus quite a bit closer than regular teles.
 I have 350/5.6 and 500/8  Tamron SPs which are great to carry for 
'in-case', but I use my Tokina AT-X 150-500mm/5.6 for any serious 
long lens work. I also have a 1000/11 mirror, but that gets into the 
territory where the state of the atmosphere becomes almost more 
important than the lens. Ths Tokina also focuses closer than most 
conventional 500mm teles, 2.5m, 1:3.5.
Moose
 
 
 Sometimes what looks like atmosphere is merely lack of contrast due 
to the design. I saw some slides projected once with shots with 
1000mm Nikon reflector compared with a 1000mm Leica refractor and the 
differences were not subtle.  The Leica shots were richly colored and 
contrasty while the Nikon shots looked like multigeneration copies 
with no color and no contrast. I know Nikon knows how to make good 
lenses too, so I think it was the difference in design. When contrast 
and color saturation are marginal anyway and a long shot through the 
atmosphere will completely wipe it out.
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California
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