CPO 500mm f/5.6 -- an Oldie but a Goodie

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

I own a couple of old Century Precision Optics Tele-Athenar II telephotos, a 500 f/5.6 and a 650 f/6.8. These are manual-aperture T-mount telephotos. Optic construction is basic: each has a well-corrected achromatic doublet, which is enclosed between optically flat front and rear elements. Both take good pix, but it's been several years since I've used either one. Nowadays most of my photographic needs just don't include the use of a long telephoto.

Recently, though, I bought an adapter that would allow me to hook up my Century telephotos to my Canon DSLR. It arrived a couple days ago. I've got slides I took with these lenses which came out nice, but of course, I was curious to see how they would perform with a DSLR. In the following test, I used the 500mm f/5.6 only. The 650mm f/6.8's front elements are beginning to separate, and I figured that this condition would affect sharpness, so I'll just wait with it until I have the front doublet recemented.

So anyway, following is a series of photos that I took with my Canon XS (1000D), mounted on a sturdy tripod. The stop sign was about 200 meters away. The "Watermill Express" kiosk is about 10 meters further away, and the red pickup is probably another 10 meters beyond the water kiosk. The storefronts in the shopping center are about 250 meters distant. I focused on the "Watermill Express" sign.

The following images were reduced in size and converted to jpg's with no compression. I applied a bit of unsharp masking to the full-frame images. The 100% crops have had no processing done to them other than converting them to jpgs (with no compression).

500mm CPO @ f/5.6:

500mm CPO @ f/8

500mm CPO @ f/11

500mm CPO @ f/16

100% crops:

@ f/5.6

@ f/8

@ f/11

@ f/16

If you look closely, you'll see some purple fringing against high-contrast areas. This seems to be mostly gone by f/11. And while it appears that the lens is shaper at f/5.6 and f/8 than at smaller apertures, I should point out that the wind was gusting as I was taking these shots, and I was using the self-timer instead of a remote shutter release. So the wind may have had some effect on the slower exposures, although I don't really see any evidence of camera shake.

All in all, I'm quite happy with the performance of this lens. You'll see the 500s and 650s occasionally on eBay with prices varying from the mid-200s to the mid-400s ($). They are worth it, I feel. Me, I got lucky with both of mine. Bought the 500/5.6 at a swap meet back in the early 90s for $30 and the 650/6.8 at a camera show for about $100 a few years later.

CPO, which was acquired by Schneider in 2000, built a variety of long telephotos during the 60s-80s, some of which can only be described as BIG. They built a 500mm f/3.8 and f/4.5, a 600mm f/4.5, an 800mm f/4.7, a 1000mm f/5.6 and f/8, a 1200mm f/6.8 and others. Most of these lenses were sold to the motion picture industry, but a number of still photographers have used them over the years with good results.

Best,

Michael

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

I think the price of this now-legendary glass is much higher these days.

You have made a great deal on your investment !

gil

As a birder, I am fond of long lenses. Thanks for showing another option in the manual lens. The longest I've tried on a manual lens was an $8 Tamron 400mm f71. preset that I included in my order of other things. The front lens were cloudy and rather than spend maybe $10 to send it back; thus, I just played with it.

Luis was also an inspiration to play some more with manual lenses.

cheers,
gil