Teach Me About Russian Mirror Lenses

[xaprb]

Hi! I’m a bit lost trying to research Russian mirror lenses and sort out their makers, brand names, focal lengths and apertures, history, and the like. I haven’t been able to find any comprehensive sources online for this topic. I’d love to have a website with a listing of all of them in one place, but that doesn’t seem to exist.

What do you know about them? Please reply and tell me!

For example: what’s MTO? What’s LZOS? What’s the difference or relationship, if any, between an MTO lens and a Rubinar? What’s a Tair mirror? What are the meanings of all the letter/number codes like “3M-6A” and what are common misspellings, given that there are Cyrillic characters involved (I’ve seen people freely interchange C and S)? For that matter, what different models of lenses in that family exists? Is there really an MTO 1000mm f/10 mirror lens, or is it mistakenly labeled and is really an MTO 1000mm f/11? Is there really an MTO 1000mm f/11 or are people mistyping the 1000mm f/10? (I’ve seen users write in some forum threads, “I have a Russian 1000mm f/11, it’s great” and then the same user elsewhere say “I have a Russian 1000mm f/10, it’s great”)? Why is the MTO 1000A apparently an 1100mm focal length, that’s either a mistake or a really confusing choice of model/brand, isn’t it?

… I have so many questions, but I’ll stop there! Looking forward to learning lots from you!

[BurstMox]

In 1953 came MOM lenses designed by Maksutov and made by KMZ.
Very rare and expensive ($$$$)
MOM-1 500/8
MOM-2 1000/10

Then, from 1956 was produced by KMZ
First generation, slim body, no tripod mount : (1956 - 1959)
MTO 350/5.6
MTO 500/8
MTO 1000/10

Then came the second generation by KMZ
MTO 500/8
MTO 1000/10

OOMZ produced in 1959-1962 :
MTOM 500/8 by Maksutov (not very common)
MTOM 1000/10 by Maksutov (very rare)

It was later transfered to LZOS, which was the specialist of mirror lenses in Soviet Union.
LZOS produced all these, with some noted exeptions.
MTO 500A 550/8.5
MTO 1000A 1100/10.5
MTO 11 1000/10
MTO 11CA 1000/10 (lighter and more compact version)

During the same period, Volosov calculed a derivated MTO, name ZM (3M).

ZM-5A 500/8
ZM-5A CA 500/8 (more compact and lighter)
ZM-6A 500/6.3
ZM-7K 300/5.6 (rare) produced by AOMZ

The last generation is Rubinar

Rubinar 300/4.5 (rare)
Rubinar 500/8
Rubinar 500/5.6
Rubinar 1000/100

About your specific questions :

MTO is the name of the lens, could be for Maksutoviy Tele Objectiv or Meniskoviy Tele Objectiv (because it use meniscus)
LZOS is a plant specialised in mirrorlenses

Tair mirror, I don't know where you read it, but it's not sense. Tair design doesn't use mirror, excepted on rare lenses like Tair-51T.

3M-6A is ZM (Zerkalniy Meniskoviy maybe), the 6 is the code number of the lens, A is for the "A mount" (like Jupiter-37A ou Jupiter-11A).

There is confusion about MTO-11 which is 1000mm/10 and MTO-1000A which is 1100mm/10.5.

I made a video last year about soviet mirror lenses. It does not exactly answer to your question, but it could interest you (activated eng subtittles) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urJi0Q408ZY

[jamaeolus]

This is fantastic. Thanks.

[Gatorengineer64]

They are very heavy, and imho not notably better than the japanese version. I tried a few of them.

[Teemō]

LZOS now reproduces their range of mirror lenses in M42 mount, with machined barrels instead of tube construction, new AR coatings and better interior blackening, so you can buy them brand new but they're not exactly cheap or offering better performance than the vintage originals. About $450 new for the 300/4.5 but don't expect precision finishing like a Japanese lens. I think the lenses are no longer engraved either, essentially screen-printed by shallow laser engraving. Anyway, it's great that they are available brand new again.

There was also the LZOS MC 3M-5CA 500mm F8, also labelled as 3M-5A-MC. This seems like it is more or less the same as ZM-5A \ CA.

[Gatorengineer64]

Do you have a link? This doesnt look happy

http://lzos.ru/en/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=1&category_id=2&manufacturer_id=0&option=com_virtuemart&vmcchk=1&Itemid=2

[visualopsins]

http://www.lzos.ru/products/?PAGEN_1=12
http://www.lzos.ru/products/?PAGEN_1=13

[xaprb]

Thanks for all the information, this is great!

This is a bit of a tangent from my original topic, but since there’s discussion about the newly produced lenses, I’ll go ahead and post. I got a couple of the new Rubinars that LZOS is making, the 2020/2021 vintage. I bought both of these from Zenit’s Germany shop. I forget which is which, but there’s zenit.store and zenit.shop distributing these lenses outside of Russia as far as I know.

The 300mm f4.5 is fine, although its hood is annoying and I will likely make my own with an after market hood and a step-up ring. It doesn’t fit backwards over the lens for storage; I can’t imagine why they designed it that way. It takes up way more space in storage and the lens is so long with the hood on that I end up always wanting to get the $*#@ hood out of the way since it’s just sitting near the lens (and I’m loathe to store it elsewhere lest I forget what it belongs to or where it is). The lens is good to use; contrast is a bit lower than most of my mirrors but sharpness seems fine, although I’m not pixel peeping. Handling is not bad, although not great; it’s pretty bulky (side walls feel needlessly bulky to me, so the lens barrel is a lot bigger than it seems necessary to hold the optics). All in all it doesn’t feel outstanding, but it’s faster than most 300mm mirrors, which makes a big usability difference if you want to shoot in anything but bright sun.

The 500mm f/5.6 is really hard to use because the focus ring is stiff. Not just overdamped; stiff. Like, almost two-handed stiff; so stiff it’ll unscrew the M42 mount at times even if I screw the mount in very firmly. So stiff I have to use elbow motion to focus. Not just wrist motion; certainly this is no one-finger Nikon to focus. I have a feeling I’m not going to use this one very much because of that. I haven’t evaluated the image quality all that well yet, but it seems neither shockingly good nor have I noticed anything to complain about. I will continue to give it more camera time as I find time and circumstances are right. What I tend to do is just take out a lens for no particular reason and walk about listening to my intuition, shooting whatever the lens is suited for or whatever seems to call to it. I’ve gotten a couple really nice portraits of our aging, probably-not-long-for-this-world dog lazing in the sun, one of her favorite things to do, with this lens. That alone makes the lens worth it.

You’re right about the feel being very non-Japanese. Both of them lack a lot of fit-and-finish, and feel overly heavy and coarse.The surfacing quality of the M42 mounts, for example, feels quite imprecise, like it was cast instead of machined. Surfaces that ought to be mirror-smooth and machined to the precision of a fine instrument are lumpy/rippled. That’s just an example. I’m also not a huge fan of the surface material they used to finish with; it feels like a slightly tacky rubberized paint. It’s a dust trap. If I had a cat, I’m positive it would be covered with cat hair in no time and be impossible to clean.

Despite my partially negative remarks above, I hope it doesn’t sound like I regret buying these lenses. Far from it, I am glad to have the chance to give them a good home. I like unusual, niche things. Mirror lenses are already their own niche, and I guess I’m drawn to niches within niches. That’s why I didn’t get the 500/8 or the 1000/10: not weird enough! :) I also love mirror lenses because of their rendering, which most people seem to want to avoid. For me, a mirror lens is often “bad” in a really interesting way. Some otherwise unremarkable shots of, say, a bird in a field of grass has a dystopian feel I don’t think would have happened with any other lens; my cheap Lentar 250mm f5.6, which is so “bad” that I saw one person took out the optics and used it as a desktop pen holder, has produced one of the most emotional portraits of my daughter I’ve ever captured; a “super terrible no good awful” cheap Quantaray mirror lens at close range captured a butterfly on a flower with so many uncorrected aberrations that it looked like something from a dream.

[Lloydy]

I like my LZOS ( Matsukov ) MC 3M-5CA 500mm f8, it was cheap because the focus was stiff, but otherwise in very nice shape. I soon relubed it, it's a simple enough lens. And better than I thought it would be.

Is it better than my slightly fungused Canon, near mint Minolta AF or a well used but excellent Tamron - all 500 / 8 mirrors? No, it's not, but that doesn't make it a bad lens, and it's way better than the cheap Korean, Chinese and Japanese lenses that end up on ebay for next to nothing.

The best thing I've done is buy a cheap Chinese tripod mount for a Nikon 80-200 / 2.8 AFS which fits very nicely on the raised portion of the lens at the front of the static part. All my other mirror's have a tripod mount, and I always use them.

[woodrim]

[xaprb]

I use both Fujifilm X-S10 and Olympus PEN-F at the moment.

I took the Rubinar 300mm f4.5 out for some shooting today and yesterday. It's been a while and I'd forgotten how stiff its focus action is, too. I found myself growing annoyed with it to tell the truth! I found myself working hard to get focus moved and then discovering a bird had flown by the time I got it. Maybe it will loosen with more age and more use.

Here's some sample photos, some processed or downsized, some camera JPG and some converted RAW, but hopefully illustrative of some general results with this lens. (I guess the forum downsizes photos anyway?). I set ISO pretty high in most shots, probably 6400, so there's some noise.

It is not very good as a macro lens in my opinion; MFD is about 1.5m but at that distance, nothing can be focused sharply. I'm guessing spherical aberrations just are not well corrected close-up. I did a technique I call "twist and spray" with this shot: I defocus just to one side of the target, then take a burst of photos while I move the focus through the subject, then later I pick the best shot from the burst. I was trying to focus on the eyes. This shot is "in focus."

#1

#2



It starts to get a lot better around 10 meters. The following photo has contrast (curves) increased in-camera and Clarity increased to the max in-camera. Otherwise no processing.

#3



I have a large collection of 300mm f/5.6 mirror lenses, which have elsewhere been described as rebranding/relabeled Japanese generics. The Rubinar's sharpness on a "bookshelf test" is way better than these.

#4


The hood is absolutely essential. Even on an overcast day, having the lens pointed anywhere close to the something like the sky washes everything out immediately. It's hard to say, but I think it's the worst of all my mirror lenses for veiling flare / stray light.


#5


I used a Vernier caliper to measure the opening and central obstruction at the front of the lens: 71.75mm and 42.5mm. I don't know what the true T-stop of this lens is, but if my calculations of surface area are correct, it's physically impossible for this lens to be any brighter than T/5.2, and it's certainly not an actual T/4.5. By comparison, my Minolta 250mm f/5.6 also has a theoretical max T-stop of 5.2, again just based on how much of an opening there is to let light into the lens. The Minolta is in a different league altogether as for portability, clarity, flare control, etc and it's not much more expensive if you're patient. I got a mint-in-box copy from a first owner here in the US. I paid a pretty penny for it, but I also paid more than generously for the Rubinar. (Again, just to be clear: no regrets. I'm just posting these opinions in case someone is researching and trying to make their own buying decision.)

Overall, when I think about the things I care about when shooting a mirror lens, I might score it like this:

Portability (Size & Weight): 3/5
Handling, Usability: 2/5
Build Quality: 3/5
Image Quality: 3/5
Flare Resistance: 2/5
Price/Performance, Value: 2/5

[woodrim]

xaprb: If your 4.5/300 is representative of the new production, I'll stick with the older lenses. You are not getting satisfactory performance from that (and maybe the 5.6/500) lens. I have more mirrors than any man should and shoot with them frequently. I do know that technique is very important and the camera you're using can play a role. You're using crop sensors which make the angle of view more narrow and thus, steadiness becomes more of an issue. Focus magnification is essential to getting perfect focus but also increases the challenge of holding it steady. I did do pretty well with my APS-C but am now using full-frame, which I like better. If you're using magnification for focusing, the lens should provide a clear enough indication that it's in perfect focus without having to resort to focus-bracketing. My better mirrors are the sharper ones which do a much better job of poping into obvious focus.

Your whites seem blown out; maybe try setting your EV to -.03 or .07. That will also provide a faster shutter speed and maybe help keep the ISO down. You do have an excellent mirror with the Minolta 250mm. I don't know if there is any better at the distances where it performs best. I've used a friend's 250, so have that reference. I've been too cheap to buy my own. I do have the Minolta Vectis 400 and can say it compares very well with the 250mm. The Vectis isn't quite as close focusing but is as sharp and performs better at distances.

The stiff focusing ring should not be. The fault of many mirror lenses is a too-loose and sensitive focusing ring, which makes for great difficulty holding a perfect focus. However, the dampening should not interfere with a good, fluid focus. My 5.6/500 Rubinar has a good feel to it and is very sharp, even if requiring precision focus. However, this older Rubinar is very sensitive to tightening of the adapter and tripod collar. When I first received it, it had bad astigmatism. I loosened the mount, tripod collar, and made sure the hood wasn't tightly attached. Astigmatism cleared up. Every now and then when I have any trouble focusing it, I remember to loosen the mount. It shouldn't be that sensitive but apparently is.

I too have a couple of the 5.6/300 lenses and have been lucky that my copies are very good. I have two Makinon too but both are crap. Either of my 300 will outperform what you have shown from your Rubinar 300mm and that shouldn't be. I don't recall if you said you have the Tamron SP 350 but if you do, that should be a lens to compare with the Rubinar.

If you are a facebook user, you might find it interesting to know that we have a mirror lens group there. It's called "Photography With Mirror Lenses". If you would like to view, I have an album on Flickr of just mirror images. Each image is tagged with the mirror name. https://www.flickr.com/photos/103713015@N06/albums/72157708914494981

[calvin83]

It may be a bit of OT but I found an AF adapter is quiet useful for using mirror lens without a tripod. Use the focus ring to for focus them auto focus for fine tuning. As many mirror lens allow focus past to infinity, this made them very good candidates for the AF adapter available for Sony E and Nikon Z.

[woodrim]