Mirror lens: help me to choose.

[wolan]

Hi,
I'd like to buy a mirror lens, mainly because of the special bokeh they produce.

I looked around and it seems these below could be good candidates:
- Nikon 500mm f8
- Tamron 500mm f8
- Rubinar 500mm f5.6

Which one is the best in your opinion in terms of sharpness? (Reading some posts on this forum it seems the Rubinar is the best of the pack)
Do they all produce the same typical donut bokeh?
Are there other mirror lenses between 300 and 500m I should consider (say below the 500$ threshold)?

Thanks in advance.

[calvin83]

Rubinar 500mm f5.6 is the best as it will give you brighter donut. Rubinar 300mm f4.5 is another choice if you want a shorter one. Both are big and heavy.

[wolan]

[calvin83]

Which camera you want to use it? One some SLRs with build in flash, you may need to modify the 300/4.5 lens to fit the camera.
http://forum.mflenses.com/adjusting-infinity-on-rubinar-300-4-5-t17773.html

I don't have much experience on the 500mm mirrors.

[wolan]

[marcusBMG]

The tamrons are the most readily available and the cheapest (the 500mm. The 350mm f5.6 is relatively pricy), and good quality.

http://www.adaptall-2.com/lenses/06B.html

http://www.adaptall-2.com/lenses/55B.html

http://www.adaptall-2.com/lenses/55BB.html

[jamaeolus]

I really like my rubinars. They are big and heavy and expensive though. The minolta is pretty good as well, though I have the AF version for my A7ii. You could likely get an adapter for MD version to adapt to the fuji. It is about 1/2 the size of the rubinar. and weighs even less than half.

[fwcetus]

[Lloydy]

The Tamron is very good, but I did have a very bad one that I had to return, I think it had been dropped. The second one I bought is excellent.
I also have a Canon FD 500 mirror that is excellent despite a slight fungus attack, and a Minolta Auto Focus 500 mirror that is probably the best of these three, but that doesn't make the Tamron a bad lens, far from it, it's the one I use most.

One thing to consider with a 500 mirror is how sensitive the focusing ring is because they have a fairly small depth of field and need precise focusing. I had a Samyang for a while and the rotation of the focus was very small compared to the Tamron and the Canon, and although the lens was OK it was difficult to focus.

[stevemark]

I do have some experience using the following mirror lenses on 24MP FF:

* Minolta MD 8/500mm RF
* Nikkor 8/500mm (second computation, close focus to 1.5m)
* Sigma 8/600mm
* Sigma 13.5/1000mm

Clearly the best lens from those is the Nikkor (second computation). It is the only one of these lenses using a hole bored through the main mirror (difficult and expensive), which is essential for reducing stray light (look at figure 2&3 here: http://www.nikkor.com/story/0013/).

The other lenses menrioned above DO NOT have this feature (same is true for the Canon FD 8/500mm). Due to their simpler construction theses lenses do have much more problems with flare and low contrast. In addition, the Nikkor has also a better detail resolution at the borders and at the corners.

This does NOT mean that the e. g. the Minolta MD 8/500mm RF is a bad lens - it has much less CA than for example the MD 4.5/300 or the Canon FD 4.5/400mm. But the Nikkor 8/500mm (second computation) simply is even better!

Stephan

[calvin83]

The Nikkor N do have another advantage: it has more complete donuts on the edge and perform better on close ups.

[wolan]