Vivitar 500mm f/8 Series 1 Manual Focus Mirror Lens (Requires T-Mount Adapter)

Comments about Vivitar 500mm f/8 Series 1 Manual Focus Mirror Lens (Requires T-Mount Adapter):

Like in the good old days! Vivitar Series 1 at that price is always a winner.

Comments about Vivitar 500mm f/8 Series 1 Manual Focus Mirror Lens (Requires T-Mount Adapter):

Being that this is a mirror lens, it's as small and light-weight of a 500mm lens as you're likely to find. Seems well built and attaches to my Canon EOS just fine.

Two things to be aware before you order this lens: (1) It is a manual focus lens, (2) the f-stop is fixed at f8.

Because the aperture is not adjustable, exposure is adjusted with ISO value or shutter speed. And the lens can be rather dim for precision focusing because it's always at f8.

I've found that the contrast and saturation of images provided by this lens are poor - very poor when compared the the results of even a moderate quality refractive (glass) lens. The bokeh (quality of the out-of-focus areas of the image) is very harsh and unattractive. I get a much better quality image by using my entry-level Canon zoom set at 300mm and cropping the image.

I find this lens difficult to focus but it is more the fault of digital SLR's than of the lens. Older manual focus cameras often had a split screen circle in the middle of the view finder and a micro prism collar. These tools helped achieve precise manual focus even in dim light. Modern digital cameras are completely geared toward auto focus and lack these precision focus tools.

Comments about Vivitar 500mm f/8 Series 1 Manual Focus Mirror Lens (Requires T-Mount Adapter):

I have thoroughly tested this mirror lens on an Olympus E-30 FourThirds camera and the image quality is horrifying. It gives you an impression like plastic optics of a Lensbaby. An ordinary 200mm telezoom lens delivers more details on a cropped part of the image than a full-size image of this 500mm mirror lens taken at the same distance.

The aperture is claimed to be f/8.0 but my own measurements resulted in f/9.0, that means one third f-stop darker.

Maybe this lens behaves somewhat better on a full-frame 24x36mm sensor (e.g. Nikon D700) or with good old wet film where it obviously has been designed for. It appears that the resolution of this lens has been optimized for silver iodide crystals at ISO 800.

The mechanical build quality is surprisingly high, really convincing. Therefore I can give one of five stars.

I would like to ask the engineers at Vivitar (respectively Samyang) to redesign a mirror lens for APS-C sized sensors: a lightweight 400mm f/6.3 catadioptric type featuring a reasonable resolution would be a dream.

Comments about Vivitar 500mm f/8 Series 1 Manual Focus Mirror Lens (Requires T-Mount Adapter):

Great lens if you like to get the close-up without standing in the path of destruction or to get close-up to that inaccessible subject.

Not for the faint of heart, the field of view is *very* small, so you may want to consider a monopod if you have trouble keeping the camera steady. Save the weight of an optical lens, you won't get tired of carrying this lens around.

Good optics, great addition to the kit. Works great in Manual Focus mode on my digital camera. If you plan to use this on a digital SLR, remember to check out the focal length multiplyer. On some digital cameras, this lens is equivilent to an 800mm lens.

Includes rear filter kit.

Comments about Vivitar 500mm f/8 Series 1 Manual Focus Mirror Lens (Requires T-Mount Adapter):

it's cheeper then spending [$]on a 500mm lens, the only thing i dont like is you cant use a telacoverter with it, like a 2X dubler, the camera dont except it, and give an error message.