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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Rokinon 500mm Mirror Lens (1 Viewer)

Craig S

Member
Here are the first pic's with the new mirror lens mounted on an Olympus E-510. My experience level would be advanced amateur, maybe.
Never expected to get any award winning shots with this really just wanted it for the zoom.
Total cost delivered was $230 Canadian, including taxes, delivery from U.S.A., and duty. Included lens, 2X teleconverter, stedi-stock. Lens cleaning kit, t adaptor, magazine subscription.
Teleconverter will not work with any other type lens. I doubt the t adapter will either.
Stedi stock inovative but you really need 3 hands to use it, 2 to steady camera and focus, 3rd hand to operate shutter. Might consider trying a cable shutter release and attaching it like a trigger onto stedi-stock.
All shots were held held.
Basic info is included with pic. Lens size 500mm/1000mm, the shutter speed, ISO then distance to subject. All pic's were taken through triple pane window on a very cloudy day. Hold mouse pointer over pic to see basic info. The STO picture is a Stop sign.
The results are not spectacular but not bad considering that the shots are all hand held and the size of the lens used. Also all shots are manual so no autofocus, or any other automatic settings. I am fairly pleased and will experiment more later out doors with a monopod for stabilization.
Considering that I would have had to put out over $2,000 to get a 4/3 500mm lens and 2x teleconverter, or a 1.4x teleconverter and 600 mm lens I am fairly pleased. The results with the 500mm lens and 2x teleconverter would likely not have been much different under the same circumstances. Also they are no longer producing Sigma 400, 500 or 600mm lens for my camera.
Took 144 pic's of those I found only 11 were of any use, these are pretty much the best of the 11.
Manual focusing is difficult as the focusing ring is fairly easy to move and thus minute adjustments are difficult.
I think someone with more experience could do much better, and I could probably do better if I used a tripod and remote shutter release.
Aiming is a little challenging as you are starting at 500mm so I found that I was spending a fair bit of time searching for my subject. Now I use the hotshoe to sight down, then go to viewfinder and have to raise the camera a bit to acquire subject.
I also purchased a magnifier for my viewfinder. Thankfully I found one on clearance for $20 as opposed to the retail price of $69. The magnifier does help but manual focus is still difficult.
I'll post a few more pictures later using a monopod and a tripod.
Pictures have no post processing other than resizing to meet size requirement for attachments. Resizing did darken the pictures a bit and sharpness suffered a little as well.
 

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More Samples

Took another 49 pic's during the afternoon. Of the 49 only one was completely unusable. The remainder were good enough to identify the birds in the pictures. I was not paying much attention to the manual settings as there were so many birds in the area and we were trying to get as many pictures as possible to aid us in identifying them. Most of the birds were warblers, finches, sparrows and vireos. Most of these pictures are over exposed but still quite usable. All pictures were at best a little out of focus. The area is heavily treed and a lot of undergrowth so it is difficult to get clear pictures even using autofocus.
We are partaking in a 5 year province wide bird atlasing project and have 2x10 square kilometer areas to monitor so it is more important to get pictures to identify the birds later as often they are 20-40' into the bush or high up in trees and moving constantly making on the spot identification difficult.
For our purposes this lens is economical and does the job so I am happy with it and will likely get better with it as time progresses. The manual focus is not really an issue because autofocus is pretty much useless in the bushy areas we are monitoring.
I have attached two of the better pic's I got on this outing, they are not bad and will serve our purpose.
These pictures were taken using a monopd, the ducks were about 75' distant and the geese about 100 yards. Heavily overcast and in heavy bush/trees. I only used the lens at 500mm as 1000mm in the bush was not practical.
At this point I'm not certain I could recommend this lens although I think with time and practice I will get better with it.
Olympus is moving into the micro 4/3 system now and I suspect their support of the 4/3 system will start to dwindle. Sigma is no longer making 400-600mm 4/3 lenses so options on the 4/3 system are already becoming limited. Probably will wait a few years to see how it goes then will likely consider getting a more widely supported DSLR with a bigger zoom. lens. I currently have a 70-300 Olympus lens but it just isn't sufficient for the type of photography we will be doing over the next 5 years. The 70-300 lens is just as difficult to manual focus as the mirror lens. I do like the E510 but do not see myself investing any more money in it or the 4/3 system.
 

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I don't mean to be negative, but they aren't very good are they? Shows that you get what you pay for, although I'd say that at $230 it's not even that good!
 
You get what you pay for, but for our purposes it will work, won't be posting to many pictures from it.
It is a cheap lens to for the bird atlasing project and a temporary lens until I decide whether I will stick with Olympus 4/3 system.
I did get one pretty nice picture of a warbler about 30-40' into thick bush. Over time I think I will get better with it but it does not compare to the $1,600 lenses.
We also want the 1000mm range for raptors in one of the grids we will be monitoring.
For the price it is OK, its biggest draw back is manual focus, but that has as much to do with the difficulty of focusing a 4/3 camera with a small viewfinder.
No buyers remorse, I realized the focusing would be a problem and was not expecting prize winning photos, it is a tool and it does what I expected.
 

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I currently have a 70-300 Olympus lens but it just isn't sufficient for the type of photography we will be doing over the next 5 years. The 70-300 lens is just as difficult to manual focus as the mirror lens.

The 70-300 doesn't have AF?

I'd have thought a heavy crop from even a cheap 3rd party 70-300 (with AF) would be better than what you're getting.........
 
As I stated in the post we are observing birds in heavy bush and trees, at a range of even 20' in heavy bush the autofocus is pretty useless, always finding something in the foreground to focus on so it is constantly trying to focus. With a 70-300 lens at even 20' on the Olympus E510 a warbler sized bird is very difficult to manual focus on. The E510 has a small viewfinder which makes it even more difficult. This cheapo lens is sufficient for what we need as it brings the smaller birds even closer thereby making manual focus a little easier. I am not out for excellence with this lens just to record birds for a bird atlasing project. Although with more experience I think I could get some passable pictures, but again that is not the objective. Most of the pictures we are taking have to be quick as a lot of the birds we are photographing are very small and do not sit still for long. So adjustments to ISO, shutter speed and WB are seldom made, as we enter the bush I take a few shots to set up the camera and generally just go from there. The lens proved its worth to us yesterday as we recorded over 10 small birds deep in the bush or high in the trees that we would otherwise not have been able to identify.
For me the lens is merely a tool that works.
 
The focussing doesn't look too bad to me but they all look very dark.

I would have thought you could enhance them via software without too much problem.
 
I could but didn't as this lens is purely for a 5 year bird atlasing project, I only need to identify the the birds and it does this just fine. I could adjust lens speed, iso etc, but the areas we are monitoring range from open fields to dense bush, to taking pictures or birds high in trees so I will generally set the camera for the type of area I am in as I am often snapping pictures rapidly. The migration has started with new birds in the area every day so it is pretty much none stop shooting. To stop and change settings would mean missing birds that may just be passing through.
Just got back from my latest walk and saw several new birds in the area, from vireos to cranes, got pictures of them all, but not certain how the crane pictures will turn out as I was shooting through tree branches and the camera was set for lower light settings. It seems to be a capable lens and serves my purposes very well. In the types of settings we are monitoring an expensive lens would not do much better, unless it is capable of auto focusing through thick brush and tree branches.
Found the monopod to be an encumbrance today and ended up shooting hand held.
I will likely use the mirror lens for the length of the 5 year project.
 
Have had this lens for about a week now and it has performed better than I expected. The 2x teleconverter was a real surprise as it works rather well.
That being said this lens is still no replacement for a quality lens.
I find the pictures can be acceptable, but, they will not win any prizes. Once you start to enlarge the pictures the lack of quality is immediately evident.
The manual focus is the biggest draw back for me as I often have problems getting a really sharp image.
I have image stabilization built into my E510 so that helps a bit as I have seldom used a tripod or monopod with this lens.
I don't think I would want to rely on this lens to get me any memorable pictures of say a whale watching vacation. It is a cheap way to get that extra zoom for birds. The further away or the smaller the subject the less likely that a quality image will be captured.
Be prepared to be deleting many pictures.
Have attached a few sample pictures, the smaller pictures are from a Canon Rebel XS, 250mm lens, unfortunately we didn't check the Rebels settings and image stabilization was off and the camera was set to manual rather than a scene setting so the images are not terrible but not as good as they should have been.
Picture of the Gold finch is a sample of the area we are taking pictures in.
 

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Last edited:
I think this is what Inags meant...
 

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Thanks for cleaning that up, you did an excellent job considering what you started with. Doubt I could have gotten it that good. I rarely do any post processing.
I found this lens to be OK for my purposes and better than many of its bashers claim, although if I were going for quality pictures I wouldn't use this lens.
The warbler picture was taken on a very cloudy day in dense bush, the camera settings were wrong and the pic would have been better if I had made adjustments but for what we are doing, the nature of the area and birds, changes to settings are not always possible.
 
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