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| sent on 17 Giugno 2015
Pros: Compact and lightweight, close focus
Cons: Catadioptric lens, meaning fixed slow aperture and 'doughnut' shaped out of focus highlights, quite soft low contrast image, mirror alignment quite easily knocked out of place, no stabilisation, manual focus, very old Tamron 'Adaptall' system, lenshood essential
Opinion: Out of all the plethora of catadioptric (mirror) lenses that came out of the 1980's, this, apart from the much heavier and more exclusive (now) Nikkor variant, this Tamron is about the only one even worth considering, now. With the likes of excellent quality (in comparison) long zooms such as Sigma 150-500mm almost commonplace and affordable, the need for a cheap very much compromising mirror lens is almost not there now. I bought mine back in the film days for my F100 and it's always been difficult to get a sharp image. The subject jumps about in the viewfinder that sometimes it's difficult to frame it accurately! However, it seems surprisingly much more able on the digital crop D7000, accessible via Nikon's 'non CPU lens' data bank. I occasionally use it for very far distant views, where infinity focus usually means no out of focus areas to create those awful doughnut shapes. The resulting image quality is always quite low contrast, not surprising considering how many times the light path is bent by all those internal mirrors. The images always requires quite a lot of Photoshop sharpening and extra contrast. I can achieve better results by attaching Sigma EX 1.4x TC to my excellent Tamron SP 70-300mm VC, giving equivalent to 560mm, compared to 750mm of the mirror lens. The vibration control of the zoom actually works too. I do stop the zoom down a bit though, but even handheld in good light, results can be impressive. Therefore, I almost never use this 500mm f8 mirror lens these days but I will keep it, as its value is probably quite low now and it may become useful again. The lens, being an 'SP' Tamron is well built though, with a nice smooth but long reaching focus ring that focusses down to 1/3 life size. In conclusion: in these days of ultra fast iso's available and excellent long zooms covering this focal length, mirror lenses are really only of novelty value, now. But, if you want to try one, or are after those weird out of focus shapes, then this is probably about the only reasonable contender and the Adaptall system should fit most DSLR's, as long as you can get the relevant adaptor, of course, which will be secondhand too and cost you extra. Overall, I can't give this lens more than 7/10, when compared to what is available today. |
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