Weird lens reviews: Samyang 800mm f/8 Mirror, & 2x telecoverter (with samples)

Ive got a Tamron adaptall 2 500mm

i have the sony 500mm f8 mirror lens and It has Autofocus !! thats the best and useful at 500mm..bought it almost 10 years ago $1000 singapore dollars

Didn’t Samyang make mirror long lenses before it came out with some fast MF primes that caught my attention?

Where's the resolution charts??

Circular loop bokeh.. !

The one place that lenses like this really shine is with astrophotography if you have a Star tracker.

Everyone at some point buys one of these :D

It’s so inexpensive because you can’t see Vampires through them 😭

As a filmmaker I actually love the unusual bokeh.

Is it any good for astrophotography? I want to buy a star tracker and a lens with lots of zoom, and 800mm on my mirrorless 4/3 would be crazy! What do you think?

good for moon

I know this is an old video, but maybe it would have done better with a full frame to APSC speed booster. Let in more light and maybe sharpened the image... (if the focal reducer/speed booster is of good quality). Also, maybe on a camera with good IBIS inbody stabilization could help an absolute ton.

this is so badass

Tokina 800mm f/8
Yes can shaking it is because you are not use correct parameters . Tray to create video on stativ and speed 1/2500 s set ISO800 minimum on 800 distance and 1600 on 1600 distance and have be fine. I personaly preffer 300mm F2.8 and more extender if will set 2x extender and other extra 2x extender get 900mm and I am able change aperture on that fixed lens F8 and 800mm you can lost sharp picture with faling light at evening changes. But on lens with aperture have you more option to hold on stativ with adding aperture on f11 or f22 and get sharper images with any light condition. That is my advice to hold on better optic with aperture.

Now i know where the traffic lights photo in captcha were taken

Good for spying on people

There are a handful of decent mirror lenses, Tamron SP 500/8 focuses to 1.7m and is much sharper than this 800 Samyang, The camera makers reflex lenses of the 1980s were all much better than this Samyang but still not any where near as sharp as a mid-grade traditional lens of similar focal length. What I find curious about this lens you have reviewed is it's super long reach of 800mm in a package just a little bigger than the classic 500 and 600 reflexes of yesteryear. I wonder if that lens already has a built in 1.4x tele-converter? Perhaps it was designed as a 570mm f/5.6 and then a 1.4x TC was installed behind it? Who knows, like you said, it looks like a fun lens, but it is really just a "toy" lens.

Like with all mirror lenses the image is washed out, with very poor definition.

Click the moon

You don’t understand how the equivalent focal length works with an APS-C camera. The image doesn’t magically get higher magnification. Your field of vision gets smaller as if with a longer lens. Example- close one eye and see the room, your focal length is approximately 17 mm, now pick up a straw and look through it. What you see through the straw hasn’t improved, the magnification hasn’t improved, but the amount of the room you can see has decreased as if you were using a higher focal length. That means that the amount of the room you will be able to see is equivalent to the area you would see if using a 1600 mm lens. In other words you capture less of the scene with an APS-C than a full frame. The focal length of the lens (magnification) is fixed by the size of the lens. In real life the image (information) on the APS-C is smaller but zoomed to fit the view finder. FYI 24 MPixels on an APS-C is better than 24 MPixels on a full Frame because it means there are more pixels on the smaller image.

Does this lens cover a full frame sensor?

Heck, with a lens like that, at 2500mm, you'd be the first to get a glimpse of the "BIG MAN" Himself, way up there amongst the clouds😇 ☁️

Fast forward to 2020 and we have dioptric 800mm f11 lenses

If you buy such a lens, you are obviously not a photographer. It's a PVC tube with some wine bottle butt glasses.

I like the doughnut bokeh :) it's unique.. it's hardly trying to mimic standard bokeh.... In fact it's not so much bokeh as artifact.

LOL 99 bucks on amazon now, I can't wait to see this. yea 99 bucks with a doubler. I can't wait to see what it can do!

I remember 500mm mirror lenses being popular with amateur photographers in the 1980s. Nice vid. Thanks Christopher.

Funciona na Nikon d 3100 ?

lol modern photographers freak because they have to focus manually. try a rangefinder camera with dof indicator on the lens.

In the past Nikon, Canon, Minolta Sigma, Tamron or even Sony(Minolta design) were selling f/8 reflex lenses at around 500mm. Recently in 2020 Tokina has announced an f/8 400mm reflex lens for various mounts. It is said that has very good optical quality.
Minolta is the only manufacturer that produced autofocus reflex lenses. The autofocus 500mm f/8 reflex a-mount for 135mm film SLR cameras and the less known autofocus 400mm f/8 reflex for APS film SLR cameras.

I'd like you to do a review of Tamron 500mm f/8 (55BB) mirror lens.

Did you find a difference in how sharp is between ff and apsc. I said that because I found some ff lenses to be sharper in a ff camera and softer in apsc cameras

Wow, I am surprised newtonian lenses aren't more popular.

Nothing weird about this lens ?????

It's sad really that no serious manufacturer has gone through the effort of making a good mirror lens. Apart from the bizarre bokeh and a somewhat low contrast due to the central obstruction, it IS possible to make a fast, sharp and autofocused mirror lens, and there are ways to add a variable aperture as well. The bokeh can't be fixed in post, but low contrast can, to a large extent. An 800 mm f/5 lens with AF would certainly be possible. It would cost a lot more than these cheap lenses, but still far less than "glass" lenses of similar focal lengths, and the lower weight would still be there.

아주 훌륭하네요..

Korea

Nikon's reflex lenses give better image quality. Look for those instead.

How good is this for astro photography?

So it is really worthless, for anything useful!

Could use it as a telescope for astrophotography

If you'd tilt the back mirror (the one closest to the sensor) 45° you could avoid that donut bokeh, as the light would exit through the side and you can leave out the mirror on the front, which is the culprit in this case

you would just need to add another mirror just "outside" the lens at 45° again, to avoid tilting your camera 90° to shoot straight.
in other words:
similar to a herschel telescope but modified to allow the camera to attach to the back of the lens

Robert Denero used one of these lenses in the movie "Heat" ..and it looked cool as hell

Ive seen donut boka in old national geographic magazines

No thanks l'll stick with my Canon 55-250STM or Tamron 16-300 and crop the image.

cropped images from a decent 85mm are sharper than what comes out of a mirror lens

Some super zoom camera with a small sensor can do a better job.

Hello sir, dear sir I have M50 EOS with mount adapter, this lens work on my camera!!!