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Pastimes : Digital Photography -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (14601)	8/27/2006 4:05:51 AM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21652

Hi Mike, Thanks for your comment. Your sunset picture didn't seem to have the tell-tale "circles" that mirror lenses create of specular highlights. Yes, no "donut boke". For those who don't know it yet here's an example: forums.dpreview.com Do you know if that lens comes with a Minolta mount? Yes, Cameta Camera also sells a version for Minolta: cgi.ebay.com The picture of the lens in the middle of the offer includes the teleconverter. If the TC is not mounted the lens is not that long, 30 cm or 12 inches. It's about the length of my 70-200/2.8 but only weighs half as much. Some words of caution so that you aren't disappointed: - The lens doesn't contain "low dispersion" glass minimizing chromatic aberrations. In unfavorable conditions there's horrible "purple fringing", not only 1-2 pixels around a high-contrast edge but up to a distance of 10-20 pixels which I was not able to correct in post-processing. - Manual focus and manual exposure are a challenge. Birds in flight, for instance, would be very difficult. - For handholding one has to accept high ISO settings. A noise reduction tool is helpful. - For smaller apertures than f/8 the aperture has to be closed manually with a separate ring. As the lens itself has a T2 mount you should be able to use it on a different camera system if you ever decide to switch, just get a new T2 adapter for the new mount. Here's a resolution comparison of the 500/8 with the Nikon 70-200/2.8 and the Sigma 70-300/4.0-5.6, my previously longest tele options: For the Nikon and the Sigma I have included both a direct 100% crop and an upscaled version with the same field of view as the 500/8. It's obvious that the 500/8 currently is my best tool for 500 mm. Good luck!