This picture tells a sad tale, fueled by ego, from the mid-1970s. First, that’s me in front of the custom color lab that I owned in those days. I’m showing off my new Canon 800mm lens, which I bought to replace a Sigma 500mm mirror lens that I’d enjoyed. Mirror lenses won’t stop down for more DOF, so I went for this behemoth. That’s its custom-fitted case on the ground. It came with the lens. I do miss the nice tripod.
I readily hand-held the 500-mirror, NEVER this thing. It was just too unwieldy. In fact, to reliably get sharp shots with it I had to use TWO tripods – one on the lens and another one on the body – plus a cable release and a motor drive to keep it from blurring just from touching the (Canon F-1) camera to press the shutter button. I successfully shot with it only once – Little League baseball from beyond the home run fence – and sold it for a song, glad to be rid of it and lesson learned.
Hmmm… Food for thought. I never realized the BIG lenses could be so much trouble. It has always been in my mind that if I ever got really rich, I would want those “reach out and touch someone” lenses. I would like something better than my 70 – 300mm zoom, though. But that will have to be later down the line.
My conclusion from the expensive lesson was that a huge lens ought to also be super fast – even bigger on the front end – in order to be useful. Besides, the big stuff is for jobs that really need it – like shooting the Olympics or NASA launches for the big payday – not mere mortals having a good time. It’s possible to rent the giant optics when needed, too. I did that to compare cars before buying one. I should have done that when picking a long telephoto. Could have saved myself a fortune.
In retrospect, the 500mm mirror was small, balanced in my hand, and very hand-holdable. I should have kept it. Now I use a 400mm (non-mirror), which on my 50D body acts like 35mm’s 640mm. Just right. -J:
Looks like you mean business! Great photography and photograph!
Oh, this is just posed. To actually use the lens I had to put a motor drive on the camera. Squeezing the shutter button would bounce the contraption so much it’d ruin the composition or even blur the image. -J:
Yea. I had a 1000 MM Celestron Mirrored lens for a long time. I took some interesting shots but it was, though quite short (less than 12") it was a bear to focus. I only have two lenses on my Nikon D80 but I pray for a 500MM. Thanks for the history.
Comments
Hmmm… Food for thought. I never realized the BIG lenses could be so much trouble. It has always been in my mind that if I ever got really rich, I would want those “reach out and touch someone” lenses. I would like something better than my 70 – 300mm zoom, though. But that will have to be later down the line.
My conclusion from the expensive lesson was that a huge lens ought to also be super fast – even bigger on the front end – in order to be useful. Besides, the big stuff is for jobs that really need it – like shooting the Olympics or NASA launches for the big payday – not mere mortals having a good time. It’s possible to rent the giant optics when needed, too. I did that to compare cars before buying one. I should have done that when picking a long telephoto. Could have saved myself a fortune.
In retrospect, the 500mm mirror was small, balanced in my hand, and very hand-holdable. I should have kept it. Now I use a 400mm (non-mirror), which on my 50D body acts like 35mm’s 640mm. Just right. -J:
– Jay Gross
Looks like you mean business! Great photography and photograph!
Oh, this is just posed. To actually use the lens I had to put a motor drive on the camera. Squeezing the shutter button would bounce the contraption so much it’d ruin the composition or even blur the image. -J:
– Jay Gross
Yea. I had a 1000 MM Celestron Mirrored lens for a long time. I took some interesting shots but it was, though quite short (less than 12") it was a bear to focus. I only have two lenses on my Nikon D80 but I pray for a 500MM. Thanks for the history.