Mirrors and Birds

Several months ago In my review of the Nikkor·C 500mm f/8 Mirror Lens, I predicted that “once I upgrade my camera body to something with ISO performance like the D3/D700 this lens will be given new life.” This Morning, with D700 in hand, I took a very cold — and hence short — walk with the lens. Freed from lower ISO constraints, the mirror lens performs. It’s low contrast and slow, but reasonably sharp and free of chromatic aberration. The most difficult thing is getting perfect focus.

Sparrow — D700, ISO400 1/800s

If you look at it at 100% it seems soft, but I was slightly off focus. The lens requires minute adjustment and would benefit from a viewfinder of higher magnification than the D700’s. Where’s my .95x (or 1x) magnification viewfinder, Nikon? In the end it doesn’t really matter. The photo looks great, even when blown up significantly.

Here the focus was just about perfect. Two score after it was designed, there’s still plenty of resolution for a new camera.

Posted by tai on 2009-12-12 12:35:56. Comments (3) | Tiny link