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According provided by lens Samyang MC Mirror Lens 1: 8.0 f = 500mm (with Nikon F mount) many thanks to Alexander Shokur. By the way, Alexander has already sent me no less legendary Polo D3000.

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror on the camera Nikon D3200

Browse Navigation:

1. In short
2. Main Specifications
3. Assembly
4. Focusing
5. Diaphragm
6. Image quality
7. Sample Photos
8. Prices / where to buy
9. My personal experience with the lens
10. Results
11. User Comments
12. Add your review or question on the lens

In short

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror - super cheap, super light super telephoto manual focus lens... A feature of the lens is its mirror-lens optical design, which does not allow changing the aperture and forms a characteristic 'donut' bokeh. Image quality is very poor.... To exaggerate, the lens is for 'try to shoot the birds, the moon, and then throw it away or sell it.'

First of all, Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror is intended for shooting distant objects and photo hunting for birds and animals. In the viewfinder, it zooms very close to the subject.

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror

Main technical characteristics of Samyang MC Mirror Lens 1: 8.0 f = 500mm:

Please note that the lens was / is produced under other names / brands: Vivitar, Bower, Rokinon, Walimex, Phoenix, PRO-Optic, Opteka, and can also be installed on Micro 4/3, Samsung NX, Olympus 4/3 cameras , Pentax K-mount, Sony / Minolta A-mount, Nikon F-mount, Canon EOS EF-mount, Fujica, Konica, Contax using a special adapter that comes with the package. Necessary or additional adapters can be bought separately, however, in the CIS countries, their search will cause certain difficulties.

Samyang SLR line

• Samyang Reflex6.3 / 300mm 1: 6.3 300mm UMC CS M (two colors: black / silver)
• Samyang MC Mirror Lens 1: 8.0 f = 500mm,
• Samyang Mirror Lens 500mm 1: 6.3 DX,
• Samyang Mirror Lens 800mm 1: 8 DX,

(names are written according to the marks on the lens body)

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror

Assembly

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror assembled well, but somehow rude, without any grace. Lenses with such a rough design were made 30 years ago, and for a modern lens, this is rather strange. The lens body consists of an alloy of metals, the focus ring is very wide, rubberized. Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror is made in Korea (no, not in North).

Included with the lens are several filters: Normal (IA Skylight), ND 2x, ND4x. Optionally, you can buy original color filters Y52 (Yellow), O56 (Orange) and R60 (red). These filters are mounted on the bayonet side, near the rear lens. This method of installing light filters is characteristic of many telephoto lenses. Also, you can use ordinary filters, which are screwed into the thread near the front lens and have a diameter of 72 mm. For review, I used a rear neutral / normal filter SKY-LIGHT 1A M30.5 KM-500 and front protective filter Extra digital 72mm.

I could not find information anywhere, whether it is necessary to install any filter in the thread under the rear filters. That is, it is not clear whether the filter is included in the optical circuit of the lens, for example, how this happens with the lens Nikon 300 / 4 AF. I can assume that Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror is still better to use without any filters.

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror

Focusing

Focusing is smooth, without jerks or slippages, with a pleasant 'oil' movement of the focusing ring. The focusing ring rotates approximately 200 degrees, due to the fact that the lens has a large diameter, it is quite convenient to focus on focus, but very difficult. During focusing, the front part of the lens barrel, together with the thread for light filters, rotates, and the barrel of the lens barrel (lens trunk) moves forward. Unfortunately, the lens does not have a hard stop for fast focusing - the focus ring has a large 'infinity flight', which is due to the temperature limitations of the housing.

The minimum focusing distance is only 1.72 meters, which allows you to shoot at a maximum magnification of 1: 2.7, which is very, very good for such a lens. The Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror has a focusing distance scale in meters and feet, as well as a scale indicating the magnification for 'Macro'.

Some resources and users mistakenly add the prefix 'IF' (example), indicating the presence of internal focusing. There is no such attachment either on the lens body or on its box, and adding it is a hoax. It is also possible that Samyang means something else under this abbreviation. God only knows what these Koreans have in mind.

The instructions for most Nikon cameras indicate the maximum relative aperture of the lens, with which the 'electronic rangefinder' function will be available, which helps manual focusing. The electronic rangefinder indicates in which direction to turn the focusing ring for fast and accurate focusing, and also gives confirmation of accurate focusing with green point in the lower left corner JVI... When the dot lights up and stays on, the focusing is correct. Most Nikon cameras are only designed to work with lenses no darker than f / 5.6... For example, electronic rangefinder cameras Nikon D700 и Nikon D3200, with the help of which test shots were taken, cannot correctly tell me about the exact focusing on sharpness.

The list of Nikon cameras whose focus sensors allow the electronic rangefinder to work correctly with optics with F / 8 can be found here. More information on focusing and metering. exposure with manual lenses and Nikon cameras you will find here.

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror on the camera Nikon D3200

Diaphragm

Lens unable to control aperture. Shooting always occurs at F / 8. Because of this, certain features and difficulties are obtained:

• exposure control is complicated. You have to control the exposure without changing the aperture using ISO manipulations, shutter speed, filters and the power of additional lighting;
• The depth of field is controlled only by the focusing distance; it cannot be forcedly increased or decreased by means of aperture;
• it is impossible to forcibly (by closing the aperture) improve the image quality, especially with regard to sharpness and contrast. The lens always 'shoots the same';
• It’s very difficult to focus in low light, even the Live View mode helps a little.

Most likely real aperture this lens is much lower than F / 8. It feels like the T-stop (a measure of the actual aperture ratio) is equivalent to T 10 - T 13.

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror

Image quality

With image quality, everything is very bad. Very low sharpness. Very low contrast, the multi-illumination used does not help the lens. there is chromatic aberration, which, in principle, this type of lens should be completely deprived of, but apparently, when it was created, something went wrong.

In such a situation, I must definitely add a spoiler: 'maybe I had an unsuccessful copy on the review, found at the nearest trash can.'

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror

Sample Photos

All sample photos were shot on camera. Nikon D700 и Nikon D3200 with T2 / Ai adapter, the gallery shows images without processing, only resized for quick viewing and imprinted data from EXIF module. Pictures were taken without front and rear filters.

RAW source files ('.NEF') can be download from this link (21 file, 415 MB).

Multi-illumination optics Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror

Prices / where to buy

Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror sells new at 100 c.u., in used version of the lens can be found at a price of 50 cu You can see the real prices of the lens in popular online stores, and you can buy this lens at this link. Using links from Radozhiva to sites magazilla.ru or м.уа You help my project exist.

My experience

As my grandmother used to say: 'buy, paint, throw away'.

If the lens gave an image quality comparable to at least the Soviet MS 3M-5CA F8 500mm, then you could seriously think about buying it. At just 320 grams, small size and low cost at a 500mm focal length, this is a very tempting proposition.

With super long telephoto lenses, the golden rule doesn't work. For handheld shooting it is advisable to use excerpts shorter than 1/1600 second.

Dimensions of two lenses. And Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror is 2 times longer in focal length and much shorter in physical dimensions before SIGMA 18-200mm 1: 3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM MACRO | C (Contemporary)

Results

The Samyang 500mm f / 8.0 Mirror is a very lightweight, compact and cheap manual telephoto mirror-lens type lens. Well built, easy to install on most modern cameras. Unfortunately, its image quality is very low. I do not recommend it. Think 100 times before buying this lens..

Share the review with others. Thanks for attention. Arkady Shapoval.