The Russian
Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 6:08 pmThere has been some mention scatterred in threads throughout these forums of Glen's mirror reflex lens, known only as "the Russian" - 1100mm focal length manual focus mirror reflex lens, with a fixed aperture of f/10.5.
Some people at the morning meet might have a few shots of me with it mounted on my D70 at Birddog's. (Handholding needed 1/3200th shutter to stabilise).
Ok, brief background: the challenge for the long lens meet was to get pics of bridge climbers, the one with the clearest identifiable person wins. Or something similar...
Now, just to give those who weren't there an idea of the distances involved, this is the view of the harbour bridge shot at 24mm:
...and 80mm:
[img=http://img144.exs.cx/img144/3329/russian032iq.th.jpg]
Now, 'The Russian' steps in. 3300mm equivalent focal length achieved with Tamron 2x TC, plus DX sensor crop factor. It was mid afternoon with excellent light. Despite that, I had to shoot at ISO1600 to achieve 1/500th shutter. The aperture became a fixed f/21, and the viewfinder was extremely dim. Shades of dark grey and black dim!
Even with 7kg of professional Manfrotto support underneath and weight on top to dampen vibration, the image in the viewfinder was quite noticeably shakey. Not helped by the fairly strong winds blowing. The images obtained are fair quality at best.
On the 80mm bridge shot, I counted the people having a height of 25 (twenty five) pixels. So even with the lack of sharpness, contrast and resolution, the Russian more than makes up for the fact that it simply got the image when nothing else can.
Some people at the morning meet might have a few shots of me with it mounted on my D70 at Birddog's. (Handholding needed 1/3200th shutter to stabilise).
Ok, brief background: the challenge for the long lens meet was to get pics of bridge climbers, the one with the clearest identifiable person wins. Or something similar...
Now, just to give those who weren't there an idea of the distances involved, this is the view of the harbour bridge shot at 24mm:
...and 80mm:
[img=http://img144.exs.cx/img144/3329/russian032iq.th.jpg]
Now, 'The Russian' steps in. 3300mm equivalent focal length achieved with Tamron 2x TC, plus DX sensor crop factor. It was mid afternoon with excellent light. Despite that, I had to shoot at ISO1600 to achieve 1/500th shutter. The aperture became a fixed f/21, and the viewfinder was extremely dim. Shades of dark grey and black dim!
Even with 7kg of professional Manfrotto support underneath and weight on top to dampen vibration, the image in the viewfinder was quite noticeably shakey. Not helped by the fairly strong winds blowing. The images obtained are fair quality at best.
On the 80mm bridge shot, I counted the people having a height of 25 (twenty five) pixels. So even with the lack of sharpness, contrast and resolution, the Russian more than makes up for the fact that it simply got the image when nothing else can.
:
![[img=http://img144.exs.cx/img144/3329/russian032iq.th.jpg]](http://img144.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img144&image=russian032iq.jpg){kind=link}