![\"500mm](\"http:\/\/www.tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/P8266583-S.jpg\" "\\"500mm")
<\/a>500mm in a box.<\/p><\/div>\n
I was surprised to see so many items after opening the box – the lens, a carrying bag, a T-mount adapter for my Olympus and three filters (Skylight, ND 2X and ND 4X).<\/p>\n
<\/a>Inside the box.<\/p><\/div>\n
The lens construction was all metal and felt solid. I installed the Skylight filter anyway. I don’t think I’ll use the ND filters anytime soon unless I start shooting the Sun. I took some shots around the house just to test the lens. It was a real challenge as a small vibration would get your photos all blurred. Here’s what I learnt:<\/p>\n
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- Fast shutter speeds (less than 1\/100) produces sharper images than slow shutter speeds (1″ or more). I suspect that the shutter makes the camera vibrate slightly on the tripod, but this gets magnified by the 500mm lens blurring the image.<\/li>\n
- You’ll have to be very patient to find the right focus. On my camera, the viewfinder produced better results than live view. I believe some image processing during resizing didn’t show the focus accurately.<\/li>\n
- Taking pictures a stop down from normal exposure (i.e. faster shutter) gave sharper results. You would be better off correcting the photos in an image editing software.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Here’s two shots taken using my Olympus E-420 and two different lenses, just for comparison. Note that the photo taken using the 500mm mirror lens was digitally enhanced because it was taken at an exposure level of -2.0.<\/p>\n