500mm Mirror Lense? What the heck!

Coco Bermudez

Coco Bermudez

Well-known member
Guys,

anyone knows what does 500mm Mirror Lense means? I am putting the finishing touches to my 35mm adapter and I was wondering what would one of these babies do for me? I am already enjoying a depth of field using a 28mm F2.8 lense. i wonder if I would have extreme DOF using a 500mm...just dont understand the mirror part.
 
Mirror lenses are actually constructed internally using mirrors to get additional focal length out of them.

A 500mm lens should be, by definition, about 500mm long -- or, half a meter -- or, put in context, about a foot and a half long. That's a pretty big lens. I know, I have one, a Zeiss Jena Fernobjektiv 500mm. Lenses like this come with their own tripod mount -- for still cameras you'd attach the lens to the tripod. For movie cameras you need to use two tripods (or a long rail/support system).

Mirror lenses came about as a way to make long lenses but much more compactly. By using mirrors you can get twice the focal length in half the physical size. Mirror lenses are typically much fatter, but can be much shorter than regular "long" lenses.

A 500mm mirror lens will dwarf your camera in size. And yes, the depth of field would be infitesimally shallow.

Once upon a time I posted a picture up here about the DVX/mini35 with the 500mm lens on it. Looked totally absurd.
 
Don't bother. Shooting video with a 500mm lens would be pretty hard, and a lot of the mirror lenses (which are apparently pretty low quality) are f8.0, which would mean tons of grain on your image and a need for an intense amount of light.

Get a 200mm f2.8 or a 50mm f1.4. Both much more commonly used focal lengths and much more useful. Really, though 3 lenses shold be pretty much all you need if you don't plan on zooming.
 
Mucho thank you.

Mucho thank you.

Learn something new everyday. Great explanation about this type of lens, Barry..
Mucho thank you.

Barry_Green said:
For movie cameras you need to use two tripods (or a long rail/support system).
Click to expand...
Saw this the other day and thought maybe it would work well for something like
the your35mm adapters everyone makes without an adequate support system.

http://www.ronsrail.com/ronsrail.html
 
Super8, what are you trying to accomplish? If you want to shoot wildlife, a 300mm at f4.5 will be okay (far from ideal) but it may be a bit soft at f4.5 and you will get some adapter grain most likely, especially if you close the iris. The depth of focus will be hard to work with at f4.5 since it will be very shallow, but since you can't close the aperture much further without noise from the mini35, it will be a hard, hard lens to use. I'd strongly recommend agains unless you have no control over mis-en-scene (you're an event videographer/documentaris/wildlife videographer for instance.)

For narrative purposes, I think 200mm is about as long as you'll need. If you just want shallow DOF, 200mm f2.8 is killer. However, there's such a thing as too shallow. For an all around lens, 50mm is the best. It's what's used most commonly in Hollywood. An 85mm and 150mm lens would be nice, too, I suppose. Even a 50mm lens can have shallow DOF, by the way:
http://www.pbase.com/image/1221491
And that's cropped at f2.0. Even with a 50mm lens you can get crazy bokeh. And it's the closest focal length to the human eye.
Before you buy a lens, look at samples on pbase, by the way. It rocks.
 
Even better:

http://www.pbase.com/image/31752234

I hear that the Canon 50mm f1.4 has seven aperture blades so it has some mighty pretty bokeh. For the money (75 bucks), the 50mm f1.8 is amazing (but 5 aperture blades lead to ugly bokeh). And, of course, neither is a manual lens. Oh well.
 
Remember a Full Aperture academy frame is about half the size of a photographic frame.
So--if you're going for a movie look, you wouldn't actually use all of that GG on your adapter..
 
Sorry for stating the obvious above.

The actual mini35 is Full Aperture or Super35mm. A 35mm frame would be 40% smaller than that.
A lot of the problems everyone runs into (vingetting) could easily be solved by only using the center
of the frame.. this isn't a compromised adapter.. it's exactly the way the p+s technik product works
and closer to an actual film frame size. Hope this helps.
 
Thanks for all the good info:

I am just experimenting with different looks. I made my static 35mm adapter (after months of messing around with it...by the way it rocks!...and at a $450 price tag!) Buying lots of lenses to see what I get.

Marrying video and photography is a royal pain in the arse! Got to hit the books and study a little more. I have different situations.....tripod shots, documentary style....looking to see what looks good and what doesn't.

By the way...i posted this picture long ago...but here is the adapter siting pretty on my other camera ...the ADGV-80.....nice cam too for 24p-less imagery.

The adapter has changed a bit..I'll post brand new pics and and video of my experiments later...hmm maybe I will call it the Super8mm adapter and sell it too! ha..

All I am trying to achieve is the grungy Super 8 look i am used to shoot with for B-roll footage.

Here is the adapter....

http://moviegroovy.com/35mmadapter.html

and here is the video with the original GG i made out of some coarse velour paper product and glass.

http://moviegroovy.com/35mmadaptervideo.html
 
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