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500 mirror bargain?

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jcharding

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In the aftermath, I am starting to look for lens bargains. At my local camera shop, I found two of interest. A Minolta 500 AF mirror and a Minolta 70-210/4. They are asking for about $260 for the mirror, and $130 for the 70-210. I am not overly interested in the 70-210, so that leaves the 500mm.

I have been doing some research on the 500mm, and was wondering a few things:

1. I saw one thread at the Yahoo Groups Minolta forum which seemed to indicate that the 7D will not recognize the 500mm and that you must set the camera to "no lens". Is this indeed the case?

2. Second, has anyone compared the 500 mirror with the Minolta 300/4 G with a TC (I would be using a Kenko Teleplus 300)? Clearly there is a size/weight advantage, but I am curious as to what, if anything, people have observed optically.

Does anyone have anything else to add that has not been discussed previously?
 
DEFINITELY get the 70-210 f/4, great lens for the money, that is a cheap price, and prices for it are on the rise. So maybe buy it and sell it in a year, even if its just in your closet all that time.
--
'A photograph is often looked at...rarely looked into.' -Ansel Adams
 
The price for the 500 is as good as I have seen anywhere.
It does AF and does not require any setting changes, but remember it is f8.

I would say that the 300+tcon would be marginally better particularly in the contrast area. The optical quality of the 500 is pretty good, however, and that plus its light weight give it sufficient appeal for me to have repurchased one about a year ago.
--
catch up with me at dyxum.com

 
...

I have the KM 500/f8 and it is an excellent lens ( paid $560.00! ) for the price and size. I also have a KM 100-300 APO and an Olympus TCON 1.7x TCON, but the KM 500 is way better in sharpness and contrast than that set!

A sample photo with the 500/f8:



... Lucas
--

KM Maxxum 7D, Tokina 17/f3.5, Tokina 19-35/3.5-4.5, Tamron 24-135/f3.5-5.6, KM 100-300/f4.5-5.6 APO(D), KM 50/f1.7, KM 500/f8 mirror, Sigma 50/f2.8 macro, KM HS 3600(D), KM A1, Oly TCON17 1.7x
 
Will do, and if I don't buy it I will distribute some kind of contact info.
 
If you are using digital then you could also crop your pics thus cutting out the need for a very long lens such as the 500mm (i have one and very rarely find an excuse to use it)
Peter
 
Cropping loses huge amounts of resolution. It's no substitute for focal length. As an example, if you want to match the angle of view of the 500mm (750 equiv) mirror with a 300mm (450 equiv) lens, and you have a 6Mp dSLR, you'll end up with 2.16Mp in the cropped picture from the 300mm lens.
 
Same problem with scanned slides. They're no better than digital pics - in fact they're usually worse I find.
 
Al Dugan wrote:
Technophile2 said:
Same problem with scanned slides. They're no better than digital
pics - in fact they're usually worse I find.
Click to expand...
It depends what you are doing with the slide. It you need a projected image in front of a large audience, you can't even come close to a slide with a digital image, for brightness, sharpness, contrast and saturation.

When it comes to scanning a slide, that depends on the quality of the scanner and the condition of the slide. I've seen amazing results with a pro scanner. My buddy has a Nikon Coolscan 9000. It is very good, but not very practical. I can't afford one for my limited use, so I use my buddy's.

Al
 
jcharding said:
I found two of interest. A Minolta 500 AF
mirror and a Minolta 70-210/4. They are asking for about $260 for
the mirror, and $130 for the 70-210.
Click to expand...
I bought a Sigma 600 about twenty years ago when list price was $400 and I got it on sale for $240. So $260 for a Minolta is a very good price. Oh and I have used it handheld.

Ken Martin
 
jcharding said:
I saw one thread at the Yahoo Groups Minolta forum which seemed
to indicate that the 7D will not recognize the 500mm and that you
must set the camera to "no lens". Is this indeed the case?
Click to expand...
Hardly. The 500 mm is AF (something no other manufacturer can match) and as such will be recognised by the camera. A few members of this forum have the lens and I have never seen any of them complain about incompatibility. If you use it with a teleconverter, that's another story.
 
If you have the money and are interested, there's no reason not to (provided it's not a used lens).
 
I bought it. It was used, but it was immaculate. All filters and case came with it.

I didn't know what the Yahoo posts were getting to regarding having to set the camera to "no lens" - which is why I asked. It seemed kind of odd regarding the AF capability ....
 
Of course, if it's immaculate, it doesn't matter that it's used, and if you got it from a store you also had the opportunity to check it before money changed hands.

Happy shooting!
 
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