Samyang 800mm f8 reflex. It's not what you think.

[lehill]

I shoot wildlife so I've been anxiously lusting after the availability of the new Tamron 150-600mm for A-mount like many others. But it seems the A-mount version won't be available for several more months. So what's a long lens type of guy without a lot of spare change to do?

You buy the $184 Samyang 800mm f8 reflex lens. Everyone knows these lenses are junk and can't take a sharp photos and the internet is full of confirming examples (the Sony/Minolta 500mm AF reflex is a notable exception and in a class all by itself). Yet out of so many really awful fuzzy photos from long reflex lenses there are a few that are not so bad and 1 or 2 that are reasonably sharp. For $184 I figured I could play with this lens and find out if the fuzzy photos are due to problems behind or in front of the camera.


Samyang 800mm f8 reflex on Sony A77. Lens weight: 877 gms. Length, max: 5.7". Dia: 4.4". 105mm (front) & 30.5mm (rear) filter sizes, MFD: 11 ft. T-mount, so you'll need to buy an adapter.

The photos below are initial test shots with 100% crop inserts of the focus point. Lighting was really bad. According to DOFMaster the DOF was about 0.5". Tripod, 10 sec timer, no sharpening. A77 magnified view used for focusing.


Newspaper shot. Looking a bit fuzzy, but not awful. Certainly good enough for the internet.

[ATTACH alt="Chocolate tin. Note the lens is sharp enough to show the detail of the "pixels" that make up the trolley car illustration."]media_2886040[/ATTACH]
Chocolate tin. Note the lens is sharp enough to show the detail of the "pixels" that make up the trolley car illustration.


Best focused shot of the night. The pixels are clearly well defined. Hey, this lens ain't so bad!

Initial impressions:

This lens is not as bad as everyone says it is. The combination of manual focus and shallow DOF just makes it very tough to get accurate focus. The Sony A77 with focus magnification and focus peaking makes an ideal companion for this lens. A focus puller would help.

The Samyang (877 gms) weighs about the same as my Sony 70-300G (800 gms). Compared to my Sigma 150-500mm (1910 gms), it's a lightweight.

--
Lance H

 

[K E Hoffman]

Thanks...for posting..

I have been looking that 85 F1.5 and in some tests it scores up with the Zeiss 85 F1.4

The SLTs really make give these manual lenses value.

Actually a mirror lens should have a chance do to do really well because it can take CA down to almost zero.

From what I have read these lenses can be collimated like a telescope

Look up "SCT Collimation".. we do with telescopes .. of this design.. and if your lens/scope is collimated, you we get sharper images.

You don't want the MOVE the center element.. you do want to get under the cover and find the three screws that align the center mirror it holds ine the center of the corrector plate. You also may not want to remove or move the front corrector its not really flat glass its a weak optical element that I know in telescopes is aligned with the back mirror on optical benches before shipping.

SCTs like this can't really use a laser collimator so don't listen if someone wants to sell you a collimator .. What you do is defocus a pin point of light like a star or an "artificial start" in to a donut and adjust the central mirror angle so the donut is round.

I suspect some of the image variation may be the mirror lenses are out of collimation.

 

[Ralf B]

those close distance shots of stationary targets appear as best-case scenario for such a manual focus tele lens.

Out in the wild, I can see its use for observing stationary targets like a bird's nest or a rabbit hole for waiting for a Kodak moment there. To attempt BIF or other moving targets with such a piece of extreme shallow DOF Manual Focus kit, my strategy would be pre-focus, track, spray-and pray hoping that my target will cross the DOF spot I chose in advance. Could work for plane spotters as flight patterns on approach or take off are predetermined.

Do you plan to do any of that? I'd be very interested to see results! Haze, air interference, miss-focus and cam shake may well cause many of the questionable shots you mentioned in your post.

Good luck, let us know how your 184 $ experiment works out please.

Cheers,
Ralf
www.ralfralph.smugmug.com

 

[Jim Funston]

Guy's I own the Rokinon version of this lens with a huge third party lens hood. It sits in a bag in a closet. A 2x on a 70-400g gives a far superior manually focused image IMO (at least for my copies of both). One thing do not put a cheap Vivitar type polarizer on one as I installed it very carefully but the use of a extended hood made it jump threads and was my first ever stuck filter on a lens ... What a PIA that was....

i personally don't have much good to say about the lens. The focus throw is far to course making final focus troublesome, because it hangs off the front of the camera with no tripod mount and at that magnification it is extremely sensitive to vibration, and if you end up getting a decent image it lacks contrast or depth so it has to be worked on a bit longer in PP to get anything usable from it.

So mine sits unused because I own better options to use if I need that kind of reach.....

 

[Tom Harvey]

Guy's I own the Rokinon version of this lens with a huge third party lens hood. It sits in a bag in a closet. A 2x on a 70-400g gives a far superior manually focused image IMO (at least for my copies of both).

I would have been surprised if the 70-400 didn't give better results. The question is, what lens in a similar price bracket can give better results at similar magnification? If you only have a $200 budget you are not going to buy a Sony 70-400 and a 2x TC.

 

[LesPickstock]

I have 600mm Sigma (plus its excellent dedicated deep hood). But also have Minolta AF 500 mirror - which knocks spots off the Sigma, even with slight cropping to emulate the 600mm reach. So Sigma lies unused.

I also have Sony 70-400mm... and with a 1.4x converter it remains superior to both, so is my first choice for planned 'long reach'. BUT the 500mm is so sweet to carry around, with good results, so will never part with it.

As with most mirrors, the original image can seem a but 'flat' - very easy to uplift in LR or ACR with a touch (touch!) of Clarity and Contrast. And the doughnut 'bokeh' has never bothered me (rarely see it in images).

 

[RonWA]

I have a Rokinon 500 mm mirror lens that looks remarkably like yours. I have had very mixed results from it so I wouldn't depend on it to get shots I really care about. However, I have had some pics that are sharp enough for me to think my poor results may be due more to my inability to get a sharp focus than to the quality of the lens itself. I also have the Sony 70-400G so the Rokinon is more of an experiment for me than it is a serious lens for wildlife. I am using an A-55 so do not have some of the focus fine tuning of the A-77.

Ron

 

[123Mike]

A lot of claims that people make about equipment they don't have are wrong. People were wrong about teleconverters, tele conversion lenses, focal reducers, as well. My favorite saying is "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

You just showed evidence that this 800 (!) mm lens is very good. I would love to see some serious birding and naturing with this.

But 800mm prime lens though... you're *always* *way* zoomed in... How often is that focal length just right? You carry multiple bodies?

 

[Jim Funston]

Tom your right if you don't have anything else.... but IMO the $200 would be better spent on a good TC to use with what someone might have instead of the 800 f8. I'd rather use my beer can (which is a excellent copy) and a 2x and crop than use my 800mm.

But if you have a body and need 800mm reach without any other lenses in your case then if $200 is you max budget it's this or walk closer and buy a better used Minolta glass that might do like a 100-300 apo D that (even though I do not like my copy of that lens much either) still will give better results cropped than my 800 f8.

 

[Jim Funston]

Mike.... Here's your proof and I actually do not know why I even kept this shot at all and it took me a while to find it.

This is the 800mm f8 Rokinon mounted with a A-E adapter to a nex 7 placed on a bean bag positioned and focused to this landing perch the hummingbird was using at a distance of 50'. The shutter was actuated with a IR shutter release. Post processing I used nearly every tool I could to get a salvageable image and honestly imo I failed and the file is over cooked. But it is far better than the initial RAW conversion I had. The doughnuts are on the background which is another 70' behind that limb.



If this is what someone wants in a wildlife lens then they should go right ahead and buy the 800mm f8..... it just isn't what I want. I prefer the 500mm f8 Minolta with a crop by far like this one taken last week at nearly the same distance as the hummingbird shot but this was handheld

 

[lehill]

Thanks for the tip. I did search around and there's plenty of instructions for telescopes. I'll check the Samyang and see if that plastic cover comes off. I've only taken a few photos but so far things seem OK with this lens.

 

[lehill]

I was thinking of the Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons, or sleeping ducks, dead animals :-D. Those guys can stay in one spot forever. That gives plenty of time to focus.

For BIFs, perhaps a bird taking off from his perch would be doable for me. My current skill level is not that good.

 

[sybersitizen]

I don't get why 123Mike is enthusiastic about those sample shots. (He's usually among the first to point out the unsharpness of a lens and recommend something else.) The samples are not so good. I'm confident that if you shot the same scene with a known good lens you would see the difference pretty clearly.

Budget-priced reflex lenses like the Samyangs always have had and always will have a place in the photographic world; but as mentioned by others there, that place will typically end up being a shelf in your closet unless you are very easy to please - or unless you somehow luck into obtaining one particular specimen that somehow beats the odds established by the majority of its clones.

On the other hand... nearly every reflex lens ever made by Minolta (or carried over by Sony) has been an exemplary performer. I say nearly because their 250mm was not so great IMO (I have owned two of those and preferred using the Minolta 135/3.5 with a Minolta 2x converter - still very small and light). No question, though... Minolta has had the 500mm focal length down to a science since the 1970s. And that was without the enormous advantage of the later autofocus version.

I speak from experience, having over the years owned and used five Minolta mirrors and a couple of the budget options.

 

[K E Hoffman]

Thanks for the tip. I did search around and there's plenty of instructions for telescopes. I'll check the Samyang and see if that plastic cover comes off. I've only taken a few photos but so far things seem OK with this lens.

 

[Chris Malcolm]

I have the Sony 500mm mirror lens. Even with the aid of the A77's focus peaking & magnified view it's very tricky to focus it accurately manually. It can take twenty seconds or more. And impossible if you're handholding. Whereas once AF is properly calibrated it focuses it accurately immediately. Good AF makes an extraordinary difference in usability, far more than with any other lens I have.

 

[123Mike]

Wait a sec. Go over those initial samples again. We're seeing a picture of a newspaper, and two pictures of a tin can, taken with the 800mm reflex. I'm not seeing it suck, do you? Am I missing anything?

But the Jim Funston's first bird shot is awful, taken with the equivalent Rokinon 800mm.

 

[Michel J]

Thanks...for posting..

I have been looking that 85 F1.5 and in some tests it scores up with the Zeiss 85 F1.4

The SLTs really make give these manual lenses value.

Actually a mirror lens should have a chance do to do really well because it can take CA down to almost zero.

From what I have read these lenses can be collimated like a telescope

Look up "SCT Collimation".. we do with telescopes .. of this design.. and if your lens/scope is collimated, you we get sharper images.

You don't want the MOVE the center element.. you do want to get under the cover and find the three screws that align the center mirror it holds ine the center of the corrector plate. You also may not want to remove or move the front corrector its not really flat glass its a weak optical element that I know in telescopes is aligned with the back mirror on optical benches before shipping.

SCTs like this can't really use a laser collimator so don't listen if someone wants to sell you a collimator .. What you do is defocus a pin point of light like a star or an "artificial start" in to a donut and adjust the central mirror angle so the donut is round.

I suspect some of the image variation may be the mirror lenses are out of collimation.

Good idea and It's a nice job for good opticians, OTHO I'm really worry if the O.P. could get "worse compromise" in sharpness than the one from factory?!

--
Cordialement,
Michel J
« Shoot RAW+ ...think JPEG »

 

[sybersitizen]

Wait a sec. Go over those initial samples again. We're seeing a picture of a newspaper, and two pictures of a tin can, taken with the 800mm reflex. I'm not seeing it suck, do you? Am I missing anything?

I didn't say anything about sucking. I said this: 'The samples are not so good. I'm confident that if you shot the same scene with a known good lens you would see the difference pretty clearly.'

Without that kind of comparison, it's hard for any of us to know for sure... but I've come to expect better fine detail on similar subjects with my own lenses.

But the Jim Funston's first bird shot is awful, taken with the equivalent Rokinon 800mm.

Indeed.

 

[Michel J]

Wait a sec. Go over those initial samples again. We're seeing a picture of a newspaper, and two pictures of a tin can, taken with the 800mm reflex. I'm not seeing it suck, do you? Am I missing anything?

I didn't say anything about sucking. I said this: 'The samples are not so good. I'm confident that if you shot the same scene with a known good lens you would see the difference pretty clearly.'

Yeap, and with a zoom, you make exactly the shots you want (no cropping or a very few), when with the one having fixed focal length, you make shots you can.

Without that kind of comparison, it's hard for any of us to know for sure... but I've come to expect better fine detail on similar subjects with my own lenses.

But the Jim Funston's first bird shot is awful, taken with the equivalent Rokinon 800mm.

Indeed.

 

[sybersitizen]

Okay... knowing that we can't really compare apples to apples here, I am offering an apples to oranges comparison instead. Using the same camera as the OP (A77) and my own Minolta 500mm AF Reflex, and a subject that is as similar as I can reasonably find, here is a sample provided in the same resolution and presentation as the OP's largest sample (also at ISO 200, RAW converted in IDC, no sharpening):

A77 + Minolta 500mm AF Reflex

I think both the full shot and the 100% center crop insert look better than the OP's samples with the Samyang 800mm. But, to be honest, we still have difficulties with this comparison:

1. I have a LOT more light on my shot. I need that light in order to obtain focus (that's meticulous manual focus, not relying on AF for this carefully constructed test). If the OP could put more light on his shots, they might improve a lot.

2. The subject distance in my shot is very near the 13 foot minimum focus distance of the lens so as to match the OP's shot as closely as possible. In my experience, I don't find that the Minolta 500mm does its best work at that distance. I think the lens might be optimized for further subjects. And maybe the Samyang is too - or maybe not.

To reiterate, we can really only learn a little from these separate tests under different lighting conditions at one subject distance, and I assume, using different processing. It would be interesting to see how the OP's Samyang - which might be an exceptionally good specimen of that lens - would stand up to a Minolta in a real direct comparison.