The Russian

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The Russian

Postby Onyx on Sun Jan 09, 2005 6:08 pm

There 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.
Image

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:
Image

...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!
Image

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.
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Postby mudder on Sun Jan 09, 2005 6:21 pm

Holy S%$t Batman! That thing is the lovechild of the Hubble and a microscope...

Wow, that's impressive...

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Postby sirhc55 on Sun Jan 09, 2005 6:37 pm

mudder wrote:Holy S%$t Batman! That thing is the lovechild of the Hubble and a microscope...

Wow, that's impressive...

Cheers,
Mudder


Agree 100% - that is one helluva mirror lens.

Onyx - did you win?

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Postby gstark on Sun Jan 09, 2005 6:45 pm

Chris,

sirhc55 wrote:Onyx - did you win?


Yes.

He now gets to date Olga (that's the Russian's name) for the next two weeks. :)
g.
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Postby Onyx on Sun Jan 09, 2005 6:48 pm

Dating Olga - is that losing than winning? ;)

Glen was having a serious go of it, snapping off frames with the remote and in continuous bursts. I was content to manually depress the shutter with the vibrations inherent with this ancient form of shutter release.

I wanna see what others got out of Olga. Please post - sydneysiders who were at the meet.
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Postby MCWB on Sun Jan 09, 2005 7:34 pm

Onyx and his new friend :lol: :

Image

My shot at 3300 mm effective. 1/250, f/21, ISO800. Camera shake is a bitch. :)

Image
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Postby Matt. K on Sun Jan 09, 2005 8:14 pm

Sorry...Olga is spoken for...he gets Helga!
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Postby Onyx on Sun Jan 09, 2005 8:30 pm

Thanks for the shot MCWB. Olga on D70, compare that to the pancake (45/2.8P) the other extreme. :)

And your noise reduced bridge shot took along with it a fair bit of detail too.
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Postby MCWB on Sun Jan 09, 2005 8:49 pm

Onyx wrote:And your noise reduced bridge shot took along with it a fair bit of detail too.

Your shot is still better though IMHO. In both cases the reach is certainly impressive however the sharpness leaves a bit to be desired. I think if I had my time again I'd crank the shutter speed more, maybe lower the ISO to 400 and compensate for exposure in NC. What do you reckon? LOL about the pancake, or is that the 5400 lookalike? :lol:
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Postby Glen on Mon Jan 10, 2005 10:08 am

Good reveiw Onyx, I think some of the shake came from the lens / tripod connection, I can see an arca swiss bracket for Olga and we will be back in business.
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Postby redline on Sat Jan 15, 2005 2:30 pm

hey theres a russia site selling some 10/1000 relfex for nikon for about 280usd


http://www.zenit-camera.com/rubinar-len ... -nikon.htm

http://www.zenit-camera.com/mto-11ca-lens-nikon.htm

has anyone tried them before?
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Postby Nnnnsic on Sat Jan 15, 2005 3:34 pm

No, but I'm tempted to.
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