The characteristic doughnut-shaped out-of-focus highlights of the catadioptric lens are the elements that make up today's image. Also know to photographers as a mirror lens, the design enables long focal length lenses to be built that are very small and light, and were popular as a cheap alternative during the 1980s. The main drawback was the slow, fixed aperture, and the almost inevitable poor performance in most cases of the optics themselves.
The one I used is no exception: a budget model to start with, I bought it for next to nothing - and second-hand - from a local camera shop many years ago just to experiment with. It had little use since then and I had considered condemning the lens due to the advancement of a fungal growth that was taking hold on the glass, but before I did I decided to see if I could dismantle the basic design and have a go at cleaning it. Much to my surprise I managed to do just that (and got it back together), so on went the T-Mount and I started pointing it at various subjects.
The lens is basically a piece of junk by modern standards, but I think it might still have a bit of life left in it for some creative shooting, as with the photo of sunlight bouncing off of the leaves of a tree at the bottom of my garden.
Centon 500mm f/8 Catadioptric lens. Manual exposure and defocused to create the effect.
© 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment