Playing With Lenses: Playing with the big boys: Samyang 500mm 1:8 Preset

Cost: 39.99$ (average market price $110.00 - new)

I was looking forward to play with this lens from the moment I found one last winter in a Thrift Store. A whopping 500mm for less then the cost to fill the gas tank of your car. Of course, for that royal amount of cash, you get one really slow lens. But does that matter these days, when using camera's that are capable of getting good images with high ISO? As long as the glass is sharp...

Also, do not confuse this with the common Samyang 500mm 1:8 Mirror lens that cost the same, but gives a lot less quality.

Now, when would you use a 500mm lens? I can see two prime use cases. Sports and wildlife photography. And since I'm not a sports fan, I took it out to shoot some birds. I did find myself a little limited amongst other photographers with lenses easily over $10K. But on the inside, I was grinning, as I had just as much fun for a lot less investment.

OK, image quality isn't that great. You will not win any exhibition prices, or make it on a wildlife magazine cover, but for the occasional bird picture, it does just fine. Decent colors, even without a lens coating and sharp enough, but nothing spectacular and some significant color fringing. But as long as you are not pixel peeping, it's not that bad. If this was a 50mm, it would be rubbish, but for a 500mm... not that bad.

Handling was OK. With this focal length, I would have expected an obligatory use of a tripod (enforced by the fact it comes with a tripod collar on the lens), but because of the low weight, the wind was causing vibration on the lens and made it really hard to focus. It was actually more easy to use it handheld. The length of the lens, combined with the low weight, made it reasonably stable. Almost like a rifle... and yes, the length was so ridiculously long that it wasn't fitting on my cutting board anymore.

The simple design but solid build made it fairly easy to handle and focus. Even focus peaking worked well. The one confusing part are the two focus rings... one ring that controls the aperture, but has no intermediate aperture steps that you can feel, and a second ring that has the steps, but is not connected to the aperture mechanism at all. You have to use both together to understand what aperture stop you are actually using.

I actually enjoyed taking this lens out, and as you can see below, the results are not that bad.

Lens Specification:
Focal Length: 500mm
Maximum Aperture: F8
Minimum Aperture: F32
Image Format: 35mm
Lens Mount: T-Mount
Optics: 4 Elements, 4 Groups
Blades: 6
Focussing: Manual
Minimum Focus: 1006cm
Filter Size: 67mm
Weight: 640g
Length: 312-326mm
Production: In Production
Serial Number: 881886
Made in: Korea

Company:

Samyang Optics Company Limited is a Korean optical equipment company founded in 1972, producing al their lenses in the company's plant in Masan, South Korea. Samyang is known for producing various low-cost interchangeable lenses compatible with different 3rd party camera's such as Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Pentax, Samsung, Yashica, Olympus and Panasonic, plus a wide range of T-mount lenses. Samyang SLR lenses were also branded as Vivitar, Falcon, Rokinon, Walimex, Bower, Opteka, Bell and Howell, Polar, and Pro-Optic.

Adapter:
K&F Concept M42 - NEX
Cost: $19 on Amazon

Although there are better and much more expensive adapters on the market, it found this one to be of good quality, feel solid, holding the lens very tight. A large button to remove the lens make it easy to use (seems to be a common problem on some other adapters). It was good enough for me to buy these brand of adapters for other mount types.
Do remember this is a manual adapter, so no auto focus and no passing on of information to the camera (as we are using old manual lenses, that is of no issue).

Samples: