Cheap 500mm telephoto lens

[William Seger]

I've been seeing ads for various versions of this lens for around $100 -- Opteka, Vivitar, Quantaray, and other budget equipment suppliers all seem to be selling the same lens -- and I finally gave in to the temptation. There are also a couple of similar looking lens that are zoom lens, but this one is not a zoom. It does come with 2X extender, making it a 1000mm lens, but my testing seems to show that the images don't really look any better than the 500mm shots viewed larger.

It has to be said that, compared to a $1000+ lens, the images are soft and have lower contrast, and it's fully manual for focus and aperture -- no electronics at all. But it also has to be said that it's 1/10th the price, and for that price it's really not too bad. I wanted to try my hand at nebula photography with photo stacking, but for the limited use it would see, I just can't justify spending $1000 -- at least, not yet.

I'll have to wait for a new moon to test it on a nebula, but here are some test shots, enhanced to compensate somewhat for the lens' weaknesses. The second one is the top of Pikes Peak, 13 miles away:





(Edit: This is the lens I bought: https://www.amazon.com/Opteka-1000mm-Telephoto-Digital-Cameras/dp/B074QVXXTF

[bluedye33139]

1. I bought one of those and I love it

It is tougher to use for sure. No image stabilization, fully manual. But it forces me to use my tripod properly and to use superfast shutter speed. And I try to do better bracketing when I'm using that lens.

[flamin lib]

2. For some reason I'm not seeing your samples. Can you post a link to them?

For contrast it's easy enough to correct in Post and nebula have no sharp edges so who knows if it's sharp or not ????

The best lens is the one you have!

eta: never mind the link, I figured it out. Looks pretty good to me!

[mitch96]

3. what were the exposure factors? time? nt

[William Seger]

4. Both were shot at 1/400th sec, ISO 100

... and while I intended for them to be f/8 (the lens' max), I'm not sure that they were, because I may have been misusing an "open-close" adjustment ring that's next to the f-stop ring -- the instructions are confusing -- and I didn't recheck the f-stop after fiddling with that.

On both, I was just changing the exposure time until I got a reasonable image, so it's just a coincidence that both were 1/400th sec. The moon pic was actually taken this morning after sunrise, not very long before the Pikes Peak one, and the sky was dark blue before I cheated and took it down to black.