Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The Phoenix 500-mm reflex telephoto lens is a way to get long telephoto shots at a diminutive fraction of the cost of conventional telephoto lenses. It's very light, very comfortable to hold, focusses quite easily (the focussing ring turns smoothly and has a conveniently long motion), has a 77-mm-diameter front thread (lens shades are easy to find), and can produce definitely acceptable 9" x 12" prints if you know how to post-process digital images. If you're accustomed to using a DSLR and a not-lightweight lens, you won't need a tripod unless you want insurance against camera shake.
If you've read other reviews about how the donut-shaped out-of-focus highlights are ugly or distracting, I dunno: google "mirror lens bokeh" and check out the images. Yes, the bokeh is sometimes offputting, but the depth of field these lenses produce is so shallow that the out-of-focus highlights are more often blurred completely out of existence. If you can separate your subject from foreground and background--as you want to do with nature shots, as happens automatically with shots of aircraft--the donut bokeh doesn't happen. You can learn to avoid circumstances in which it looks weird. Sometimes it looks cool.
If you've read other reviews about how dark things look in the viewfinder with an F8 lens, your experience should be a pleasant surprise: the lens has to be used in bright light in order not to use an impossibly high iso setting, and in sunlight or light overcast the image in the viewfinder is bright enough. Of course, if you're accustomed only to F2 lenses, what the Phoenix shows will look dark, at least at first. But the tradeoff is a really long telephoto, and you can buy a pretty good used car for what a really long Canon or Nikkor or even Sigma telephoto lens costs. And the Phoenix is a really light telephoto, and those other long, long lenses are truly heavy. So you can put the Phoenix in your camera bag or a big pocket and have it with you. You can take it to the zoo or the airfield or the outdoor game/race/event or the lake or on a ramble through the woods and not have to lug your tripod along.
But if you've always let your camera do the focussing, this lens requires a good deal of practice (but the truth is that shooting long telephoto shots with good AF still results in quite a few discarded images, so a manual-focus lens will only cut your "keeper" rate in half, or so, after you've practiced).
And then, the Phoenix 500-mm will not produce consistently first-rate images. With careful post-processing, it will give you some really good ones, and quite a few definitely satisfactory ones. If $100 is no big deal to you, and you want to try a really long lens, go for it. If $100 is a definitely big deal, then the cost of a better-quality lens is an even bigger one, and owning one of these is a far-future event. So you may want to get the Phoenix and save up for a better lens, and in the meantime learn to use a long telephoto, learn how to focus manually, and learn how to post-process images to real advantage. Learning those skills will be valuable. The Phoenix is fun to use. If you find you don't like long-telephoto photography, you can sell the lens and recoup a good deal of its cost. If you find you really love long-telephoto photography, you can look forward to getting a higher-quality lens and know your images will improve when you have one.
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(Auto exposure depends on the DSLR you have. With mine, the 500-mm Phoenix works fine when the exposure mode is set to Aperture priority, and exposures are consistently good. If you have to use manual exposure, it's not a big problem. Look at the chart on this page-- [...] --and change it by decreasing your shutter speed by two stops. Then on each outing take a test shot, look at it in your LCD, and make the adjustment you need. Easy.)
(The Phoenix reflex needs a lens shade. Get a cheap, collapsible rubber one; it will protect the front element, the lens cap will fit into it, and it will improve the contrast and saturation of your images.)
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Samyang Mirror Lens Multi-Coated 500mm F8.0. loc-RB Lens Section
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