The Team With the Best Equipment... Doesn't Always Win

There are few things that get photographers' hearts racing like a "new" lens. Especially, one that's as unusual as a mirror lens; otherwise know by the awkward name of catadioptric! Some months ago, in my Mirror, Mirror post, I talked about picking up a Tokina 500mm f/8.0 "Cat" lens off of eBay for a pretty darned good price. Then, I found that it had some fungus growth on the inside of the front element and the seller refunded me half the price of it, so this lens ended up being south of $30. 

So, yesterday after the Thanksgiving meal and rocket-launch-a-paloosa, I headed out with this lens mounted on the D300, MB-D10 attached, and the whole rig attached to my mono-pod. I don't mind if I do say so myself: I looked good! AP or National Geographic should start sending me checks! 

This was about as good as it got! Not terribly impressive, is it? Oh, but it gets better!

If you go ahead and pull this up at full-size, you'll see that some of the grass in the lower right-hand corner is darned sharp! 

Apparently, it was the camera's (lens', computer's, fence's) fault...... Uhhhh, no; it's just photography. Photography isn't just equipment, it isn't just talent, it's mostly skill which is acquired through hard work. 

It's unfortunate, but you can't just grab up some nice equipment, go out into the woods with a "how to" book and get it done. I shot images for the better part of an hour till the wife came out and wanted to know what I was doing at which point, I basically ran out of light. An f/8 (f/11 effective) mirror lens needs lots of good light even to shoot bad images. If there's a lens out there that takes more work for a photographer to get good at using, I don't know what it is. Thinking back, to the days where I carried a camera literally everywhere, there was a reason I was astounded by our photography instructor who regularly used a 500mm Nikkor mirror hand-held. No, it's not the lens. Yes, the beast of a Nikkor is a better mirror than the little Tokina, but as you can see, it's not the mirror bugaboo, contrast, that's the issue here. 

1. I didn't hold it very steady even for shooting at 1/1000th of a second or higher....
2. I clearly didn't do the best job focusing either, and if you didn't already know, the depth of field for a 500mm (750mm effective on APS-C sensor'd camera) f/8 is pretty darned unforgiving. 
3. I probably should have used a tripod instead of a mono-pod, but then; what would be the point of using a compact mirror anyway!

So yeah, I'm going to need lots of work with this lens if I'm going to get any good with it. 

However, it wasn't an all-bad afternoon....photographically speaking. I did shoot some pictures with my regular "go-to" lens, the 18-200mm VR Nikkor and I got another reminder of how much better the use of "fill-flash" is when shooting in bright contrasty conditions! Here's is a picture of Josh "the Rocketeer" with his helper, Katie "Space Disaster" getting ready for a launch.

That turned out pretty well; photographically, as well as aeronautically.