Hi,
I have had Rubinar 300/f4.5 for some year now and used it mostly for
nature. It's quite compact and light for 300mm lens and gives better
than average image quality. Rather good than bad.
There have definitely been problems with quality as my friend got the
same lens with much worse image quality. I reassembled it and now it's
much better. The main problem with Lytkarino catadioptric lenses are too
tightly assembled elements, especially the front one. If the image looks
like "center in focus - corners blurred", it's almost 100% sure - after
loosening the ring that holds front element in place, everything goes fine.
BR, Margus
Aaron Reynolds wrote:
Thanks for the heads-up on the factory! That's some news I can use.
-Aaron
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Shell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subj: Re: mirror/cat lenses
Date: Tue Feb 7, 2006 7:20 am
Size: 1K
To: pentax-discuss@pdml.net
On Feb 6, 2006, at 6:41 PM, Fred wrote:
Which VS1, Godfrey? I have found the VS1 600/8 to be quite good,
but I was
disappointed in the VS1 800/11 (two samples, too).
The 800 seems to have been somewhat of a dog. I've known a number of
people who bought them and none of them were satisfied with it. The
600 was a different animal, one of the better cat lenses ever made.
I did an article on cat lenses some time ago and for the article I
shot with a lot of them, including the astonishingly expensive Zeiss
Mirotars. No surprises that the Mirotars were best in terms of
sharpness and contrast, but somewhat surprisingly my 500/8 Rubinar
came in next. The Tamron 500/8 was among the top performers, too.
Now this isn't to say that you will get great results if you rush out
and order a Rubinar from that Russian web site. As with all things
Russian, quality control on these is all over the place. But it
seems to have been tightened a lot in recent years. Of course you
can pick up the Rubinars for about $ 100 if you happen to be going to
Lytkareno, just outside Moscow. I ordered my 500/5.6 direct from the
factory for under $ 100 and had a friend of mine who lives in Moscow
pick it up and ship it to me. The factory won't ship one-piece
orders to individuals, unfortunately.
Bob
