Amazing sharpness and contrast for a folded optic. Small and light for a 500mm lens. Probably the best mirror lens made.

donuts yeppers..bad bokeh. Not the lens I would choose to use if I were photographing a model in a sea of wet bubble wrap on a bright sunny day. It would be donut hell. Even worse for those of you zeiss haters, they would be perfectly concentic donuts with even illumination across the frame. All mirror lens do this (well other mirror lenses donuts arent as prefect), so you have a few options; switch to a refractive lens with good bokeh, move or wait till the lighting changes and my personal favorite, have a tantrum about it...go on and on and on about it how you hate donuts.... This is a F/8 lens...I suppose you could handhold it, but its much better on a tripod. Focus is very critical, there is no way to stop the lens down for extra depth of field, so anal retentive focusing is required. The Ax or Rx bodies can really help in this regard. The design will cause the spot meter in your camera to give a false reading...thats per Zeiss's instruction sheet.

Best Mirror lens ever made? maybe, although I haven't used the CZ 500 f4.5 or the 800 f5.6 yet. The lens is about the same size and weight as the 28-85 CZ zoom. It features typically excellent CZ construction and silky smooth focusing. It feels like you're shooting a large 85 f1.4. This is a folded optic and therefore by definition, its performance is limited. The cental obstruction which houses the seconary mirror is quite large. I would estimate close to 30% or more of the front element is obstructed. The problem with this is it kills contrast, and the defraction of the lens more than doubles causing a major loss in sharpness. Mirror lenses also suffer from spherical abberration, yet another way to kill sharpness, and dont illuminate evenly across the entire frame. Having brought all of this up, one would expect this lens to perform like a steaming pile of dog excretement. Most mirror lenses do . The amazing thing is how well this lens does performs given the limitations of the design. Is it equal to the CZ 300 f2.8 apo?.....ummm no. The laws of physics won't ever allow a design like this to equal or exceed the performance of a refractive optic of similar quality. However I would be willing to say that if you put the mirotar against a high quality refractive lens, it would be very very difficult to distinguish between 8 x 10 prints, the sharpness and contast are that good. Overall this is an amazing lens, that shouldn't perform the way it does given the limitations of the design.

Customer Service

tocad is very slow...and not very responsive. as to the quality of thier repairs I will let you know if I dont die of old age waiting....

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I used a Nikon mirror lens which was rather blaa, okay it was pretty bad... and 2 different off brand lenses which were hideous.

Even image illumination right to the edges. Very sharp and good contrast without any chromatic aberrations. Very good internal flare protection.

Very expensive (except my case) Viewfinder is too dark with tele-converter Mutar III. (it is better to use Mutar II)

I bought it absolutely new with a hugh discount price (35% of street price). I am very, very impressed by the sharpness and contrast right to the edges. I got lots of pin-sharp pictures even handheld with my AX and Aria. I even managed to obtain very sharp photos of birds in flight. The loss of light at the edges is less than a stop and hardly noticetable. Previously I used the Yashica 500/8 mirror lens which suffers severe vignetting at the edges (2-3 stops). The Mirotar is definitely one of my favourite Carl Zeiss lenses.

Customer Service

Excellent. One of Carl Zeiss optical engineers explained to me in details about the performance and usage of the Mirotar by e-mails!!

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Yashica 500/8 mirror Sigma 400/5.6 APO Macro HSM

Lite-wieght, small and incredibly sharp!

Pricey but worth it.

A very sharp, lite-weight and hand-holdable 500mm lens. Auto-focuses with my Contax AX body!! Best used with mono-pod or tripod for exacting results.

Customer Service

Not needed.

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None

Beautiful Mechanically constructed, lightweight

cost 4x more than Nikon,Tokina equivalents,slow,low contrast, not tack sharp

Even when using a tripod,mirror lockup,cable release, I could not obtain sharp photos! Characteristic of CAT lens's are the out of focus backgrounds which are ugly! I would recommend any refractive optic over a CAT if you are a serious photographer. Too bad Zeiss "can't" make a long affordable tele !

Customer Service

none

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Tokina CAT

Uniform field illumination; good mechanical design.

Minimum focusing distance could be a bit closer. High price.

Probably the best 500/8 catadioptric. However, due to the secondary obstruction, sharpness and contrast are only average. Excellent field illumination, a major plus in this kind of lenses. Price is very high. Not a very good vaue for money.

Customer Service

n.a.

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Tamron reflex 500/8