Lightweight for the fl and aperture.

One needs practice to use effectively.

I served in the United States Military Mission to Soviet Forces in Germany from 1976 to 1980. My fellow Missioneers and I used this lens and Nikon F2s to photograph Soviet and East German aircraft in the German Democratic Republic. The results were outstanding. We frequently received high praise from our "clients." The equipment was provided by the US government.

To shoot anything moving in three dimensions, the lens must be hand-held. There is quite a bit of "technique" involved.
Shooting right handed, the barrel is cradled in the left hand and the right is on the camera body and trigger. Rotating the barrel with the left hand for focus becomes natural with time.

Because the field of view is so small, one must also practice to acquire a target. It is like throwing a ball and becomes natural with practice. I would "dry-fire" on distant landmarks while waiting for aircraft to appear. Church steeples and power cross-ties were good for this.

The technique was to look at the target without the lens and bring the camera to the eye with the target in the viewfinder.
If it isn't there, one can never find it by moving the camera, so it's down, look at the target and up again.

This lens is great for shooting birds in flight and for air shows.

Obviously, if you cannot control exposure with shutter speed only, focus manually and hand-hold a large camera/lens combo, don't buy this.

A rule of thumb for hand holding long focus lenses: One divided by the focal length is best. 1/50 second for 50mm becomes 1/1000 sec for this lens. If you can hand hold the 50 at 1/25th, go for 1/500th with this one, but shoot lots of exposures.

I still shoot air-shows and now use a Sigma 300mm f/2.8 on a Canon 60D. I am now lazy so auto focus, auto exposure control and digital processing are now my routine.

I hope this will help.

Seryy

Very high magnification to weight ratio.

Difficulty in focusing and where fast action is required, this lens is helpless.

Interesting lens. Found it quite difficult to focus at first, but after installing a magnificer (2.3x) on the eyepiece, it becomes a lot easier. Needs cable release or self-timer setting. On the whole, happy with the sharpness but could not use it to shoot moving animals. Distant scenery is ideal.

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 100-500mm lens

High Magnification

Large size

A wonderful lens with a novel magnification ratio. It was purchased used in Toronto. I use it with a Nikon F100 and Nikon D1x & D100. With a x2 converter it is even more amazing. On the D1x and with the x2 I have effective 3000mm or x60 magnification. I have taken full frame images of the moon that are incredible. A great tool to play with if the subject is far enough away.

Customer Service

Nikon service is very good in Canada

Similar Products Used:

500mm f8.0

Quite sharp, without being as sharp as a 50mm lens. Probably 40 to 50 lines per inch. No chromatic abberation. Extremely well built.

Slight vignetting. Requires extreme care in focussing and of course depth of field is very small, so tilted surfaces may not be uniformly sharp. The aperture is not that great, but you know this when you buy it.

I bought the latest version of this lens, second hand. Was a little wary after trying a Russian MTO lens of similar charactestics. Used it for taking pics of stained glass. Quite pleased with the results, but you will need a very heavy tripod for the lens and a monopod on the camera. You will probably also require a magnifier to assist focussing and you will need a cable release or the self timer.

Similar Products Used:

MTO 1000 mm f/10 600 mm Olympus.