Rubinar 500mm f/5.6 - "macro" mode use

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Written by

Scientist and artist exploring the beauty and magic of nature

1 year ago

Topics: Photography, Travel

Some time ago, I wrote about one of my lenses, the MTO 500mm f/8, a nice mirror lens that I bought several years ago. I made a basic schematic and explained a bit about how the lens works and how it differs from traditional constructions. Today I am continuing the story about this interesting construction, telling about the MTO's cousin, the Rubinar 500mm f/5.6.really huge one. It came with a set of colour filters. At 1.2 kg (2.6 pounds), it is by no means light but still usable if you want to shoot birds, for example, or to go creative. It has a minimum focus of 2.2 meters, which is nearly half that of the MTO 500mm f/8.

One major point regarding this lens is that my DSLR has a bulging top where a flash would normally go, and the lens cannot be screwed in without an extension tube. The shortest extension tube that I have managed to find online is 0.5 cm. The benefit is that with the tube, I can focus closer. The downsides, though, are that I cannot focus at infinity and also the extension leads to light loss, so the effective aperture is smaller. I have not calculated it.

Still, with that note in mind, I find the lens very pleasing to work with. It has a long focus thrust, and hitting sharp focus is reasonably easy. Of course, you need a steady grip over the camera, but I can successfully support it well enough against my body, and I have not used a tripod.

So, here are some examples that I have taken with this lens.

The first one is a photo in disguise. There are no signs of ring bokeh, and the background is smooth and peaceful. I would not have guessed it was taken with a mirror lens if it was not my own.

Taken in the same location, the background is a bit more restless here.

Here, the rings start almost getting distracting, but still, the tips of the pine are well separated from the background.

Ring bokeh should be employed as a nice artistic tool. Make the subject out of focus, and you might end up with abstract outlines of it.

I would say the photo above is better than the well focused one where the nice rings are masked.

Huge rings can be used as a background element. Here, they are fairly mild, so they don't distract the viewer.

The background looks slightly weird, or at least, the rendering of the outlines of the leaves is clearly different from what a typical lens would do.

This one shows some small rings here and there in the backlit areas, but otherwise looks peaceful.

Going abstract is again a good approach in my opinion.

The rings are really fun to deal with.

Can anybody guess what is the subject below?

Then, naturally, comes bird photography. The extension ring that I have to use puts some limitation to how far I can reach, but the furthest focus is still a few meters away from the camera, enough to point the lens at some birds that are fairly close to the camera.