Nikon 500mm Mirror Lens – The short fat cheap deal!

I bought a used 500mm mirror lens in 1975 when I was shooting for United Press International. It was the longest focal length in the smallest form factor available at the time. Perfect for shooting dangerous situations from behind cover. I should have been using it while photographing the Philippine security forces firing on protesters at an anti-Marcos rally, but I was in the thick of things with a 28mm. That day I got part of my ear shot off from behind. The bullet made my Nikon F disappear into thin air. Fortunately, I was NOT WEARING MY NECK STRAP! After that incident I used the 500mm lens from rooftops, behind garbage cans, trees, and parked cars. It’s a light, easy to handle lens. But being traumatized and bandaged, I was shaking too much to get sharp handheld photos with it on that assignment. I’ll elaborate on that day in another post. Suffice it to say, it’s the only thing I have in common with Donald Trump. Let’s talk about happy shots with the 500mm, which I still have! It works on my Nikon D-610 and D-800. I also use it with an adaptor on my Sony A6000. All the following shots were done on the same day in Santa Cruz, California.

As you can see, the Nikon 500mm Mirror lens is short and stubby. It reminds me of the old 1940 song, “Mr. Five by Five. He’s five feet tall and he’s five feet wide…” I did not attach a sound file of me singing this ditty, so you’ll need to run the title on Google. The lens design is much like a reflector telescope with a small glass viewing lens, called the ocular, that focuses an image formed by a much bigger parabolic mirror. There’s a hole in the parabolic mirror so its resulting image can be concentrated onto a smaller front surface plano mirror and bounced back through the parabolic onto the film plane. Don’t bother analyzing this drawing unless you’re the type of person that enjoys repairing toilets or fixing an Austin 1275cc engine, which in my experience are both equally troublesome.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the use of this drawing for a small donation. There’s no reason to explain how the aperture works, because there isn’t one. WHAT?? You read correctly. This odd lens is wide open at F/8 all the time. This ‘inconvenience’ is worth the trade-off for getting big magnification in a small package. Think about it: F/8 at 1/000th of a second at ISO 400 in bright sun is just right for sports, wildlife, and oogling on nude beaches. This lens has very short depth-of-field, so you must be spot-on with your focus. The digital Nikons make this lens easy to use in aperture priority, with the added bonus of most models displaying a small green ‘focus confidence light’ in the viewfinder. You can assign a beep to it for convenience.

This shot of a seagull plotting to steal a french fry from an innocent and unsuspecting child was taken at about 9 feet. That’s the closest range of the lens. Not very much depth of field here! Note the doughnut bokeh in this shot. Your looking at the result of the hole in the parabolic mirror. Interesting!

My granddaughter playing volleyball on the beach in Santa Cruz, CA. Here we see the comparison of the 500mm lens on the left to an 70-300mm Nikon lens on the right. The image of 70-300 lens had to be increased so Katie remained the same size. Both images were altered in Photoshop to increase contrast. The results are very similar because it was blistering hot that day and heat waves distorted the background. Climate deniers will like the effect, but my feet did not.

This shot of boys riding boogie boards shows the lens at it’s best. The rendition of shadows and highlights is superb. I was lucky on the focus.

This cyclist was about half of the frame and he’s acceptably sharp for being a distant subject. Again, good focus. I lay in wait and prefocused on the ice plant, as runners, walkers, skateboarders, and others made the turn. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

The dougnuts in the background are also obvious here, as is the short DOF. It was late in the day and I was boosting my ISO, hence the grain. Still, very decent shadow detail.

Getting very late by this time. Final shot of the day follows.

Last shot of the day is a spooky photo of a plant with sharp spines. I’d much rather shoot this with my long lens than a macro!

In summary, I think the newer 70-300mm Nikon lens narrowly beats the Nikon 500mm Mirror Lens on sharpness, but not mojo. That mirror bokeh is deliciously special. The fact that these 500mm lenses are available online for about $160 USD is tantalizing. One warning: Mirror lenses are easily knocked out of whack by being dropped, so if you see one for sale with major dings, continue your search.

Jeffery Luhn

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