Hahaha! Yeah, but for only $72 and a whim — and only in-camera. On a bright day. For random giggles.
Once Canon improved their low ISO DR (after many years of being behind Sony and Nikon in that particular metric, despite continuing to lead the camera market), the trolls needed some new hobby horse to ride.
Contrast can be adjusted in post if the ISO isn't too high and sharpness is largely about nailing focus, which is hard. None of the mirrors are as sharp as equivalent refractors, but some are decent and the new 250mm TTartisans is actually very decent, so with modern Canon tech, I suspect a mirror could be quite good and if AF could be made to work reliably, we could have an interesting lens. The bokeh can be distracting in some scenes and very creative in others, so not always bad.
It's hella hard when hand held and things don't wait.
I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt but the repetition of idiosyncratic nonsense like "shovelling garbage tier" and dripping superiority complex sure stinks like trolling. Oh well, that's what the mute function is for.
Also, thanks – your timing was fortuitous. At about 7:30a local time this morning, I happened to check CPW for a Canon-refurbished RF 2x. It wasn’t listed with CPW’s top-line post on the current Canon refurb sale, but I searched up CPW’s entry for the 2x and clicked the link to find it in stock at Canon for $450 (vs the current new price of $690). So I bought it…
I have the Minolta 500 f/8. I think I posted a sample in the bird series. I have speculated getting a copy of the Minolta 800, but so far have not as they are a bit pricey for pastime experiments. Ditto for the Minolta 250mm f/5.6, but I did spring for the TTartisans 250mm f/5.6, which is an improved clone of the Minolta and much cheaper. It has also caused the Minolta prices on eBay to drop by about 50%. The Minolta 500 is one of the sharper mirrors I have, but it does not close focus like some of the others. I think the Canon 500 f/8 is the sharpest by nose and the Nikon 500 f/8 and 1000 f/11 are close seconds with the Minolta right in there. Can post samples of any you are curious about. They are all much more usable on mirrorless than on SLR.
I have an Opteka 500 and a Samyang 900. Obviously they don't hold a candle to modern normal lenses, but they are fun when I want a distraction. I don't tend to edit them beyond in-camera settings for this reason. If they're soft they're soft — if I want clinically sharp I grab an appropriate tool.
It is not an issue of Photoshop. Lightroom is not creating anything the lens didn't capture, but rather adjusting the ratios of the information that is already there. "In-camera" is very different from RAW to JPEG. You have to do a fair bit of correction in Lightroom to bring a RAW file to match the in-camera JPEG since most camera JPEG engines to quite a bit of "fitting" to get exposures to fit into the 8 bit JPEG space. I always shoot RAW, so Lightroom is always in the mix. I will admit that running Topaz sharpening is pushing the envelope a bit since Topaz uses AI to extend detail a bit beyond what you could nominally recover, but it is still not "Photoshopping" in the classic sense. As an aside, I think the mirrors I mentioned in my response to Alan are much better than either of the ones you identified above. The Opteka and Samyang are both made by Samyang and the newer ones have been made very cheaply (and poorly). The TTArtisans 250mm f/5.6 is an exception as it is actually quite good and not crazy expensive. I see photography as an art form, which is to say I am not trying to exactly recreate the image that was seen by the eye (impossible in any case, because there is no available display mechanism with enough DR), but rather to create an image that tells the story of what I saw when I looked at the scene.
He already did that. Now he is just shilling.Oh my God, Canon hates me!
This makes me so sad I could cry all night long!
Time to jump ship and get tenderly lovedby sweet Sony!
Let's not put Sony on some sort of pedestal when it comes to high quality as opposed to junk. Their first two generations of mirrorless cameras like the A7 and A7 II were often referred to by reviewers and buyers as "Beta" releases. They were an embarrassment. I, too was swept up by the "Sony way ahead' forum baloney of the time and gave Sony a try. Very dull EVFs, Cameras in which all shots were a minimum 1 stop underexposed, as well as virtually non-existent weather sealing and ergonomics that were completely uncomfortable. From what I understand from some of today's reviewers, the EVFs (as well as back screens) still use cheaper glass and are not as bright as the competition, the ergonomics, while improved, are still poor. They had a class-action suit filed against them a few years ago because their shutters were breaking early and often, and another lawsuit was filed because they were putting serial number stickers on their lenses, rather than engraving the serial number into the lens. Users sending their lenses in for repair under warranty were denied warranty service because the lenses did not have serial numbers - the stickers had fallen off. So, plenty of junk coming from Sony - as well as a total lack of ethics - just look into their unethical practices when it came to CDs.
