[Konvas] Mirror lenses...

[Bruce Taylor]

One of my Kinors came with a 500mm mirror lens. I think it is Russian, but it isn't a Lomo. 
Right, the f-stop is not adjustable-- no iris. It actually works quite well. I haven't used it myself, but a friend of mine did. It's sharp! It does have one very odd feature. The bokeh circles of out of focus specular highlights in the background are dark in the center-- becoming little circles of light. I don't know if this is a feature of all mirror lenses, or just this one. Years ago I bought one of the cheap 400mm 6.3 non-mirror lenses for my Olympus still camera. I still have it, and it still takes pretty decent pictures.
Bruce Taylor

--- On Sun, 11/8/09, Adam Frey <thefirstrule at chainsawlinux.com> wrote:


Let's talk about mirror lenses. 
So, my question is:
1) Anyone used them for Motion Picture work?
2) is the image warped in any way?
3) is the image flipped?
4) is getting a mirror lens worth it, or are they cheaply constructed?
5) did the LOMO factory build any mirror lenses?