Comments about Pro Optic Pro-Optic 800mm f/8.0 Manual Focus, T-Mount Mirror Lens:

What a bargain!

I got used to mirror lenses back in film days, but I saw nothing like this one.

Look at the specs. If it looks good to you, give it a try.

But know what not to expect. This is a mirror lens, with a very narrow field of focus. No f-stop movement; no zoom. If that's OK, go for it.

Comments about Pro Optic Pro-Optic 800mm f/8.0 Manual Focus, T-Mount Mirror Lens:

This lens is incredibly soft. You cannot fix that by stopping down because you CAN'T stop down! It's f8, and that's it. I get MUCH better results by cropping the images of shorter but higher quality lenes, like the Nikkor 80-400mm zoom. Well, you get what you pay for, but this is a little too expensive for a door stop. The best use I have for is as a conversation piece. Take pictures with it? What, and endanger all those innocent pixels? Those poor, poor pixels!!!

Comments about Pro Optic Pro-Optic 800mm f/8.0 Manual Focus, T-Mount Mirror Lens:

I've read a lot of negative reviews about mirror lenses, especially the lesser-known Korean brands like this one. Some even say they are no sharper than a good 200mm traditional telephoto lens. It's true that these mirror lenses are difficult to use, but as the image below shows, you can achieve results superior to the a 200mm lens from the same distance. In fact, the Pro-Optic showed a little over 4x the resolution of the 200mm lens in my test.

The image on the right is a 100% crop, from the Pro-Optic 800mm f/8 mirror lens, focused manually (of course). The image on the left was taken with the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS USM at f/8 and autofocus, resized to match. Both were taken with a Canon 400D (Digital Rebel XTi) on a tripod with mirror lock-up.