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TTAritsan 250/F5.6 Reflex Lens — A 1979 Idea For Modern Cameras
This Affordable Lens is Surprisingly Good
Telephoto lenses are popular among photographers and photo enthusiasts. They can be used not only for shooting wildlife or sports events, but also for architecture, portraits, and even street photography. A large zoom allows us to make a closer shot of a distant subject, “compress” the perspective, and make a more clean and detailed view of the subject.
In this article, I will test a modern reincarnation of the old idea — a mirror reflex lens, made by TTartisan. I bought this lens on my own, so this review is independent and reflects only my opinion.
Let’s get started!
Technology
A “classic” camera lens usually looks like this:
Using different types of lenses is obviously, not new in photography. The longer the focal length, the “closer” we can see the subject, but the lens itself also becomes bigger, to fit that focal length inside a lens body. For simple geometrical reasons, a 300mm focal length lens will likely be about the same length in size; practically speaking, if we want a big zoom, we will have to carry something like this:
By the way, this is the main reason why smartphones barely have a large zoom — there is physically not enough space inside the phone. The phone’s case is usually too thin to fit the required focal length, and manufacturers have to use smaller matrices and even prisms as a workaround, which can reduce the optical quality.
A mirror, or a catadioptric lens system, has been known for a long time in astronomy. In this system, a curved mirror is used instead of a lens to collect the light:
