Tamron 500mm f8 BBR 55BB

Introduced in 1983  is an optically revised version of the original model 55B lens first introduced in 1979 and it doesn't include the tripod collar or the various B\W filters. The only filter on the lens is the UV one.

I've had lots of  friends and friends of friends and a lot of curious camera users who wanted to try the lens out just to see what it could do and if they had no experience using manual mode lenses, focusing or manual exposure their results were always out of focus, even the "Auto" mode on their camera correctly exposed the resulting image but without "AF" (Auto Focus) this lens wasn't for them.

This is a great lens one of the best 500mm Mirror Lenses of it's time especially for the price it was sold for. This is the 2nd version of this lens the first being the 55B which had a tripod collar and was supplied with the B/W 30.5mm filters which screwed into the rear of the lens. From what I can remember the UV filter must be kept screwed on at all times otherwise focusing can be affected, I may try it without the filter attached at some point and see if there is a difference in image quality as an extra piece of glass in the image path could deteriorate the sharpness.

Like all lenses of this type it has a shallow depth of field (less than 30mm if I remember correctly) and it can be very hard to focus if you are not used to handling a lens like this. It is not a point and shoot lens and it will take more than a couple of photographs to get used to focusing it to get consistent sharp results. What helps greatly is if the camera you are using has built in Image Stabilization, includes "Focus Peaking" where sharp focus is indicated by highlighting the pixels in sharp areas in a different colour.

A tripod can help tremendously but can actually hinder the picture taking process and kind of negates the idea of having a small lightweight lens with great reach.  Another thing that must be taken into account is the crop factor of your camera, as I now use the Micro 4/3 system all the time which has a crop factor of 2 this lens appears like a 1000mm lens and with the 2x Tele Extender it will have the reach of a 2000mm telephoto.

After some, actually quite a lot, trial and error sessions with this lens I eventually set my camera the following way:

Auto ISO within the range of 200-5000, with newer bodies you could probably go higher.Shutter Speed, with built in shake reduction minimum 1/200th second but sometimes the camera has chosen 1/120th second and I didn't see any loss of sharpness.

Exposure:

A camera's exposure modes determine how much control you have over two critical exposure setting, aperture  and shutter speed. You can choose the full manual (M) mode, or one of the three semi-automatic modes: programmed auto (P), shutter priority auto (S) and aperture priority auto (A).  The semi-automatic modes allow you to take more creative control, but still get some help from the camera, of course you could set it to fully auto mode as the only thing that changes is the shutter speed and ISO.

Most of the time I usually use "A" Aperture Priority but I have also used "P" Programmed Auto so I can choose the shutter speed and the camera will adjust the ISO for me. When I feel "Retro" I go into full "M" Manual Mode and take my trusted Weston Master IV or my Weston Euro Master, and sometimes my sleek all black Weston Master IV always raises a few eyebrows and questions from those who are taking photographs.

It takes practice, an awful lot of practice to get some great results with this lens but when you do get the results you are after all the practice was well worth it. Some people don't like the donut bokeh that out of focus areas is shown as but it can end up with unforgettable imagery. 

What follows are images taken roughly at my front door facing the same direction as the panoramic shot above the two moon shots, the light wasn't as good when I took some of these at different times though but let's see if you can spot their locations in the panoramic image.

The weather started getting bad so gave it up for the day. For my next attempt I added the Canon 2x Tele Extender to the lens, I was shocked by the results, it's even harder now to spot the areas in the panoramic photo above. With the Canon 2x-B it has a field of view the same as a 2000mm lens on the M43 system, the aperture was f16 so unless there is really good light and focus peaking on your camera you may find the results rather disappointing. The resulting images though are very good I think.

The lens looks like a monster creation and when on my E-M5 II I wasn't sure what to make of it. I thought it would be awkward to handle like this but I was pleasantly surprised. The Canon Extender being where it was also helped in holding the combination steady. I will try the lens with the Tamron SP 2X teleconverter 01F and compare the results and don't imagine they wouldn't be much different.

The next thing to try with this is using the FotoDioX Pro FD-M43 EXCELL + 1 attached which in 35mm will be like a 360mm (720mm on my cameras), f5.76 and see what the results are like. Imagine adding the Canon 2x and then the focal reducer which would end up like the 720mm f11.52. 

As the weather isn't the best I added the focal reducer to the lens and it looks really good. Normally I have a Tamron to Canon EOS, and then the EOS to M43 mounted on it all the time and it has been fine. Of course adding the focal reducer meant I had to swap the existing contraption for a Tamron to Canon FD which took me all of 1 minute. 

Here it is in it's case ready for use on either the E-M5 II or E-M1 II, but as the E-M1 has been setup to record the lens details from the great addition of being able to enter details of up to 10 manual lenses I think it's going to be the E-M1 II. I'll check the results with the E-M5 II as well as the IBIS is very good and comparing the different sensor and CPU may be interesting. I don't think it would be worth trying the HiRes mode though.