Home Nikon A6500 – Massive 500-1000mm Lens – It’s 80 Bucks, Does it Suck?

A6500 – Massive 500-1000mm Lens – It’s 80 Bucks, Does it Suck?

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Check out my latest video :
Huge lens:
tiny lens:
Sony a6500:
Lens used in this video:
Tripod:
Bendy Tripod:

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44 COMMENTS

  5. I can see how this lens could be usable on a body with very good high ISO performance and ideally a stabilised sensor. I only have cameras with an optical view finder but I imagine a good electronic one with focus peeking would help massively.

    The portrait IQ was surprisingly good. For me the point of long telephotos is to shoot small things close up, like birds. Then you truly see how the optics perform without atmospheric distortion.

    The trouble is I think you need a very expensive body to make this lens work and if you can afford that, why look at an $80 lens? Saying that I'd be tempted to buy one for a laugh and the challenge of shooting with it.

  15. This 500mm prime preset manual focus lenses comes from many generic brands. I got one under a "Five Star" brand for around 28 USD (PhP1500 Philippine peso) bought surplus from a thrift shop. For the cheap price I paid, I got sharp photos of birds at f11 straight from my Nikon D90 or D300. The 1.3x area crop mode on my Nikon D7100 turns it into a 650mm lens. I was able to follow seagulls and heron in flight, but not the quicker swifts and sparrows – which I use another technique for those shy birds such as pre-focusing and framing while at rest and waiting for it to flap it's wings and fly. It's a bit tricky to use when using full manual, luckily the Nikon D300 and D7100 offers metering for full manual lenses that I use auto ISO and exposure compensation so the exposure is always good under sunny conditions outdoors (shooting in shade or cloudy skies requires to raise ISO at around 1600 to 2500 or so). A bit bulky to travel with a 500mm that big and a heavy D300 so I just bought today a used but good old Panasonic DMC-FZ70 with a hefty 60x zoom (equivalent to 1200mm) which I'm about to try on a light travel. With a superzoom from 20-1200mm you can have all that bulky lenses in one small package, as long as you limit the ISO under 1600 in low light.

  19. My fear of heights would make this video completely different.

    You : stood near wall "We've got a church down here" leans camera over the edge

    Me : stood spot on in the center of the car park "We got a nice safe wall right there, and juuuuust over that wall we're not approaching is a hill we're not photographing"

  21. Wow. I pulled this video up to have a laugh. But hey, that little Opteka lens is not awful at all. For $80, I was pretty impressed. I mean if you want to be real, it's made of some pretty flimsy material, and it focuses in more like a kids' telescope than a piece of photographic equipment, but if I had a 10 or 12 year old kid who is showing a budding interest in photography, I think this would be a great way to introduce them to telephoto lenses. Thanks Christopher!

  35. Actually at 500mm it didn't look to bad at all. 1000 was pushing it; though I think the heat in air had a huge part to play. It reminded me of what its like to look at the moon through a large dobsonian telescope, where the atmosphere creates a moving fluid like distortion.

  39. You should try photographing the moon. Also Mars in in opposition to the Earth right now and the closest it will be in 15 years. So you should also try photographing Mars and see how it looks like 🙂

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