Pocketable paparazzi

Real-life test of the Tokina 300 mm f/6.3 reflex lens for street photography

I always wanted a mirror lens. The desire comes from my adolescent years of building telescopes from simple lens and just about any tube I could scrap. The image quality was poor, focusing rudimentary, but if I could see through them I was happy. Proof of concept was the goal. I was fascinated about how people made celestial scopes with hand-made mirrors, with apparently superb quality. Much-much better than anything I could achieve with lens. The hobby faded away but the fascination remained. I want to have a mirror lens, i.e. a telescope on my camera.

I have a micro four thirds system and Tokina is manufacturing a 300 mm mirror lens with a native mount, which corresponds to a 600 mm tele on 35 mm format. You cannot find much about it on the web, and most Flickr pictures with any mirror lens is either about ducks or the Moon. I am not interested in either. I want real photography, where I can use the super-long telephoto reach for a reason. Either because I cannot go closer, but more importantly when the topic needs the super-flat nature of the tele imaging. I was on a trip to San Francisco, a city full of street action when I got hold of a mirror lens and took it to the streets. Below I summarise my experience, I hope it will be useful for those who consider a mirror lens setup.

Old man in Golden Gate Park. Background is lost in the darkness of the museum entrance.

First, usability. I have a Panasonic GF-2 and a GM-1 body, both rather small and without in-body image stabilisation. The lens is fix-aperture, manual focus, without stabilisation — this combo is frightening for never catching anything in focus. In reality, this is just the case with the GF-2. The lens is made of high-precision metal, so it is a pleasure to use the focus ring but it turns to frustration when you get back to the dark interior and ‘develop’ the pictures. Most of my shots were just out of focus simply because the low quality screen is not good enough for precise focusing under bright sunlight. On the brand new GM-1 it is vastly improved. The picture-in-picture image enlargement pops up anytime I turn the focus ring thanks to the electric connections of the lens. Yes, it has electric connections for exactly these purposes, though there is still no autofocus or variable aperture. The screen of the GM-1 is bright and sharp enough to help catch the exact focus plane almost all the time. In cases when I didn’t had this luxury, I simply shot a series of images while slowly turning the focus ring. This way at least one shot was spot-on, however, I still need to practice this shooting technique so it will become second nature. The GM-1 can record 40 images per second, which helps. With this body I really didn’t need image stabilisation at all. Since there are no other things to fix on the lens, let’s look at the camera settings.

Manual focusing is a given, plus the fixed 6.3 aperture. I found that the slowest realistic shutter speed is 1000, preferably 1300 whenever the light conditions allowed. I tended to under-expose by 2/3rd of a stop in order to give a little leeway for more speed. So I was mostly shooting in S mode and the camera decided only on the ISO setting for the correct exposure. It was an easy setup, and I recommend everybody to follow this routine. Measure the light, underexpose about 1 stop, set maximum speed you can. This lens only allows specific scenes to be taken, so you can easily judge what are the real possibilities and changes in the ISO setting are just enough for the correct exposure. I weren’t forced to reject a photo because of bad exposure but lost a lot to bad focusing or simple camera shake. Despite it is recommended to use a tripod or at least a monopod, I shot everything handheld. Why spoil the pocketable smallness of the system by lugging around a ladder to fix it to?

The Oakland Bridge and the Bay as seen from downtown San Francisco. From the top of a hill I could crop out all the houses and flatten the view into a postcard frame.

How about donut bokeh, low contrast, softness? If you already read this review this far these are the most itching questions. And I didn’t even touched them, while most other reviews are lamenting about these. Take contrast first. This is really not only the issue of the mirror, but the long telephoto. The reasons are inherent in the optical system which escapes me, but it is clearly demonstrated on these 3 shots: a 14mm, a 60mm and a 300mm lens. All of them are shot at the same time, images straight out of camera, with white balance set to the same level in post though it was not very different to begin with anyway. The wide image is high, the medium is medium, the long tele is low contrast. Only the 60 mm returns the same contrast we observe, the wide is too much and the tele is too pale. Small wonder, the optical focal distance of our eyeball is about 50 mm. What it means in practical terms is that you have to increase the contrast in post to have the same subjective feeling we are used to. I played around with the sliders in Aperture and settled with the following: mid contrast +30, vibrancy +10, definition +10. Settings close to these numbers made the pictures more lively. As you’ll see below, some of my street photo shots of people didn’t need any such fine-tuning, they were close to perfect straight out of the camera. This I didn’t expect after reading all of the other reviews.

Comparison of contrast at various focal lengths. White balance is set to the same, otherwise the pictures are srtiaght out of camera (Pana GF-2). Histograms show that as the focal length increases the contrast and dynamic range decreases. These images are shrunken but it is still evident that the sharpest is the 60mm Olympus Zuiko, followed by the 14 mm Panasonic pancake and last is the Tokina 300 mm reflex.

This lens is not as sharp as it may be. Partly because of the lens design partly because there is a lot of air in between the lens and the subject which is filled with fumes and dust. It is far less than my favourite Zuiko 60mm, but again, this is what I expected. The pictures are good for 4-6 megapixel real resolution, which is about the same as the classic 35mm film. Case closed.

Donut bokeh is simply a physical flaw of such lens design, as there is a second mirror in the middle of the front lens. No escaping physics, the bokeh is donut shaped. The good news is that I rarely had any donuts on the pictures that pop out. Really. No problem with bokeh at all under street shooting conditions. Of course, if you are deliberately taking a shot of a lot of highlights out of focus you’ll get a big box of Krispy Cream, but then you really try hard to make it a problem for yourself so you can vent about it on the forums.

Portrait taken at a tram stop. The background is out of focus but there is no donut bokeh anywhere.

I have a very long tele instead. Very-very long in a small package. The 600 mm equivalent mounted on the GM-1 is about the size of my fist. I can shoot on the street and nobody realises that I have a capable paparazzi system with me. Try that with a beige elephant.

Don’t fool yourself, this is a paparazzi system, if only your target is stationery enough for focusing manually. I got into the habit of walking down the street, keeping the Sun to by back, and shooting the faces of people coming across on the other side of the road. Even on multiple-lane avenues, I could easily get a portrait from a distance of 20 m. Amazing. I like the kind of street portraiture when the subject notices that you take a picture of them but since I am a bit farther away they do not look terrified or surprised. I would not shove a camera into their faces and shoot them as I think it is rude, but I also dislike totally stealthy shots as being dishonest. With this long-long lens the subjects normally noticed that I take a picture of them, but because of the distance and small kit they felt like they are small figures in the scene while in reality it was a portrait. This way they had an expression of ‘presence’ without posing. Judge for yourself if you like this kind of street portraiture. To be honest, it is possible with shorter lens as well, but not always easy. With my 14-140 zoom, which is a comparably big lens when zoomed out, it was impossible because as soon as I got noticed most subjects either posed or turned away. My lens was recognised as a paparazzi lens. With the shorter portrait lens of 60mm the results are far better and sharpness is perfect but this belongs to another review.

Another suitable angle for long-long tele.

At last, I have a personal confession. I hate tele-photography. A distant duck in the middle of the picture and fascination for ‘I shot it from this far’. Usually boring pictures. However, once I saw a portfolio about the bridges of my hometown, Budapest, shot with a very long tele. The perspective was so mind-bendingly flat that he was able to stack three bridges on top of each other just by shooting them along the river from a distance where they were all in focus and flattened into a single frame. Perspectives I rarely see but would like to master one day. I tried hard in San Francisco where the long, straight streets with hilltops offer great opportunities. I also took pictures of the street with my other lens and got quite OK mugshots but only the 300 mm was able to bring back the floating feeling of Grant street on a sunny morning or a Sunday scene with sailing boats and a church.

A street musician in Chinatown. There is very little image manipulation in post.

I love this lens. My 14-140 in already on sale. I love the lightness and the capably to shoot shy subjects and flattened landscapes. I can work around camera shake and high aperture thanks to modern sensor capabilities. Sure, it will never be my first choice, but I shall always carry it on me. For an occasional portrait or the perfect juxtaposition of things in the distance. Because when you are in a sweet spot for that narrow view and you cannot take a shot, that would be a shame.