Tracy's 1000mm lens MTO-11CA review

The MTO-11CA design was invented in 1941 by the Russian optician Dmitri Maksutov (1896-1964). It falls under the "catadioptric" construction category or a "Mirror" lens. His design improved upon the mirror concept going back to at least the mid-1600's. That design is the premise for all reflecting astronomy telescopes. It is built where two mirrors are set inside a tube facing each other. Light is bounced to allow for a very short lens and to still keep the longer lens focal length. The MTO-11CA's focus doesn't even start until 24 feet away. Visualize this for the mirrored lens concept. Light bounces in through the donut shaped glass. Then it hits a mirror in the back of the lens. That mirror focuses the light into a mirror that was the hole on your donut shaped glass. Next the light goes into the camera. It is a bit like simulating how light would go all the way down a long telescoping lens but in a smaller space. Keep this in mind when you read futuristic concepts because this mirror idea is going to grow even more. One gentleman is working on a lens the size of an eyeball contact lens. Inside the glass of the contact lens the light bounces off minute beveled edges. The lens bounces the light back and forth until it goes into your eye or futuristic cell phone for a much more zoomed in image.

Interesting historic tie-in for me was that Dmitri's grandfather was the last Russian govenor in Alaska before the United States took ownership. I lived in Alaska for eight years so enjoyed this historical fact.

Mirror lenses have no aperture to open and close for light control. In that regard the lens remains an F10 and the focus begins at 24 feet regardless of set up. You'll find out more as the exposure is controlled by varying the shutter speed described below. As a general rule you shouldn't try to hand hold a 1000mm lens by its very nature. I have done it on occasion and the majority of the images turn out slightly blurry even with the most steady of hand. Even if you get the shutter speed to work with you the lens is like looking through a soda straw when hand holding it. Any little movement and your target is not in view anymore.

The MTO-11CA is produced in the 'Lytkarino Optical Glass Factory'. Said to be a uniquely diversified enterprise of the optical industry and one of the largest in Europe. The enterprise is said to have reached a high world level quality of products and is considered a recognized Russian leader in manufacturing of optical materials for various science and technology domains.

As a mirror design, it gives slightly lower contrast than refractive optics. The soft look is subtle and mostly noticeable when you switch back to your standard kit lens that came with your camera. The images below give some good examples. They are soft but still attractive depending on your taste. The slowness of the lens at F10 is fairly obvious too. You won't do clear sports shots with this lens. When you think MTO then think tripod or else blury images. However, slowness isn't always a curse. I took the MTO beast as one of my lenses to photograph an Orchestra here in town. I sat in the balcony on the other side of the concert hall opposite the musicians. Not only did I get close-ups of the musicians from there, but some artsy motion effects as well. As the violin and other players performed, I photographed them in a sort of action blur that was cool. This was all done manually because when connected to my Canon Rebel-XT there are no electronics to interface with. That said, even focusing is always done manually. I can palm a basketball with one hand and yet have difficulty using only one hand to focus this lens some of the time. Turning the ring is a two-handed focusing operation, especially if you don't want the tripod moving too far. Since this lens is fixed and has no zoom there isn't much to alter after that.

The tripod mount is adequate but there is no rotating mount device on the lens. To compensate, different hard mounting points are found on its perimeter. Unfortunately, the tripod mount points didn't originally leave my Rebel XT in the upright position when mounted. This is due to the flexibility of too many lenses making this a less than perfect fit. By default all the lenses come with an M42 thread mount. My bayonet adapter goes over the M42. Originally I left the Canon bayonet adapter a bit loose and that worked fine with my camera horizontal. Another experienced MTO-user pointed out that I could loosen the three screws on my bayonet adapter, rotate the ring, and tighten it back down for perfect horizontal positioning. I did this and now the camera fits in the upright position.

A few times I took some bokeh shots. This is where you focus on your main subject and objects on the side become blurred on purpose. The mirror design sometimes turns these bokeh effects into bright bokeh donuts. Many photographers feel that blurred backgrounds are desirable only when they are so blurred they don't take attention away from the main subject in the form of shapes or bright donuts. The MTO doesn't always create the bright donuts as you can see from the winter mountain shot below.

First and probably foremost you can photograph unbelievable close-ups of objects that are many miles away. The comfort of having a lens with this viewing distance gives you a whole new perspective on photography. The other main advantage I saw right off was the compact barrel shape of the lens. This was great for transporting and the weight is distributed to this tiny space. This made it convenient compared to long Newtonian telescoping lenses. This feature allowed me to take it hiking on a number of occasions to photograph wildlife and city skylines. It also beat out other telephoto lenses for ease of handling on the tripod. Other Newtonian lenses were very long when extended and tended to make the tripod wobbly. Another advantage was its warrior built metal exterior. Many sites recommended loosening up the optics inside the canister for better clarity in the pictures, but I'm rough on lenses and thought leaving it in its original condition might be best for now. The lens is entirely manual but this can be a good feature as it teaches you fundamental lens principals. Many astronomers are taken with this lens because there are virtually no chromatic aberrations. This is a strength of all mirror lenses. That means the purple fringe or purple halos found around objects are eliminated for the most part. Operating with this lens is easy enough that anyone can achieve reasonable results. If you are looking for a lens that has an outstanding range and you have time to experiment, then this one is perfect. The MTO is worthwhile for scenery shots. I took it up a 14,000 foot mountain (Pike's Peak) as well as the mountain-side Shrine of the Sun about 6.5 miles away. When doing daytime scenery from a tripod the MTO rocks! You can get the company you order it from to assure it has your camera's specific mount adapter. The entire package usually ends up under or around $500 for over a 1000mm lens. The images I photographed were really unique. They were spectacular views I'd never seen of my own city here in Colorado Springs, Colorado. On the humorous side, be prepared to get some attention from passers-by when you whip this monster lens out of your camera bag! The 'ooohs' and subsequent wispering about the lens are actually audible from people behind you as you set up the MTO.

The MTO-11CA can view so far away that you end up with some variables that you wouldn't have on other lenses. For instance the winter image above was difficult to achieve with any clarity. That is because the thermal streams coming off neighbor's houses are common in the winter. As neighbors run their heaters and chimneys one can see the distortion with the lens.

Speaking of distortion. Another factor I noticed was natural atmospheric distortion. The image of the neighborhood below was taken in the thawing of spring when the temperature was mild, the clouds were slightly overcast, and there was little vegetation in the way of the houses I wanted to see. I noticed the clarity of the lines came out better than the summer when the heat distorted the view from long range. In the summer taking consecutive images, one can actually see the heat warping the view much like looking at an asphalt road on a hot day. The image below will give some idea of the clarity one can expect. It's a bit soft but really not bad. Again, I have not loosened the lens elements for more clarity as many recommend.

The other prominent consideration is camera shake. Using a tripod is common-sense but there is more. As I took images from over 15 miles away (The peak was 7,000ft above my tripod) the wireless infrared remote helped a great deal. However, using a wired remote worked even better. That is because on the Canon Rebel-XT the Custom Function allows for "mirror lock-up" and goes well with the wired remote. I found that with the moon images and the mountain-top images that this was imperative for quality. Even the swing of the shutter mirror inside the camera caused a slight blur on the pictures. When I locked the mirror up for four seconds, had the image taken, then let the mirror swing down afterward, the images came out more crisp. Since camera shake is a factor you will also want to get a hefty tripod to minimize this. A sturdy tripod will also assure lock-down of the lens position once you get a subject in frame. When viewing a subject several miles away even a tap on the tripod pushes your target out of view.

So finally, how do you actually take pictures with this lens on a Canon camera? Maybe the first thing to know is that the lens fits great with the bayonet adapter and doesn't hit on the flash mount near the top of the camera. The camera is put in "AV" aperture priority mode. In AV everything comes out correctly without much intervention the majority of the time. Perhaps the only exception to this was shooting the moon image at the very top of this page. I had to change the exposure manually to keep the moon from being too bright on the image. One trick perhaps for the Rebel is to connect the camera into a laptop. Canon's software allows full control through their program. This means you can change all the settings and view your clarity a bit faster than navigating menus on the camera. The image on the laptop is much larger for quality assurance too. The downside to laptop control is that the custom function of "Mirror Lock-up" is not available. Taking pictures in this way is more like the wireless infrared remote with mirror swing. The laptop option can be useful though as the Rebel-XT series has a small display for quality assurance of the images. On my 40D Canon the display is nice and the LiveView is even nicer. One always wonders what the LiveView is for until they do a moon shot with the MTO and suddenly it all makes sense.

Photographing near the mountains keeps you alert. Between the wind and other instant weather shifts, it was always a gamble on how a session would go. The image above was taken using the infrared remote and is one of my clearest. Even the slightest wind can distort the images from this distance and the mountains have plenty of that.

The Baby Swainson hawk image was taken by me from the top of an office building where I work. The nest was more than a parking lot away. I believe with a wired remote and locking-up the mirror I would have gotten a crisper image. There was some speculation that the vibration of the building caused a small blur too. The air conditioners in the building may have had enough vibration to affect the image on the roof. It's hard to say. Like most opportunities the time has come and gone. The birds have migrated and a developer has knocked this area for a new building project. While this image is soft I still enjoy it. One bird enthusiast didn't know I'd used a 1000mm lens and feared I was so close that the bird's mother would harm it when I left. Close-up views from far away never stop amazing me.

Click to enlarge this 1000mm image. Taken from 7 miles away and 1,518 elevation difference.

Using 2x doublers is an option. I used two of these in series for my 6400mm image below. The images created with doublers are decent after a bit of experimenting. The quality appears similar to enlarging the original 1000mm image by zooming inward but without the slight pixilation of zooming. Manually lowering the exposure setting all the way to the negatives helped achieve a crisper looking image on all moon shots. The moon was extremely bright and lowering the exposure made the shutter-time faster in the mandatory AV-mode discussed above. Faster shutter then quickened the image's finishing time. Many of my 1600 ISO photographs in the past were incredibly noisy and undesirable. The images below were only 100 ISO speeds and so more clarity can probably still be achieved with a setting in between or better camera. I'm sure others will have better luck getting clarity with doublers and varying techniques. Note that these came out fairly clear even though I don't have an equitorial mount that moves with the earth's rotation.

6000mm image from doublers. Okay technically the 1000 would also be times the 1.5 factor :-)

The above moon images were taken with my Russian made lens model MTO-11CA.
M.T.O. stands for Maksutov Telephoto Objective. The 6,400mm is the crop factor with the
Canon rebel XT used in this particular image above. Crop means only that rather than seeing
farther the view is more narrow like a 6,400mm lens. As you can see however, this is a great distance.

Opteka or Phoenix substitute

Opteka vs. MTO image comparison on same night

I purchased an Opteka lens for fun last year but haven't done much with it until recently. So far, I have not been able to get the Opteka lens (aka Phoenix lens) 650mm-1300mm to perform near the same as the MTO-11CA. I've used the same settings and techniques. The Opteka was half the price and perhaps no surprise that it was half the quality. The inset image on the left in the image above was taken by the Opteka. The long nature of the lens made it extremely difficult to position on very far away objects. But worse yet, this became exaggerated when the lens was fully extended. At that point the Opteka was no longer stiff because of its expandable middle section. Even with a sturdy tripod trying to keep the target in frame wasn't easy. There was lack of clarity looking into the Opteka during the moon shots. That is why I believe I'll probably not get the same clarity as with the MTO. I recall that even when first using the MTO, that the lens showed a detailed moon after focusing. It's tempting to rate the Opteka's 1300mm and F/8 as numerically better than the MTO's 1000mm and F/10. However, the final results have not shown this as a comparable lens thus far. Obviously you get what you pay for in most cases.

Opteka versus MTO-11CA

Opteka vs. MTO image comparison on same night

The age old question by people new to photography is "how far can a 1000mm lens zoom"? While the MTO doesn't zoom you can click <HERE> to see many images I took from 14,000 above sea level and 15 miles away at the top of Pike's Peak mountain.

By now you may be able to appreciate that not every location in the world provides inspiration for terrestrial based super-telephoto in the 1000mm and beyond range. Some places in the world are flat and have few elevated features. You would think that all one would have to photograph with the MTO from there would be the moon. However, supertelephoto is about being creative and getting a shot directly into a pride of lions or something else creative. Shooting images from a mountain top down or from the town up to a gorgeous mountain top is a trend I seem to have ignited. Thanks to those who have left short feedbacks. Feel free to leave me feedback if you've been enlightened by this page. When I first authored and spliced this page I'd come across nothing practical photographed with super telephoto. Sure there are images out of someone’s window of buildings and clothes-lines in close-up. I have to say my creative side could care less about those type images. I ran into mostly image scientist pages where charts of performance and statistics didn't capture my imagination. For those of us that are visual nothing beats being shown example images instead of fed with textual jargon and charts. Fire any comments to tracy.rose@comcast.net and happy photographing!

Tracy's 1000mm MTO-11CA

Russian lens review (Super telephoto!)