Vivtar 600mm Series 1
Solid Catadioptic Lens (circa 1970)
5 April 2005
Finally! I found a long
lens that I am happy with. This is a true classic.
One of the most interesting of the Vivitar Series 1 lenses was
the 600mm f/8 Solid Catadioptric lens. It was originally designed and built for
the U.S. military by Perkin-Elmer. With the screw on hood and the “T” adapter
it is 4-1/2 inches long by 4-1/4 inches in diameter. The lens is extremely
rugged (solid as a tank!). I was pleasantly surprised by the bright image in
the viewfinder. Several others mirror lens I had tried were much too dim to
focus. I definitely need a tripod for this jewel … and remote cable does not
hurt.
(linked file is 175 Kbytes)
My standard preliminary test target for long lens just
because “it is there”. Of course this has been reduced quite a bit for the web
and it was shot with standard in camera JPG processing (no processing in
photoshop other than image size).
(linked file is 1.15 Mbytes)
Links:
Most links that you find in a search engine for this lens
wind up with “server not found”, but these were still valid at the time I
posted this.
Solid Catadioptric
Lens review (800mm) at Lumious Landscape
This following is taken from an interview with Juan L. Rayces the designer of this lens:
“…
I finally reached my goal with an all-spherical design in 1970, this was a
600mm f/8, with overall length of 84mm, about 1/5 the overall length of a
standard 600mm telephoto lens. The Perkin-Elmer Astro-Optical General Manager
interested Vivitar in marketing the lens and the lens went into production at a
selling price of less than 1/10 the price of the aspheric solid cat. This was a
remarkable feat because the division had absolutely no experience in mass
producing optics. Another feat was to completely block stray light that always
plagues catadioptric systems. Vivitar engineers subjected the solid cat to all
kinds of tests, including comparing it to a Nikon 500mm Reflex-Nikkor mounted
on the same camera body and taking pictures on the same strip of color film. We
took the solid cat to that year's Photokina Exhibition in Cologne. There it was
subject to a test that its ancestor, the Cassegrain star tracker could not pass;
a visitor to our stand dared one of our people to drop the solid cat onto the
floor from a table, he did so and the solid cat survived.
Vivitar
was interested in the solid cat mostly for prestige but they lost interest
after two or three months and production was halted. Also at that time the
price of zoom lenses for 35mm cameras suddenly was within the reach of any
pocket. Let us be honest about it: a zoom lens is a lot more fun to use than a
fixed focal length solid cat, no matter how short the solid cat may be. “