Seriously.. what is the point?? Just buy an adaptor for a decent reflector telescope. It will be 1% of the price, and actually much better! Look at that shot of the moon at the end!! All that chromatic aberration... LOL It costs $120,000 for the privilege of all that crapness. Here's a shot of the moon I took with a £300 telescope... and my scope is F5 too... none of this F14 nonsense. Seriously... why? The only advantage is that the image will not be inverted as with a telescope, but have you seen teh size of that thing? It's not as if you can work fast with it
What do the massive camera tracking rigs use owned by Nasa. The sort of thing that they use to track a shuttle launch.
Nikon has a slightly more practical lens at 1200-1400mm f/5.6-8. http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/recollections/r16_e/index.htm
Heat shimmer and atmospheric haze alone over the distance of 5200mm viewing angle make it practically useless. I agree, get a telescope and point it upward *seems like a "let's lay them on the table and measure them" type product if you ask me.
I may be wrong, but I don't think this is a new lens. This appears to be one of those old, one-off kind of lenses that was built back in the 60s and was designed for a specific purpose. EDIT: NASA used a number of different camera systems to record Shuttle launches. At least 60 cameras or various types were mounted in the immediate pad area, with multiple imaging systems used miles away (including off shore ship-based Doppler radar systems and airplane-mounted visual tracking systems). Here is everything you wanted to know about Shuttle launch imaging systems. Warning, this links directly to a 10Mb PDF file, so depending on your connection it may take a while to download.
That's the type of lens the USA used to gyroscopic-stabilise and take spy shots of Russia out of a plane with!
At 750mm how much of a crop did you do for your moon piccy? Also was it a HDR post processing image to get it "just so".
It is impossible to fathom how much I want that lens. Shame I have a Pentax............ Enterobsidian
Frankly if you could own such a lens then the mere problem of owning a pentax would not be a mere problem due to your wealth.
I'm surprised that Canon would make such an impractical lens... I think eddie is on the money - it's all about the size of your penis lens.
Impractical for what application? Remember that Canon (like most of the imaging companies) manufactures lenses for a variety of purposes, not just the consumer/pro SLR market. As I said before this isn't a new lens - from what I can find it was one of 3 built in the mid-60s. I presume that this was never destined for the commercial market, and that it was built for a specific purpose. I have no idea what that purpose might have been, but there you go. EDIT: Since this has prompted some discussion, I decided to check out the entire YouTube video. The guy states in the video description that the video is a simulated field of view that the lens would provide. In other words, all the chromatic aberrations and other artifacts that you guys are seeing are from standard lenses with the image zoomed in, not the super 5200mm special.
As far as I can find anywhere the most sensible suggested use is that of observing bomb testing, though nowhere has sources I'd feel sure in quoting.
It was probably owned by some government or military organization, i'm sure they wouldn't just build it just to say mines bigger.
