Just how zoomed?

This mirror lens is completely impractical, but I should hopefully still be able to have a bit of fun. I picked up the 2x teleconverter, which turns this ridiculous thing into a slightly more ridiculous thing (1600mm, f16 - even more impractical). Lucky for me, I have an OK tripod.

This is just a demonstration of how zoomed we're looking at here. I took the above photos from exactly the same position in my garden. The first with my iPhone and the second with the D700 at 1600mm f16. I've had to mark on the iPhone shot where I was focussing the D700 because it's almost impossible to tell otherwise.

First things first; a tripod is absolutely essential. There's no avoiding this. In bright sunlight, you might get away with 1/1000 to avoid any camera shake, but even using mirror-up on a tripod, you can see the camera shake from the force of the shutter alone. This is totally unsuitable for anything where you require serious results. Luckily, I have never required those, and I don't intend to. For a bit of fun: photos of the moon, foxes in the garden, wildlife on walks et cetera, it should be totally usable, provided I can be bothered to carry my tripod (which I usually can't).

Still, playing with cameras is all about experimentation and having fun. I intend to learn about the shortcomings of this setup with the goal being to use it to my advantage to hopefully make a few images that someone somewhere enjoys. I already get a kick out of how far away from the subject you can be with it!