Looking for a vintage lens set with similar looks for video

Thanks.

5. Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 Auto (the Sonnar version, not the newer Xenotar ones)

Do you know the serial # range for the Sonnar version?

Gesture said:

Thanks.

5. Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 Auto (the Sonnar version, not the newer Xenotar ones)

Do you know the serial # range for the Sonnar version?

Click to expand...

It is very easy to distinguish even without the serial number - it has a silver "nose" as seen in the photo while the Xenotars all have black "noses". There is an identical rangefinder version of the same Sonnar lens calculation made by the great Zenji Wakimoto but it is older, more expensive and it requires another different adapter so it is not practical if you are not a collector.



The first lens on the left is the rangefinder version, the second one is the Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 Auto and the remaining three on the right are the Xenotar iterations. The last one is famous since Steve McCurry took the "Afghan girl" with it.

Faazi said:

hello everyone.

Basically I want to cine mod a set of lens for my video projects. I have a XT3 and I really enjoy working with fuji lenses but since I'm doing more paid cinematic work I'm thinking about modding a set for my personal project and paid ones. I have tried multiple lenses. Super takumar 50 1.4. helios 44 and helios 40. Fd 35mm and fd 28. Mir 37 and Mir 20. I like them all and I feel every each one of them has their place. But I want a set that will have a same look across all focal lengths. That doesn't seem like the case for example in super takumar line and all Russian lenses. I'm tore between FD line and Nikon AIS. I really like the look on fd ones but I heard about different coatings on each one that make them look different. I would rather to mod them to a same 77/80 diameter as well.

What kind of set do you guys suggest that hopefully support from 17mm(or 21 or at least 24) upto 135mm

Thank you all in advance

Click to expand...

Here is a good reason why people are recommending Minolta for what you need. Amazingly informative write up.

https://www.dyxum.com/columns/other/Historical_perspective_Minolta_lens_design_philosophy.asp

Every vintage lens user should have that bookmarked.

--
http://www.photolumiere.net/
Goethe, this is a notification that you have been temporarily banned from dpreview, details of the reason are as follows: Unicorn graffiti in the bathroom

If you like contrasty, somewhat cooler colors, check out Hexanons

Full list here https://www.buhla.de/Foto/Konica/eHexanonUebersicht.html

Review of several at once:

Why not Fuji lenses? The old 135 format ones? They are even more exclusive than Olympus.

What a noble quest!

I use my Pentax lenses, but not with the Takumars or SMC Takumars together. Sticking with the SMC from K series through A series gives me no trouble with colors shifting at all, but if I try to mix in a Takumar or SMC Takumar, things need adjusting.

Rol Lei Nut said:

Minolta (MD) had a reputation for making lenses with matching looks. Not sure how good the MD 17 or 20mm lenses are...

Click to expand...

20mm is very good relatively speaking. There's a 21mm and 20mm, both re good.

To a slightly lesser degree said:

Canon FD I'd avoid, both for a tendency for some to lose part of the blue spectrum and also for mechanical problems.

Faazi, post: 65235331, member: 1013989"]
hello everyone.

Basically I want to cine mod a set of lens for my video projects. I have a XT3 and I really enjoy working with fuji lenses but since I'm doing more paid cinematic work I'm thinking about modding a set for my personal project and paid ones. I have tried multiple lenses. Super takumar 50 1.4. helios 44 and helios 40. Fd 35mm and fd 28. Mir 37 and Mir 20. I like them all and I feel every each one of them has their place. But I want a set that will have a same look across all focal lengths. That doesn't seem like the case for example in super takumar line and all Russian lenses. I'm tore between FD line and Nikon AIS. I really like the look on fd ones but I heard about different coatings on each one that make them look different. I would rather to mod them to a same 77/80 diameter as well.

What kind of set do you guys suggest that hopefully support from 17mm(or 21 or at least 24) upto 135mm

Thank you all in advance

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

[/QUOTE]

Faazi said:

hello everyone.

Basically I want to cine mod a set of lens for my video projects. I have a XT3 and I really enjoy working with fuji lenses but since I'm doing more paid cinematic work I'm thinking about modding a set for my personal project and paid ones. I have tried multiple lenses. Super takumar 50 1.4. helios 44 and helios 40. Fd 35mm and fd 28. Mir 37 and Mir 20. I like them all and I feel every each one of them has their place. But I want a set that will have a same look across all focal lengths. That doesn't seem like the case for example in super takumar line and all Russian lenses. I'm tore between FD line and Nikon AIS. I really like the look on fd ones but I heard about different coatings on each one that make them look different. I would rather to mod them to a same 77/80 diameter as well.

What kind of set do you guys suggest that hopefully support from 17mm(or 21 or at least 24) upto 135mm

Thank you all in advance

Click to expand...

What kind of movies are you going to be doing? I think the set can vary a lot. Are you planning to have them modded for geared focus, or just manual clickless focusing? It can make a huge difference, and I sense you just want them manual clickless, not geared (which would limit your choices a huge lot, or require a lot more creativity and be hit and miss).

I have not seen many, maybe because they may have gaps, but depending on the type of movie, even things like Zeiss Jena set or Meyer set could be very nice. They have a very nuanced, dramatic look, unique to East German lenses, and I find the extremely appealing. There are several people using the Pancolar, but I am not sure what option for UWA, or mid tele in the 80mm/100mm range. There are Pancolar 58mm and 50mm I think, so this gives you some variety at a common FL, and the 35 Flektogon is really amazing (actually, iirc Jena East was the innovator, before Zeiss West, in these lenses).

fferreres said:

Rol Lei Nut said:

Minolta (MD) had a reputation for making lenses with matching looks. Not sure how good the MD 17 or 20mm lenses are...

Click to expand...

20mm is very good relatively speaking. There's a 21mm and 20mm, both re good.

Click to expand...

Do you use these Minolta 20/21 mm with adapter on digital FF? Which FF brand?

lattesweden said:

fferreres said:

Rol Lei Nut said:

Minolta (MD) had a reputation for making lenses with matching looks. Not sure how good the MD 17 or 20mm lenses are...

Click to expand...

20mm is very good relatively speaking. There's a 21mm and 20mm, both re good.

Click to expand...

Do you use these Minolta 20/21 mm with adapter on digital FF? Which FF brand?

Click to expand...

Yes, a $10 adapter mounts to my Sony A7Riii. It's very simple. The issue with some of these lenses, I can't recall with this one in particular, is they may have floating elements. This means the lens has some elements moving and some other not moving, in the simplest case. What it means is that for these, you do need a precise adapter.

The ultra wide lenses are generally not that wide, and generally not that good. So some of the best are really good, and of course, not up to current performance.

This is the lens:


What does the NL mean? Well, the number of elements and groups. No other Minolta prime has even had so many elements and groups. So it's the only lens with NL designation.

fferreres said:

lattesweden said:

fferreres said:

Rol Lei Nut said:

Minolta (MD) had a reputation for making lenses with matching looks. Not sure how good the MD 17 or 20mm lenses are...

Click to expand...

20mm is very good relatively speaking. There's a 21mm and 20mm, both re good.

Click to expand...

Do you use these Minolta 20/21 mm with adapter on digital FF? Which FF brand?

Click to expand...

Yes, a $10 adapter mounts to my Sony A7Riii. It's very simple. The issue with some of these lenses, I can't recall with this one in particular, is they may have floating elements. This means the lens has some elements moving and some other not moving, in the simplest case. What it means is that for these, you do need a precise adapter.

The ultra wide lenses are generally not that wide, and generally not that good. So some of the best are really good, and of course, not up to current performance.

This is the lens:

https://lens.ws/minolta-mc-rokkor-nl-21mm-f2-8-mc2/

What does the NL mean? Well, the number of elements and groups. No other Minolta prime has even had so many elements and groups. So it's the only lens with NL designation.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your nice answer! It looks better than many other wider than 24 mm vintage lenses I've seen on digital. But the corners aren't that great, though better than on many other similar focal lengths.

I asked about FF since many use these on APS-C and swear how good they are (yeah, when you don't see the real corners they might be).

I have the MD 24/2.8 and it uses a floating element and is very sensitive to the adapter length. I have shimmed one of my adapters and it performs much better on that one than on one that is 0,3 mm to short. Not sure if the 21/2.8 also has a floating element and if Tony in that case tested it on an adapter with correct length. I would think he did, he is knowledgeable and thorough in his testings.

Anyway, from what I have seen these vintage uwa-lenses have gotten quite pricey and vs their performance I don't think they are worth it. But that is me.

I payed 75 USD for my MD 24/2.8 which is the same as my upper threshold for what I pay for vintage lenses, above that I prefer to add some more and buy a used modern lens instead.

lattesweden said:

fferreres said:

lattesweden said:

fferreres said:

Rol Lei Nut said:

Minolta (MD) had a reputation for making lenses with matching looks. Not sure how good the MD 17 or 20mm lenses are...

Click to expand...

20mm is very good relatively speaking. There's a 21mm and 20mm, both re good.

Click to expand...

Do you use these Minolta 20/21 mm with adapter on digital FF? Which FF brand?

Click to expand...

Yes, a $10 adapter mounts to my Sony A7Riii. It's very simple. The issue with some of these lenses, I can't recall with this one in particular, is they may have floating elements. This means the lens has some elements moving and some other not moving, in the simplest case. What it means is that for these, you do need a precise adapter.

The ultra wide lenses are generally not that wide, and generally not that good. So some of the best are really good, and of course, not up to current performance.

This is the lens:

https://lens.ws/minolta-mc-rokkor-nl-21mm-f2-8-mc2/

What does the NL mean? Well, the number of elements and groups. No other Minolta prime has even had so many elements and groups. So it's the only lens with NL designation.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your nice answer! It looks better than many other wider than 24 mm vintage lenses I've seen on digital. But the corners aren't that great, though better than on many other similar focal lengths.

I asked about FF since many use these on APS-C and swear how good they are (yeah, when you don't see the real corners they might be).

I have the MD 24/2.8 and it uses a floating element and is very sensitive to the adapter length. I have shimmed one of my adapters and it performs much better on that one than on one that is 0,3 mm to short. Not sure if the 21/2.8 also has a floating element and if Tony in that case tested it on an adapter with correct length. I would think he did, he is knowledgeable and thorough in his testings.

Anyway, from what I have seen these vintage uwa-lenses have gotten quite pricey and vs their performance I don't think they are worth it. But that is me.

I payed 75 USD for my MD 24/2.8 which is the same as my upper threshold for what I pay for vintage lenses, above that I prefer to add some more and buy a used modern lens instead.

Click to expand...

Yes, although the OP was trying to build a set for video with some consistency.

The other thing about APSC vs FF is this...take a look first:


FF and APS-C. Observe the extreme corners

If you look at the biggest circle, that's what a lens should have perfectly corrected for perfect corners, and if some improvement comes from the other parts of the circle (side, mids, center) then ...look at the size of the extreme corner vs the next shade of gray circle. It's maybe 1% of the image. But if the designed compensated with center, mid or sides, is it ok to weaken the entire image for just the tiny corner? Often times, I read, therecould be some cutting when making prints, so the slightly weaker corner may be now 0.3% of the image. Most often, with no detail or non important detail. This is why some lenses were specific for reproduction.

But do we need to switch to APS-C or can we mostly cut the tiny corners? Look at the image again, and see the inner black circle. If the EXTREME SIDE is perfect, you can still have a much larger than APSC and have the entirety be perfect. A lens that is good to 17mm radius then it's all you need. APSC in the best case (non Canon) is 11.8mm wide! That's a huge difference.

Or a lens that is very very good, perfect up to around the second lightest circle (second biggest). Go see the circle and where it 35mm frame intersects it. That's around 20mm radius. If a lens is great there, it's just tiniest of the tiniest of the regions the triangle that is not perfect. And a tiny crop will make it perfect. That;s still a huge lot more than the smaller APS-C.

Now take a look at the typical great normal lens:


Source: https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/c...yashica/en/datasheet-zeiss-planar-1450-en.pdf

Here would be with markings for the image circles corresponding to first diagram.




APSC Corner (diagonal) vs FF Side vs FF <1% corner vs FF Corner (diagonal)





The red line corresponds to the diameter of the circles. Where do you draw the line? APS-C is quite extreme. Most good lenses will render the sides perfectly, like this one above. I'd say that up to 20mm, the image is still very good unless a very very high magnification. The extreme corner is more objectionable. But it's less than 1% of the picture, and I can crop it out if picky.

The point is these trade offs were decided so as to balance camera size, lens weight, lens cost and image quality. And it's not necessary to go to APS-C. In RAW Therapee for example, I can just ask to drop (crop) x number of pixels. Default is 4 pixels, but I can change to 16 or something else very easily. I also frame with that in mind when needed.

This makes it quite trivial to compare APS-C and FF. Full gives all the distance from the APS-C red line up to the extreme right of the MTF. And that's quite a lot

fferreres said:

Yes, although the OP was trying to build a set for video with some consistency.

Click to expand...

Yeah, maybe I was drifting away from the topic somewhat. I do wonder how much is still visible if one shots video in log mode with lenses that are different in their colors and as with all log shots afterwards grades the footage in post. Shouldn't that color grading take out all or much of the original color differences?

fferreres said:

The other thing about APSC vs FF is this...take a look first:


FF and APS-C. Observe the extreme corners

If you look at the biggest circle, that's what a lens should have perfectly corrected for perfect corners, and if some improvement comes from the other parts of the circle (side, mids, center) then ...look at the size of the extreme corner vs the next shade of gray circle. It's maybe 1% of the image. But if the designed compensated with center, mid or sides, is it ok to weaken the entire image for just the tiny corner? Often times, I read, therecould be some cutting when making prints, so the slightly weaker corner may be now 0.3% of the image. Most often, with no detail or non important detail. This is why some lenses were specific for reproduction.

But do we need to switch to APS-C or can we mostly cut the tiny corners? Look at the image again, and see the inner black circle. If the EXTREME SIDE is perfect, you can still have a much larger than APSC and have the entirety be perfect. A lens that is good to 17mm radius then it's all you need. APSC in the best case (non Canon) is 11.8mm wide! That's a huge difference.

Or a lens that is very very good, perfect up to around the second lightest circle (second biggest). Go see the circle and where it 35mm frame intersects it. That's around 20mm radius. If a lens is great there, it's just tiniest of the tiniest of the regions the triangle that is not perfect. And a tiny crop will make it perfect. That;s still a huge lot more than the smaller APS-C.

Now take a look at the typical great normal lens:


Source: https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/c...yashica/en/datasheet-zeiss-planar-1450-en.pdf

Here would be with markings for the image circles corresponding to first diagram.


APSC Corner (diagonal) vs FF Side vs FF <1% corner vs FF Corner (diagonal)

The red line corresponds to the diameter of the circles. Where do you draw the line? APS-C is quite extreme. Most good lenses will render the sides perfectly, like this one above. I'd say that up to 20mm, the image is still very good unless a very very high magnification. The extreme corner is more objectionable. But it's less than 1% of the picture, and I can crop it out if picky.

The point is these trade offs were decided so as to balance camera size, lens weight, lens cost and image quality. And it's not necessary to go to APS-C. In RAW Therapee for example, I can just ask to drop (crop) x number of pixels. Default is 4 pixels, but I can change to 16 or something else very easily. I also frame with that in mind when needed.

This makes it quite trivial to compare APS-C and FF. Full gives all the distance from the APS-C red line up to the extreme right of the MTF. And that's quite a lot

Click to expand...

Very nice explanation and illustrations! Just a few quick comments, the cameras I know of either shots in APS-C crop and displays that full on the EVF/LCD or in FF. Shooting and framing in FF and trying to imagine a 10% crop or whatever can be hard. Sure, one can use the gridlines somewhat or tape a mask on the LCD. But still not very convenient. I often place lines quite precise in my images so I prefer to have a 100% of what I will get.

If one does shot in APS-C mode one looses pixels, DR and gets a noisier end result due to larger magnification of the image. Also central sharpness is lower due to the higher magnification. So that is also not a good option I think.

But what I think and how I do things don't necessary need to be the same as how others prefer do have and do their things.

--
Best regards
/Anders
----------------------------------------------------
Mirrorless, mirrorless on the wall, say which is the best camera of them all?
When I put my camera in Manual mode, why don't I get any instructions?
Some images:

lattesweden said:

fferreres said:

Yes, although the OP was trying to build a set for video with some consistency.

Click to expand...

Yeah, maybe I was drifting away from the topic somewhat. I do wonder how much is still visible if one shots video in log mode with lenses that are different in their colors and as with all log shots afterwards grades the footage in post. Shouldn't that color grading take out all or much of the original color differences?

Click to expand...

I've never shot log.There are so many factors that I agree after processing and grading, most differences may be gone. I think it'd be most noticeable if a lens is a dud or good copy. There's also the possibility to make things more even by actually color profiling the lenses using a color checker target.

lattesweden said:

lattesweden said:

This makes it quite trivial to compare APS-C and FF. Full gives all the distance from the APS-C red line up to the extreme right of the MTF. And that's quite a lot

Click to expand...

Very nice explanation and illustrations! Just a few quick comments, the cameras I know of either shots in APS-C crop and displays that full on the EVF/LCD or in FF. Shooting and framing in FF and trying to imagine a 10% crop or whatever can be hard. Sure, one can use the gridlines somewhat or tape a mask on the LCD. But still not very convenient. I often place lines quite precise in my images so I prefer to have a 100% of what I will get.

Click to expand...

That's a good point. I have lost my composition a bit for the obsession over precise focus. This is made work with sharp lenses and the biggest offender is the 42MP camera. It's like I have a hard time enjoying a slightly blurry shot in the detail I aimed for. And composition suffers because I am mostly in 12x magnified view.

I think I need to go back to 12MP and stop pixel peeping. The other problem is that of using a prime, so often I cannot change the FL fast, so I use the resolution as zoom. As you can imagine, it's impossible to have the aids of a frame in that case, so the composition has to happen afterwards.

lattesweden said:

If one does shot in APS-C mode one looses pixels, DR and gets a noisier end result due to larger magnification of the image. Also central sharpness is lower due to the higher magnification. So that is also not a good option I think.

Click to expand...

I wish I'd care less but alas, I want the photos to be crisp in the detail. I aim to always thrive for using ISO 100 too.

lattesweden said:

But what I think and how I do things don't necessary need to be the same as how others prefer do have and do their things.

Click to expand...

I think I prefer your way. I'll try it out. Probably, past year and a half for me have been more about lenses than photos, so it's a good time to go back to normal mode.