Considering a GFX50R for only Vintage Manual Lens am I crazy?

Its really for me going to come down to what the Chron can do wide open.... IF it can deliver 90% of the frame as good as the Cat picture that is here on the forums it may follow me home. I have far too many good 50s with character that would be phenomenal for street at a 40ish MM FF equivalent.

But the message has been loud and clear from you guys dont do it, dont think I have seen a single Gopher it........ Perhaps this may end up being an AND situation A7R2 and the 50R, not really in the budget but... You only live once.... If I still had the collection of Pentax 67 stuff I got rid of three years ago...........

gatorengineer said:

Current A7R2 user, Amateur, Shoot mostly Portrait, Street, and Landscape. I use the A7R2 with only manual vintage glass, I do have the first rev of the Sony 35 F1.4 somewhere but the plasticrap of this lens bothers me so I never shoot it. To me part of the joy of the hobby is the tactile feel of the lens, and frankly I am old enough to have started long before auto focus.

Every comparison I see of the Fuji Medium format stuff is done at basically infinity focus or stopped down to a very deep depth of field, and the reviewer says see no difference.

I have a very nice Vintage bucket of glass, all FF, or Rangefinder and what I have seen browsing all of the online stuff is that there seems to be something special about the focus transitions and the pop on this camera when glass is shot wide open, especially vintage glass. I also like the idea getting a little wider field and a little shallower DOF relative to a Native lens on the Fuji.

Am I out in left field and the pics that impress me are just by "better than average photographers" or is there something special with this camera and vintage glass?

thanks for any input.

PS Yes I also know Fuji Native glass is generally excellent, but frankly not in the budget.

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I too thought I would use vintages on my newly acquired 100s but the result is not as good as the nikon z7. I gave up the idea but ordered GF lenses for GFX. My vintage lens collection will stay with the z7.

Not at all crazy.

GFX 50R with Leica lenses. After awhile you learn to allow for vignette and hence crop in post.

Summicron 50 v. 4 at f/4, 1/20th sec.





Summilux 50 ASPH at f/5.6



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Pansottin said:

Pansottin said:

• JimKasson wrote:

Pansottin said:

This question is for those who know physics and optics (I don't know): when adapting FF lenses that were designed for film (I think the classic Zeiss ZE and ZF.2 will be in this category) to GFX we won't always have incompatibility problems with the sensor, the thick glass in front of it, etc? Will we see image degradation, amplification of lenses problems, etc? Thanks.

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I've not seen any issues with the lenses that provide near-total coverage. Those lenses tend to be longer in focal length, though.

I've certainly seen that issue with short, symmetric lenses (I'm looking at you, Leica M) on FF cameras.

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Thank you Jim. When you say longer lenses you mean from 50mm or even longer in the tele range?

I conclude that from your observations the biggest problem will be whether or not to cover the sensor and not these very technical aspects that are not even observed in the images?

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The cover glass needs to be included in the optical calculation.

The issue is really the beam angles. Lenses made for DSLRs have pretty small beam angles while lenses made for rangefinder cameras often have large beam angles.

You could simply consider that, if the rear element of the lens is close to the sensor then the cover glass will degrade image quality significantly.

Lenses developed in the digital era take cover glass into account. Most cameras have around 2 mm of optical thickness.

Leica M series used to have very thin cover glass, but that has created some issues.

A guy working as an optical designer tested an existing design, by inserting a piece flat glass behind the lens, and it caused astigmatism but also affected field curvature,

Weather the effect of the cover glass observable or not is observer dependent. But it also varies with lens design.

Lensrentals used to make a lot of lens tests. It seems that Zeiss told them that they needed to include the cover glass in their tests. So, now they test all lenses with cover glass. They have 1, 2 and 4 mm of optical flats.

This article has great info: https://wordpress.lensrentals.com/b...in-the-path-sensor-stacks-and-adapted-lenses/

To put things into perspective, I use this definition for an excellent lens:

• MTF is above 0.9 at 10 lp/mm across the field
• MTF is above 0.8 at 20 lp/mm across the field
• MTF is above 0.6 at 40 lp/mm across the field

This was based a bit on Hasselblad V series lens designs. It is still a challenge for modern lens designs.




The present day Zeiss Planar struggles at f/1.4 but performs great at f/4




The Zeiss Planar 100/3.5 is pretty excellent at f/8. But it is intended to used near infinity.




The Zeiss Planar 80/2.8 is pretty bad off axis. The main issue here probably is field curvature. It is absolutely visible in landscape shots. But it would not be visible in portrait shots, where you would probably focus on the eyes of the subject.Shooting landscape, field curvature may be helpful, allowing both foreground and central objects being in decent focus.

I have used both Hasselblad lenses shown here, and the story the MTF curves tell is absolutely true.

I still have the Planar 100/3.5 while my Planar 80/2.8 was sold. Would I shoot portraits, I would be perfectly happy with the Planar 80.(*)

Best regards

Erik

(*) I started off with Sonnar 150/4, Planar 120/4, Planar 80/2.8 and Distagon 50/4. Later I found that I needed a wide angle. badly, and ended up with the Distagon 40/4 CF FLE.

Later I found the Planar 100/3.5 CF at a great price. But, that left me with 'Planars' 120, 100 and 80 mm, more alternatives than I was willing to carry.

In the end, I replaced my Distagon 50/4 and my Planar 80/2.8 with a Distagon 60/3.5. I had a good dealer in used Hasselblad so I could do these changes at reasonable cost.

Would I have my Sony gear stolen, I could carry on with the Hasselblad gear. But, I make better images with the Sony gear.

The A7rII is a great camera. That said, the A7rIV is a much better camera in any sense, except size. I use the A7rIV for most things I do, but have the A7rII for tilt and shift work as the A7rIV is too large for my T&S rig.

--
Erik Kaffehr
Website: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net
Magic uses to disappear in controlled experiments…
Gallery: http://echophoto.smugmug.com
Articles: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles

Hi,

Pick some of the P67 lenses you liked the most and reacquire. Add in some of the P645 ones as well. You can still pick up a lot of those lenses for little money.

Stan

gatorengineer said:

Current A7R2 user, Amateur, Shoot mostly Portrait, Street, and Landscape. I use the A7R2 with only manual vintage glass, I do have the first rev of the Sony 35 F1.4 somewhere but the plasticrap of this lens bothers me so I never shoot it. To me part of the joy of the hobby is the tactile feel of the lens, and frankly I am old enough to have started long before auto focus.

Every comparison I see of the Fuji Medium format stuff is done at basically infinity focus or stopped down to a very deep depth of field, and the reviewer says see no difference.

I have a very nice Vintage bucket of glass, all FF, or Rangefinder and what I have seen browsing all of the online stuff is that there seems to be something special about the focus transitions and the pop on this camera when glass is shot wide open, especially vintage glass. I also like the idea getting a little wider field and a little shallower DOF relative to a Native lens on the Fuji.

Am I out in left field and the pics that impress me are just by "better than average photographers" or is there something special with this camera and vintage glass?

thanks for any input.

PS Yes I also know Fuji Native glass is generally excellent, but frankly not in the budget.

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I'm going to be a bit of a Devil's Advocate here.

I have the 50R, I only use adapted legacy lenses on it, both 645 lenses and FF lenses.

Most of the answers here make the presumption that you are looking for the highest 'image quality' possible, fair enough presumption - however you didn't say that's what you were after, you didn't say you were looking for sharpness out to the corner tips or astounding MTF charts. You talk about focus transition, pop and vintage glass., you talk about shallower DOF. You mention the feel of plasticrap and the tactile feel of the lens.

We all know that for many types of photograph, image quality (measurable aspects of it rather than subjectively appealing aspects) is well down the list of things that make an image great. Epic corner sharpness even more so.

As Jim already mentioned, if you're interested in square images, or an aspect ratio that approaches square, then you will get much greater sensor coverage from your FF lenses on GFX than on 36x24. (24^2=576 33^2=1089) This is the path that led me to GFX.

The other thing that brought me to GFX is the lack of PASM on the 50R. Before the 50R I had been shooting a Fuji x-pro3 and was relieved and joyed to be back to a control layout that resembled my film cameras. Not important to everyone I'm aware, and that is of course perfectly understandable, however with your comments about 'plasticrap' and 'tactile feel' it's possible that this may be something that weighs into the equation for you.

Personally I see the 50R as the adaptor's dream camera. You can use pretty much any vintage lens on there. The fact that it has a 44 x 33 sensor in it doesn't mean (to me at least) that I have to use the whole of it for every shot. To be sure using it all gives everything the camera has to offer, but I don't always need everything on offer. It's also a really nice 30Mp FF camera, the adaptors for which are much shorter than for Sony-E making the whole thing feel more balanced and comfortable in the hand, even though the overall size and weight is a bit greater.

So what is important to you? How will the FF crop on the GFX50 compare to your A7rii? How much more of the sensor will you be able to use with each of your lenses and will that make it worth it? Will the camera inspire you with the way it feels to shoot any differently than your Sony?

I don't have answers specifically regarding how your listed lenses will manage beyond the FF circle, I reckon the best way to answer that is to get your hands on a GFX of any description and try it out. Second best would be to shift them on your Sony so you can have a look out beyond the edges that way, if you shift accurately in mm the correct distance you will see how they are. (Just mock something up, somewhere between an adaptor and freelensing, it doesn't have to cost anything) Third best would be to read through this very long thread and/or ask if anyone has tried your lenses out:

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1496482- Beware that in the thread one person's version of 'absolutely fine on GFX' is totally unacceptable to another.

Here one, taken with the lowly SMC Pentax A 35-70/4. This is the full sensor capture. There is zero vignetting adjustment or otherwise corner processing that is not identical over the whole image.

View attachment 7d8c632e93a94ac89db426659cf0ff79.jpg

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Here another - taken with the SMC Pentax K 55/1.8. It's a crop to the pixel size uploaded. I had the freedom to crop because of the larger capture, the choice to do so had nothing to do with anything in the corners, the crop is almost entirely off the right hand side and the top.

Thanks for sharing, you have some shots in your photostream and the Hasselblad with an M group that are pretty much where I want to go.

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful response. I am looking forward to my test drive of the GFX, thinking i may push the test a bit and take the Canon 50 1.4 LTM for the test drive.. First really positive post about the Adaptation. That portrait shot shows very well with a nice transition to the out of focus areas and the shallower depth of field, again thats what I was going for.

To me size is an issue. I travel a fair bit and I want a rig that can pack relatively small. Hence I am really not considering a major investment in MF lenses....

That's a very thoughtful response Michael. Nicely done.

gatorengineer said:

To me size is an issue. I travel a fair bit and I want a rig that can pack relatively small. Hence I am really not considering a major investment in MF lenses....

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If size is an issue, you really want to hold one of these things in your hand. I was quite surprised when I first picked one up. The pictures do not tell the story. It is not small relative to a lot of other cameras that might do the trick for you.

gatorengineer said:

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful response. I am looking forward to my test drive of the GFX, thinking i may push the test a bit and take the Canon 50 1.4 LTM for the test drive.. First really positive post about the Adaptation. That portrait shot shows very well with a nice transition to the out of focus areas and the shallower depth of field, again thats what I was going for.

To me size is an issue. I travel a fair bit and I want a rig that can pack relatively small. Hence I am really not considering a major investment in MF lenses....

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The GFX with adapted 35mm lenses will still be a huge and heavy rig, and IQ will be generally lower than a 35mm rig with native lenses (IMO). If you want a small rig with very high IQ, look at a 35mm 60mp solution: Sony A7R4 with Loxia lenses, Leica M11 with a few Voigtlander lenses like the 35 and 50 APOs, or the Sigma fp-L.

highdesertmesa said:

gatorengineer said:

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful response. I am looking forward to my test drive of the GFX, thinking i may push the test a bit and take the Canon 50 1.4 LTM for the test drive.. First really positive post about the Adaptation. That portrait shot shows very well with a nice transition to the out of focus areas and the shallower depth of field, again thats what I was going for.

To me size is an issue. I travel a fair bit and I want a rig that can pack relatively small. Hence I am really not considering a major investment in MF lenses....

Click to expand...

The GFX with adapted 35mm lenses will still be a huge and heavy rig, and IQ will be generally lower than a 35mm rig with native lenses (IMO). If you want a small rig with very high IQ, look at a 35mm 60mp solution: Sony A7R4 with Loxia lenses, Leica M11 with a few Voigtlander lenses like the 35 and 50 APOs, or the Sigma fp-L.

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Or, if a fixed lens camera is okay, a Q2 Monochrom.

JimKasson said:

highdesertmesa said:

gatorengineer said:

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful response. I am looking forward to my test drive of the GFX, thinking i may push the test a bit and take the Canon 50 1.4 LTM for the test drive.. First really positive post about the Adaptation. That portrait shot shows very well with a nice transition to the out of focus areas and the shallower depth of field, again thats what I was going for.

To me size is an issue. I travel a fair bit and I want a rig that can pack relatively small. Hence I am really not considering a major investment in MF lenses....

Click to expand...

The GFX with adapted 35mm lenses will still be a huge and heavy rig, and IQ will be generally lower than a 35mm rig with native lenses (IMO). If you want a small rig with very high IQ, look at a 35mm 60mp solution: Sony A7R4 with Loxia lenses, Leica M11 with a few Voigtlander lenses like the 35 and 50 APOs, or the Sigma fp-L.

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Or, if a fixed lens camera is okay, a Q2 Monochrom.

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Absolutely! Color Q2 is really good at low ISO as well. Both make really nice images even when cropped to a 35mm FOV. I would often leave my Q2 cameras in 35mm crop mode full-time since it's non-destructive.

JimKasson said:

There is one very good reason to use FF glass on the GFX: you like square photos.

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This is a very good point, and it got me thinking...

A fast FF "normal" lens could turn the GFX50R in a very enjoyable "walkaround" camera to be used hand-held (as a complement to my main use for it, which is currently with relatively heavy adapted P645 medium format lenses, on a tripod).

And it just so happened that I saw a mint second-hand Pentax-A 50/1.2 lens (i.e., a "FF" lens, not a P645 one) available for sale locally... and so I bought it.

Used on the GFX50R in square format (33x33mm), this will produce an almost perfect equivalent "look" to the classic 80/2.8 on a 6x6 Hasselblad. In fact, at maximum aperture the DOF will be 1/2 stop shallower (2.8/56*33 = 1.65 vs. 1.2).

A Kipon Pentax K to GFX adapter is on the way from Germany...

I'll post some samples in due course.

M.

marco1974 said:

JimKasson said:

There is one very good reason to use FF glass on the GFX: you like square photos.

Click to expand...

This is a very good point, and it got me thinking...

A fast FF "normal" lens could turn the GFX50R in a very enjoyable "walkaround" camera to be used hand-held (as a complement to my main use for it, which is currently with relatively heavy adapted P645 medium format lenses, on a tripod).

And it just so happened that I saw a mint second-hand Pentax-A 50/1.2 lens (i.e., a "FF" lens, not a P645 one) available for sale locally... and so I bought it.

Used on the GFX50R in square format (33x33mm), this will produce an almost perfect equivalent "look" to the classic 80/2.8 on a 6x6 Hasselblad. In fact, at maximum aperture the DOF will be 1/2 stop shallower (2.8/56*33 = 1.65 vs. 1.2).

A Kipon Pentax K to GFX adapter is on the way from Germany...

I'll post some samples in due course.

M.

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I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this lens Marco. It gets outstanding reviews over at the PentaxForum.

Ok, maybe I got it wrong but I thought the DOF was also equivalently shallower. So I had thought you take the 1.2x 0.73 and you end up sub 1.0 Equivalent.... Do I have this wrong? The combo you are talking about is what I was hoping to do but with the Rokkor 1.2 or Canon 50 LTM 1.2........

I appreciate your response, but one of the reasons I am doing this is I hate plasticky feeling lens.... All of the Natives on Sony that I am aware of fall in this category... Again I am a hobbiest, not someone who puts food on the table with a camera. So I would trade a little IQ for a good tactile feel. I had the 85 Battis and it left for an older canon LTM 85 which in turn left for the 100 F2.....

gatorengineer said:

Ok, maybe I got it wrong but I thought the DOF was also equivalently shallower. So I had thought you take the 1.2x 0.73 and you end up sub 1.0 Equivalent.... Do I have this wrong? The combo you are talking about is what I was hoping to do but with the Rokkor 1.2 or Canon 50 LTM 1.2........

Click to expand...

gatorengineer said:

I appreciate your response, but one of the reasons I am doing this is I hate plasticky feeling lens.... All of the Natives on Sony that I am aware of fall in this category...

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The CV 65/2?

gatorengineer said:

Again I am a hobbiest, not someone who puts food on the table with a camera. So I would trade a little IQ for a good tactile feel. I had the 85 Battis and it left for an older canon LTM 85 which in turn left for the 100 F2.....

Click to expand...

JimKasson said:

gatorengineer said:

I appreciate your response, but one of the reasons I am doing this is I hate plasticky feeling lens.... All of the Natives on Sony that I am aware of fall in this category...

Click to expand...

The CV 65/2?

JimKasson said:

Again I am a hobbiest, not someone who puts food on the table with a camera. So I would trade a little IQ for a good tactile feel. I had the 85 Battis and it left for an older canon LTM 85 which in turn left for the 100 F2.....

Click to expand...

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I own a Sigma DG DN I series lens, they seem to be well made, all in metal. The Zeiss Loxia lenses are also metal, on the outside. But the only Loxia I have, the 25/2.4 I feel is horrible from the haptical sense.

Best regards

Erik