Lens adaptation chronicles

I usually browse the original DPR adapted lens forum since at times one may gather insights in formerlky unknown optical marvels-

Today I found a piece on how people had come to use unoriginal optics and a discussion on how EFmount lenses would sink in price. I was inspired to post the following recount of my transition from analog to digital while using a library of adapters and lenses. It ocurred to me that this might also be of interest here, hence this copy:

I expect that EF optics will find a home on Canons new mount, so the companmy will compete with its own past.

Inspired by the above tales of camera and lens cjhanges: here is a tiringly long account of my experience:s

I did not beiiieve that Kodachrome and Velvia could be surpassed by digital devices (and still enjoy old snaps projected 6foot wide-)

BUT then tried a tiny Fuji thing and found that it provided interesting pictorial records at near zero cost. So I stopped using C41 colour films and printed via computer rather than going to the minilabs, while staying with Ilford XP for B&W. (having long given up developing and enlarging Panatomic and FP3-)

Eventually I tried a full frame Canon mount Kodak with some of Canons optics and found both the 28mm and a 20-like reasonably good . A wide to telezoom (28-135?) was surprisinly bad. .Above 400 ASA the Kodak had terrible noise so it had to be retired-

Since I had canon-mount lenses the Kodak was replaced by a Canon something which was VERY much better at anything above 200ASA and a manual focussing screen, but did not have the excellent colour management that the Kodak rawfiles provided.

After one plastic lens fell apart and a number of my snaps with autofocus turned out to be sharp at the wrong point, I decided that I did not need more junk optics and bought some Leitz R lenses that were reasoan\bly cheap at that time (Wild/Kern et al . had decided to abandon the Rseries). And double luck; not only the lenses were good buys, but they could be easily adapted to Canon . I had never been particularly interested in Exif data so no need for chipped adapters-

Later on I found that the little "half frame" Olympus Pen F would lake just any lens one might wish to use, and would fit in a pocket if fitted with a compact lens (like the "voigtlânder" 25mm) , The penF would also use my Leitz M lenses so for travel I could just keep the thin teleElmarit in another pocket.

With time I ignored the compactness advantage , got a library of adapters and put my old Alpalenses to work plus some of the MFT olympus stuff. Metabones speedboosters were useful for dim but sharp lenses, For speed . however I could use some of my anciant C mount lenses Like the Schneider 50/0,95 that I had modified to fit. The trick for getting higher resolution through 4-slighly offset exposures worked well if the camera was solidly mounted, but I wished for higher resolution (allowing enlargement and cropping) without having to press buttins and twiddle dials.

On the MFT , the focus poit that determined where spotmetering took place had a tendency to move on its own . So I got rid of the entire MFT equipment and got a Nikon Z7 with an EF to Z adapter allowing the use of all my old lenses (except the Canon auto ones and the Alpa mount ones) . Wth another adapter It also acommodatet my Leica M lenses .

The Z is an extremely well focussing (100/% enlargement)and robust device (surviving rough treatment) whose only major fault besides excessive bulk and some useless features is that its focussing and spotmeteringh point also moves erratically

p.

I use several manual focus lenses with Nikon F or M42 mounts, adapted to E mount and L mount cameras. So long as a camera has peaking to help with the focus, it works fine.
Probably it helps if you have plenty of experience of using manual focus film cameras (with the same lenses).
Sigma offer a loupe for their fp camera which gives a particularly big clear view.

Don Cox

Further to my choice of adapters and ad reverse-engineered adapters: I did definitely not need elctrical connections and prefer to choose settings mysel, f but to let the camera gauge light conditions and choose timing accordingly.

The problem with the central point moving is that it is defining where the light meter takes its reading. Hence it needs to be in a predictable place. Focus confirmation lights or sounds are not needed when focussing manually, but the area that is chosen to focus on needs to be equally predictable (especially if using native autofocus lenses)

p.

On the original site there has been a few post lauding autolenses, so I was inspired to write the forrowing:
____--

Furtther to the eulogy posted above, I could add that as a neoluddite-control freak I dislike autofocus, prefer to set the aperture istead of being victim of camera whims (such as buttons or wheels being acciddentaly moved) AND never used to look at Exifs, so I am quite happy with cheap mechanical adapters as long as they are dimensionally correct ( especially with wide angles) ,- and that the fastening methods are secure (as opposed to some C/Y adapters with weak or too short springs and R adapters with weak springs)

Stabilization, if light and other conditions require it, is handled by the camera as part of prearing to fit the suitable lens, - or if situation demands, a tripod plus remote release, Consequently I systematically avoid CE and other autolenses.

p.

I've not got any reasonable EF lenses, so have never tried any smart adapters for EF. I do however use it as an intermediate mount, allowing me to use a focal reducer for my pentax lenses on MFT before a direct reducer was available. The same reducer has also subsequently been used with quite a few other SLR mounts, then I've added a EF to MFT helicoidal adapter that uses the same secondary adapters... With a MFT to E mount adapter both these set ups than got some use on my Nex 6 before my daughter took it over, some could get used on the A7ii but I don't remember trying.

With the A7ii stacking adapters on the Techart Pro has also proved useful on those occasions where AF has been wanted/needed (especially using a light weight mirror lens at an airshow). Most of my adapting is however still manual focus, aperture priority.

Ad adapters for MFT I found the speedboosters of mr. Caldwell optically and dimensionally excellent

AND I might add that after lugging the Nikon 7-monster around for a day in the mountains the small Olympus thing with some modifications still shoudl be able to compete when deciding what to bring on hikes.

p.

Another route with the Z mount is adapting Sony FE mount glass of which there is a huge selection , I have little need for C-AF and find for my typical S-AF that the results for all the lens I tried to be very decent. I assume that C-AF and high speed tracking would not be so effective. I gradually replaced all my Sony lenses as Nikon brought more options on board. My only Sony lens is now the 24mm GM . One advantage of adapting FE lenses is the tiny size of the adapter . I have the original techart adapter, they have a mk 2 version and a couple of alternatives from other makers are now available. For my use cases I consider any lens avaiable on FE mount as a possible should I need it

As a habiltual user of non auto optics, the Z adapter for leitz M bayonet is the most compact, but I am still looking for an adapter for the Alpa (large and small) mount-

p.

I note that there does not seem to be many communicative users of odd optics on this site.

Some silent observers might perhaps be tempted to join in if I ask whether anyone has tried to adapt any of the recent cheap chinese long focus optics to the Novoflex Pigriff devices ?

p.

Adding that the pigriff C-version also has an electric release connector in addition to the mechanical one might possibly increase its desirability.

p.

Indeed - not really any activity! However you never know who might develop an interest in those optics and devices, particularly if you show some interesting images made with them!

Do you have some sample shots or something from other optic-experiments? I‘m always interested in those things.

I own a Novoflex Pigriff (I think the B-version) + a Noflexar, but have not tried it yet. I‘ve heard they‘re pretty decent optics though (likely made by Staeble?)..

Sir,

I usually reserve my snaps for private use and do not publish . Also, the tiny sizes allowed on most netsites does not allow any meaningful examination beyond judging composition. So snaps allowing serious judgement and comparison of optical differences are impossible if not publidhing 100% enlargements at the same time and ensuring that light conditions etc. are not misleading. Too time consuming.

The enclosed picture of apples in my garden was taken hand held with a novoflex 400T in a pigiff C fumbnling with the enlargement and release button focussed on the leaves with no later sharpening. (The 7Z is with direct assistance of expert Birna Rørslett set to never sharpen or change the files).

However, I used Nikons automatic jpg transformation which I have tried to liberate from meddling with my snaps. I did not use my exact raw developer, did not use any sharpening when photoshoppping exepting the results of photosops bicubic size reduction to max 1000 of the 1495/2122 crop form the larger picture but i have brutally censored the RGB levels in order to remove usualflare but not looked at colour balance, trusting that photoshop really does adjjust RGB neutrally. But the apples are too red and the contrat too stark, so I should have tackled flare by adjusting eadh colour and calculated corrections correspondingly, but that was too time consuming. In addtion to using time to fgure out how to upload on this site where no text suppelements afre visible above pictograms for analphabets until one hover above. and then the equally idiotic windows program hides the text with a hand-pictogram. Too time consuming to go down in the basement to fire up my big Linux nachine so as to excape from Windows.

Now I have managed to guess that upload is hidden behind the hand when hovering over the arrow symbol, and this site allowed a full size Jpg less than a megabyte.

Hope this odyssey fulfils your (weakly founded) wish for illustrations.

p.

I've never used a Novoflex with Pigriff. Wouldn't mind using one without the Pigriff. The Novoflex heads are highly rated for UV photography. UV photography isn't fast, so pistol focusing isn't required.

I do use other adapted optics, none with smart adapters. The Bronica 6x7 PG lens works well on my Pentax 645Z. The adapter does have one major omission. It doesn't activate aperture stop down. So I use a wire tie to hold the Bronica's stop down button in. After all that, I usually shot wide open for the nice bokeh.
Thanks,
barondla

Thank you very much! I have to say, that's quite the description of the whole process... 😂 I'll have to see if my Novoflex lens is still in a decent condition (I have to admit of not storing it properly). Perhaps I can adapt it directly to my bellows. The Pigriff is a cool device but actually not a big help in my setup.

That's very interesting - didn't know they were used for UV. Staeble (who I think made some of them) were a pretty capable manufacturer. They were later acquired by Agfa and likely created some high-end optics for their minilabs etc. It's a pity they weren't able to make it on their own.

Sounds very interesting. I would really love to have an active thread on here with adapted optics (I actually tried to keep it alive until this month) but it doesn't seem like many adapted lens enthusiasts are still active here. But if you ever post some shots with your adapted Bronica lens, I'd be very interested to see them!

I have adapted a Nikkor-P 75 mm f/2.8 which also came from a Bronica camera, if I remember correctly, but not used it a lot, for the same reason you described. Only have one shot online at the moment:

A meltdown... through my lens! by simple.joy, auf Flickr

I've tried to use it on my tilt/shift bellows. It's a nice lens but doesn't feel at home at f/2.8...

adding to the remark above aboujt Staeble making optics for Novoflex and Agfa. Ncovoflex only made precision mechanics (and still do, I recently got a Nikon Z adapter for one of their 1960vintage products from them) styaeble made all their lenses labelled Novotar while optics bought in from Schneider carried their makers designations also, some lens heads for the Pigriffs were made by and labelleled as Leitz. Glasses I presume came from Schott, Net legends claiming Leitz cooked up glass for Novoflex are totally unfounded and besides,as often stated, having special glass is not by itself enough to make a good lens.

p.

Cool image @simplejoy. Lens really appears to be melting. Very creative. Your Bronica lens performs well. I will try to post a shot from my PG 150.
Thanks for sharing,
barondla

Or the enthusiasts are here but just aren't very active with their adapted lenses. I think that way round describes me at the moment...