Are there any full-frame chipped digital camera body that can take on Leica lenses with adaptors? I have some fabulous Leica lenses, screw mount, M mount, R mount, and Visoflex lenses that I want to put to use in the digital world. But the quality of digital chips have so far been not up to the standard to do justice to the lenses.
there are adaptors for screw mount Leica lenses to Canon EOS bodies. M lenses have a really small mount->film distance, so i don't think it will be possible to have a adaptor to make that work. R lenses i am not familiar with...
a quck search on google shows that there are adaptors for R lenses as well. they have a much larger mount->film distance. your best choice are Canon EOS bodies as their EOS mount have a very short mount->film distance so most other lenses can be adapted. it won't work for Nikon f-mount. which is a pity as my father have a few M lenses.
I think M-series lenses are rangefinder lenses, no? They're probably not going to work on SLR bodies. As for a digital solution for R-series lenses, you may want to check out: http://www.leica-camera.com/digitalekameras/digitalmodul/index_e.html They don't seem have digital bodies for M-series lenses at the moment. But, just wait. I'm sure they'll do at some point in the not-so-distant future.
How about 5D with adapters? I am not too familiar with this.... the only thing I know about 5D is it is a Full Frame camera.
a shop in tst may help. not quite sure about their name in english. something like "camera repairing centre". it's just a couple of shops away from david chan's camera. u may be able to find one there. just tell them what u are looking for. as i know most of the adptors are for canon eos. like olympus pk mount to eos, screw mount to eos, should be a leica m to eos as well. even if there are adptors for those lenses. it takes your a series of "troublesome" procedure. first u should have to keep the aperture wide open for focusing and framing. then stepping down and checking for a correct exposure before u can shoot. that's too much trouble for me.
if u are using dedicated canon eos mount lenses (both canon and third party lenses). you don't need an adaptor.
Adaptors are not a problem. The main problem is a digital body that, besides having an appropriate adaptor, has the necessary quality chip (for 1 to 1 reproduction of the 24x36mm format), not like those that cut off the four corners as in almost all top end digital bodies that you find in the market today. I have some excellent wide angle Leica and Zeiss Contarax lenses and I don't want to see their excellent corner covering power being rubbished by today's digital chips, even the best bodies from Nikon. Some of my M mount lenses are visoflex lenses that can be used on SLR bodies. There is a digital body from Epson RD1 that takes Leica M lenses, but its viewfinder accuracy and severe cropping are too cheapy.
a serious and demanding photographer indeed! not quite sure about others. only two choices for canon at the moment. eos 1ds mk2 and eos 5d. people always said that ccd sensors are better but saddly those two dslr were equipped with cmos sensors.
My son, who is also a Leica collector, has mentioned about the new Canon EOS-1Ds MarkII being the only full-sized chipped digital camera body for 35mm photography. The EOS-5D is still not quite there. However, besides its ridiculous price and its insanely heavyweight at more than a kilogram, its corner and overall performance on very wide angle lenses like my Super Angulon 21mm or Elmarit 21mm would make my lenses look like cheap $10 lenses. I am looking for a digital body that is about HK$2000, which is not much, because I am adverse to paying for something that will diminish in value over time. Unlike a digital body, my Leica bodies, lenses and accessories buck the trend and can be inflationary. This is what I like and is some compensation for the high prices I used to pay to buy them. Why don't they make digital cameras take decent extreme wide angle pictures? What is photography without wide angle pictures? Or come up with solutions to avoid cropping of images of lenses? Why can't they make a thin digital body like the Leica M 4 but with reflex viewing without the use of a mirror? Surely, today's high tech electronics can easily replace the old fashion reflex mirror that makes the SLR body more bulky and, also more expensive, than necessary. The reflex mirror camera is almost a century old-Leica came up with it with its Visoflex before most of you were born and Pentax with today's SLR in the 1950s. Surely today's digital world is not proud to be a slave to the SLR reflex mirror restriction?
then i guess u have to wait then taneepak. no offence, taneepak. may be that's alway a little bit difference in thinking between a collector and a photographer. for me, i don't really care about how people think of my gear. even they might think it only worth for 10 bucks. but what will those guys say when u got a really great shot with a "10 bucks like lenses" or even a "real 10 bucks lenses"? leica may have one "leica digital m" someday. but up to this moment. i think the dslr is still the way to go.
I agree with you 100%, like you, I am more of a photographer than a collector. I see the DSLR as something that has a straight-line depreciation - i hope to get my money's worth in terms of good pictures with it before it depreciates to $0 Sometimes, conveniences like very high-speed autofocus make 'modern' cameras superior in real world terms. I have 2 friends who have the leica 800 f/5.6 and use it with Canon DSLRs and vouch for it's sharpness and colour... but when it comes to critical moments of fast action when fast reaction is essential, I get the shot in perfect focus with my autofocus lens while sometimes my friends' pics are not in perfect focus. I participate in a photo club that uses 100% digital that had one exhibition sponsored by HP and having another exhibition sponsored by Epson this year (using their large format printers). Looking at the quality of the printouts, I really have no complaints... latest generations of DSLRs are equal to medium format film if you ask me (some people on the internet have done similar tests and concluded the same).
I don't know where you get your information from but it looks like you've got it backwards. A full-frame sensor is a full-frame sensor. When made to the correct tolerances, the photosite at the corner of the sensor is the same as the photosite in the middle. The problem with high resolution digital full frame is that it shows up the deficiencies in Canon's WA lenses (there are okay ones but none that are stellar). Therefore, the current grouse is that Full frame cannot be fully utilised because of Canon's WA lenses, not the other way round! The problem is with the lenses, not the sensor. If you have some Leica WA that can be adapted, they should work great with the FF sensors.
I have stopped serious photography for close to 10 years, and I am having a hard time locating the many cameras, lenses and accessories I own. I now take only snap shots on my gold Contax 35mm camera when I have visitors. My son is eyeing my two black Leica M4 but I can find only one for the time being. I have a vague memory that I did have an integreted concept to the various lenses of different manufacturers that I own. My 5 Hassablad Zeiss lenses, from wide-angle to telephoto, could be coupled to my 35mm SLR Leicaflex R4, giving me additional lenses besides the Leica R lenses. These in turn could be mounted on all my Leica M cameras, in which focussing is based on an extremely accurate Leitz external long base range-finder that sits on top of the flash mount. Also many Contax lenses could be mounted on my M cameras. The Leica screw lenses as well as the Leica Visoflex lenses could also be used on the Leica M cameras. I did remember that my M camera was the base camera that could use lenses from my medium format Hassabled camera, the Leica screw, M, and R lenses, Contax lenses, as well as some old Canon range finder lenses and old Nikon SP range finder lenses. I must have close to more than 50 such lenses. I would like to explore the digital world but would like to have a body that is essentially a Leica M compatible body, with reflex viewing, but without the insane prices top digital bodies seem to go for. Also how good are today's best full frame CCD or CMOS sensors? How would they compare with say an ultra fine grain reversal film or colour side? I used to enlarge photos taken with my Leica M 135 Tele-Elmar lens, taken hand-held, to 24" x 36" and the colour and contrast were outstanding. I also have tons of colour slides-my primary film-that I used to put on a Leica projector to project on to a 6' x 6' silver screen. This is how I test and compare lenses-colour slides. Comparing even 24" x 36" colour prints doesn't come close to comparing with slides, of different lenses. With slides the contrast range and colour saturation will throw up even very subtle differences.
Well, if your question is "digital vs film" rather than corner softness, then it is something that has been debated to death in many photographic forums and well out of scope for this forum, I would guess, and I would not care to add to that. Suffice to say some informed observers feel that digital imaging definitely surpasses film in terms of utility and also some forms of film in image quality, and is getting better by the month.
same here! the depreciation of electronic stuffs are so fast. so, just boost them to the limit! always think twice "what do i wanna get" then bring the right gear to a right scene.
i m eyeing on one of them as well taneepak! in fact i wanna hear the shutter sound of a leica m at 1/30 and 1/15 once again! that sound is interesting! i miss it so much since my m6 and the lenses were stolen in 1999! i can still remember the serial no of my m6. it's #1996457. if u guys found it at camera shops. plz report to the police then let me know!
If digital cameras depreciate at the rates you fellows are saying, do you think I can get a Canon EOS-d1 mark 2 body for about HK$1,000 by the beginning of 2006? Or any full frame digital body? I don't mind not having auto focus, auto metering, auto anything. I like to be deliberate and compose when I take pictures.
I am supposed to click the shuttle of all my Leica cameras once a month, but I have not done it for 10 years. Maybe they are not as silky smooth and quiet as they used to be. I once left a film in my Hasseblad for about 6 years and when I got around to taking it off I discovered that my pressure plate of the film back was a mess. There is another cheap way you can test your lenses, much better than taking photos. You simply buy a frosted glass, open your camera back and press the glass against the back of the camera, and then use a 50x magnifier on the glass. Beats any silly 2-dimensional lines per mm lens chart testing, which can be misleading.
they should be alright as long as u released the shutter and put it at "b". it's fast! but not that fast! .
