DSLR and Vintage Leica Lenses – With the tide of Full Frame DSLR cameras, there are all sorts of possibilities with using vintage lenses, we chose the Leica Summicrom R F2.
Vintage lenses can be used on anything from Black Magic Pocket camera to Panasonic GH4 and Sony Full Frame a7 and so on. Lets start of with the Konica hexanon 40mm F1.8, bought for only 10$. Like many of the vintage lenses it’s pretty small which makes it perfect for the dslr camera body. It has a good build quality and on APSC size sensors like for example the Nex 5 or the A6000, the focal length is great. The only fall back is that all the rated better than Minolta lenses, the sharpness doesn’t appear to be great,
DSLR and Vintage Leica Lenses – One of the great things about the A7II is that you can attach just about any lens ever made. The reason for this is that it has the Full Frame sensor but also because it has a really short lens mount to sensor distance. So this allows for manufacturers to create adapters for lenses and still keeps the lens close enough to the sensor. You can mount just about any lens with any fitting from Screw fitting to bayonet, Hasselblad to Pentax.
We have recently tested a number or Leica R and M mount Summicron, Elmarit and Summilux. Of course the lenses themselves are completely manual so the adapters are simply connecting the lens without any kind of transfer of digital data. However, we did find that with the M mount lenses it was worth paying a little extra for the Voigtlander close focus adapter. It does what it says on the tin and allows you to bring the subject closer to camera and into razor sharp focus.
So what is the difference between the R and the M mount? Well for the A7II sensor the R mount is by far the better choice. This is because the glass at the back of the M mount is much closer to the sensor and this can cause the angle of the light that hits the sensor to be at too acute of an angle.
The other advantage of the R-lenses is that they are quite a lot bigger than the M- lenses. This means that they are more suited to motion video and you can easily mount a follow focus system.
So why shoot Leica in the first place? Well its pretty well accepted that Leica lenses are some of the best lenses ever made. You will not find a bad Leica Lens. So the Summicron R range at F2 are a perfect solution if you want high end looking video for a reasonable budget.
When you are using a lens that is completely manual and doesn’t therefore speak to the camera you need to set the focal length in the camera so that the stabilization works correctly.
The 50mm Summicron is incredibly sharp but what is special about the Leica is that vintage look. You can get that soft creamy look to the soft focus parts of the image, and the parts that are in focus are sensationally sharp and detailed. At wide open the depth of field is extremely shallow and this creates a really dreamy look which is typically Leica.