Lenses: Leica R glass to Nikon F3/D200/D700 bodies.

[Rob C]

Does anybody know if any adaptor exists to permit the use of Leica glass with Nikon bodies; if so, what are the penalties?

Rob C

[telyt]

If you want to retain infinity focus you need to do a mount swap with a Leitax conversion kit or one of the cheap knockoffs:  http://leitax.com/

[Rob C]

Hi Doug

Reading the link, it seems all one does is replace the mount on the lens. His prices are reasonable too - may well be worth investigation! Thanks.

Rob C

[telyt]

Hi Doug

Reading the link, it seems all one does is replace the mount on the lens. His prices are reasonable too - may well be worth investigation! Thanks.

Rob C

In my experience the quality of his mounts is excellent and he ensures that the mount swap is reversible.  The disadvantage is that the lens is completely manual when used on the Nikon body: no auto-diaphragm or full-aperture metering.

[Rob C]

In my experience the quality of his mounts is excellent and he ensures that the mount swap is reversible.  The disadvantage is that the lens is completely manual when used on the Nikon body: no auto-diaphragm or full-aperture metering.

Oh.

That's a deal breaker. I remember the days with my Exakta and the drawbacks before automatic diaphragms...

 I even used to forget to stop down when using my 35mm shift Nikkor of yesteryear. Guess a compromise is always a compromise.

;-(

Rob C

[telyt]

That's a deal breaker. I remember the days with my Exakta and the drawbacks before automatic diaphragms...

Same for me    I'll keep the R8/DMR working as long as I can.  Works for some people though.

[HarperPhotos]

Hi Rod,

Have you considered Nikons new G prime lenses. I just purchased the 35mm, 50mm and 85mm versions and they are superb lenses and a vast improvement on the old D lenses.

IMO

Cheers

Simon

[Rob C]

Hi Rod,

Have you considered Nikons new G prime lenses. I just purchased the 35mm, 50mm and 85mm versions and they are superb lenses and a vast improvement on the old D lenses.

IMO

Cheers

Simon

Simon

The point is that I have this trace memory of the early 60s when I worked for a guy who used an M3 with 21mm glass (Leica or Schneider, I forget) to shoot room sets for BBC TV in Glasgow. The results, on WSG, were very different to the Nikon, Mamiya, Rollei and Sinar look of everything else we produced.

I have a 1.8/50mm Nikkor manual and I’m very happy with it, even using it at f1.8 or f2, which is the stop most of my musos are done at. Okay, these guys are shot at auto ISO and probably at around 6-thousand something at that, and I imagine that the best lenses in the world aren’t going to do their best stretched so far – too many other factors pushing into the equation at their limits, too, not least my own shortcomings at PS on top of those! My old 2.8/35mm was probably the most consistently crisp lens I ever had; I no longer have any lens of that length, and hence my using the 24mm on the smaller sensor of the D200 instead of buying a proper 35mm for the ff body.

Perhaps I’m desperately fishing around in dark corners looking for a way back to what I thought I could get with Kodachrome, a film that years later, when I started to scan and play around with computer photography, I realised gave me black/white conversions more attractive to me than I was getting using legit b/w materials, and I have no hesitation claiming I was a damned good printer with those wet things.

Another unanswerable point is that unlike transparencies, where colour was welded into the original, computers play games of their own, and so, apparently, do sensors. In that case, how much real input does any lens have in governing colour? Tricky, to say the least!

Rob C
 

[Mark Muse]

You might want to look at the Zeiss offerings in Nikon mount. I have the 21mm, 35 (ƒ2) and 100mm ZE's. These are the same exact lenses but canon mount. I use on 5D Mk II which is full frame 21 mpx. They are superb. They are manual focus without stabilization, but they are auto diaphram controlled by the camera.

[Rod.Klukas]

You might want to look at the Zeiss offerings in Nikon mount. I have the 21mm, 35 (ƒ2) and 100mm ZE's. These are the same exact lenses but canon mount. I use on 5D Mk II which is full frame 21 mpx. They are superb. They are manual focus without stabilization, but they are auto diaphragm controlled by the camera.

  These Zeiss lenses are superb as are the Leica R offerings.  The manual focus is a plus as AF lenses have to be 'looser' in order to focus with any speed.  Therefore they are subject to a tiny bit of de-centering not as present with MF lenses. De-centering is a prime factor in loss of sharpness. 

The reason the above person liked his Kodachrome scanned B&W was that the Kodachrome had very high contrast and so could and would often look better than just off the cuff shooting of B&W silver film.
This is because you shot Kodachrome at speed and processing was consisitant.  When doing your own processing, many people never tested their B&W small format like a LF Zone system person might, and so their camera/Lens and processing entered into how good a result they got.  This is something many people had trouble with.
Tri-x gave best quality at about 200EI not the 400 on the box.  Today as the emulsion is thinner, the best speed seems to be about 250-320EI.  Also as Tri-x has a bias when unfiltered and tends to get a bit muddy in the shadows.  A yellow#5 or yellow #8 really helps this film.  Especially a B+W or Heliopan.  Again another sharpness factor is the quality of the filters placed in front of the lens.
Anyway some factors I thought I might comment on.
I would very much recommend either the Zeiss or the Leica glass having tested both on High end DSLR's (D3x for Zeiss)(5dMKII on both Zeiss and Leica).

[Rob C]

Thanks for the replies; it really is a puzzle out there today.

I used to have a 2/50mm Nikkor that I bought along with my F all those decades ago. From a single misguided impulse born from listening too much to stock agents, an impulse that started rolling by my going from Hassy to 6x7 Bronica and then expensively back, totally, to 35mm, I had traded my entire 35mm system for 6x7 Pentax. A year or so later I was buying back into Nikon and feeling a prize idiot to fnd myself pouring money into my own folly. Anyway, back to the 2/50mm. It was my least-used optic, most of the stuff that I would now shoot with it was, then, handled by a 2.8/35mm because of the slightly greater distortion that was fashionable in some sectors of fashion photography, most of mine included. For the other type, I used Hassy and tripods.

For some reason I can't quite recall, I had exchanged the 2/50mm for a new, manual 1.8/50mm, and the first thing I discovered was that the front section is loose! I had imagined this a one-off flaw, but after the swapping back from Pentax, the new manual 1.8/50mm  is exactly the same. It wobbles. But it still seems to give great images. But the damage has been done, in my mind, because I have no great confidence that, one day, it won't just spin apart as I turn the focus ring.

Based on my experience of Zeiss and 'blad, the old silver lens range, there really was a problem with flare on backlighting, especially with the 150mm. I never did buy into the black lens range as I already had what I needed before they came along.

As I said, it is a puzzle out there; the world must be going nuts, just as I did for some years.

Rob C

[HarperPhotos]

Hi Rob,

Have a look at the link below. It interesting reading , especially the great reviews the new Nikon G prime lenses get even compared to the all mighty and mythical  Zeiss glass.

http://www.photozone.de/nikon_ff

Cheers

Simon

[Rob C]

Hi Rob,

Have a look at the link below. It interesting reading , especially the great reviews the new Nikon G prime lenses get even compared to the all mighty and mythical  Zeiss glass.

http://www.photozone.de/nikon_ff

Cheers

Simon

Hi Simon,

Yes, but as my interest (currently, I stress) is with wide open shots as per my music stuff, I'd hate to think CA and other characteristics in that review would play games with me. Also, of couse, it's a lot of moolah for what's essentially a hobby these days, but that's not the fault of the lens. I just can't quite get why modern design seems to offer greater problems than I faced in the past; yes, the stock reply is that digi is more demanding, but having made fairly large prints from 35mm cameras many many years ago, I can't believe that such problems would have passed unseen printed by/on any medium.

As I said elsewhere, that old 2.8/35mm Nikkor (Q?) was something else! Loved it.

Thanks for the link, Simon.

Rob C