older Rollei lenses for Leaf afi II 7

[lugnet]

I need some information about older Rollei lenses and the Leaf Afi/ Hy6 system

I shoot mostly architecture
and work with a Leaf Afi II 7 on a Linhof Techno camera. It works fine.

I would like to use a medium sized camera together with my Leaf back as well. The Leaf afi camera is
then the natural choice, and the only, as far as I know….

I have been offered to buy a Rollei 6008 camera system for almost nothing from a colleague. Together with
the camera comes three lenses. All equipment is from mid 90´s. It is not AF lenses.

Tele Xenar 180/2,8 PQ HFT
Zeiss Distagon 50/4 PQ HFT
Zeiss Macro Planar 120/4  PQ HFT

My question is - are these lenses fully compatible with the Leaf Afi camera. Does the lenses work
ok together with my Leaf back? (Afi II 7). It may function technically on the camerabody - but together with the Afi II / back?
In terms of quality?

Perhaps you know someone who has been working with these lenses and a Leaf back?

Sorry to bother you with this but Sweden is not a Rollei territory….

All the best
Max Plunger

[paulmoorestudio]

I have been using rollei 6008 and the lenses since 2003 on digital backs including back with more pixels than the II 7..yes they are more than fine, the only question really is do you have the right adapter to use the leaf back on a rollei 6008? If so, your lenses will do their job wonderfully.

[Gigi]

+1. Been using lenses from the early 1990s on an AFI with Leaf back, work fine. The 180 is a great lens, have no experience with the other 2. But I don't think an AFI back will go on a 6008?.. Sinar made backs with adapters, as did Imacon (Hassy), and there was a Phase back (DP20) that would go on a 6008, but AFAIK no Leaf fitting. Check with Eric at Rolleiflex.us

[Lacunapratum]

Well, if you get the lenses for a song and have an Afi back, all you need is a Hy6, which go used for ~ $3K when they occasionally pop up.  The three lenses are great and would work well with your back, as long as you get the Hy6 in between...  Even buying a new Hy6 is likely worth it. 

[DHW-JHartje]

Hi Max,

of course you can use these three lenses. In fact all Rolleilenses with at least a PQ in the name will work on the Hy6/Hy6 mod2/Afi.

But as the others stated, you cannot use the Leaf back on the 6008. But I think you meant that you want to buy your colleagues kit because of the lenses and not because of the camera. And after that you want to purchase a Leaf Afi? I think this could be an interesting way for. And it should work out well. If I were you, I would consider buying a new Hy6 camera. Either the older Hy6 for which we still have a nice offer on our homepage or the newer Hy6 mod2.

If you want you can write me an email. And I can give you some additional information: j.hartje@dhw-fototechnik.de

Best regards,

Johannes

[EricWHiss]

I had already written Max an e-mail before I saw this thread here on LuLa, but this looks like a good place to share more info to all in a general response.  I have in the works very comprehensive Imatest testing on most of the Rollei PQ and PQS lenses including some AF lenses as well.  All of the testing is done, and I just need time to run the rest of the graphs and put them together in something cohesive.   I will be publishing this information to my site in the near future.   For now let me write that even some of the older lenses for this system have tested out at .48 lp/pixel with my 80mp AFi-ii 12 back which may be meaningless without the background, but max is .5  and actually with standard 'capture level' sharpening added in the RAW conversion they hit .5   - Norman Koren (author of Imatest) has written me that these are some of the best MF lenses he has ever seen tested.  If these lenses can hit the theoretical max on an 80 mp back then they definitely support 33mp backs and in fact the images will be sensor limited not lens limited. I suspect many of the Rollei 6000 and Hy6 lenses have a lot of room to run yet as pixel count increases. Plus these lenses have  6x6 coverage so sensors could get larger as well and still be supported.

I and a number of people have already written to Max that the AFi-ii won't fit on the 6008. With the tight integration of back to camera in the AFi-ii to Hy6, I can't imagine any other combo anyhow.    I hope to also be publishing more information about digital back and camera compatibility for people looking to get into the Rollei system. There are a lot of used backs that fit the 6000 series cameras which are now quite inexpensive for what they offer - including these amazing lenses.

[JV]

It is unfortunate that the AFi-II 7 is no longer available new.

Leaf has a promotion going on right now (Leaf Aptus-II 7 and 8 for $8,595), bud sadly the Leaf Aptus-II 7 is no longer available in the AFi mount.

This would have made an excellent entry level back today.

[EricWHiss]

Yeah Joris, you're right!  I called Mac Group yesterday to double check that it isn't available in the Hy6 mount.  I'm sure they could have sold a fair number of them at that price.   It sort of keeps the used prices up on the AFi-ii 7's though.  

[Gigi]

Have been using the AFI II 7 back for a few years, and have had very good results on both the AFI and on a tech camera. Great entry back - its a sweet tradeoff with enough pixels, but not so many that you can't use the slightly less-than-totally-current view camera lenses. With the Schneiders on the AFI tho.... lovely. Recommended.