New mirrorless system camera-old lenses combinations (in particular M)

[AlfSollund]

Hi all,

I a wondering about the quality of the new system cameras when using old lenses through adapters. In particular leica M lenses on NEX and others. It seems to me that all new system cameras have built-in SW correction and/or are optimized for of their own brand of lenses. So what do you think we get when using a Leica Ms?

Another question is whether we get PC SW to to do this kind of correction, and if this already exists?

I have myself tried some Leica Ms on a Pana GH-2 and compared with Pana lenses, and was really surprised about how low quality the GH-2 / M combo produced.

[stever]

photzone.de has done some tests of legacy lenses on NEX.  typically resolution falls off pretty badyl at the edges.  all of the old lenses were designed for film cameras and NEX and 4/3 have some degree of coordination between chip and lens design, then do software corrections.  will be interesting to see how well Ricoh has designed their sensor to match film lenses. 

there are a variety of anecdotal reports of some lenses "working" with NEX or 4/3 cameras and Lloyd Chambers (diglloyd.com - worthwhile pay site) is planning to test both Ricoh and NEX-7 with Zeiss and Leica lenses.  Michael has an article on 4/3 as Leica backup.

you can create your own corrections in Lightroom (or hope that someone else reliable does it with the combination you have)

i'm hopeful, but not optimistic about using old film lenses on new mirrorless cameras

[feppe]

MFT Samples. Discussions. Short version: it varies a lot, some work wonderfully, some not so much. My understanding is that MFT suffers less due to smaller sensor than NEX - ie. angle of incidence for light rays at the edges of the sensor for MFT sensors is not as acute as with NEX.

I have a Konica Hexanon AR 57mm f/1.4 for portrait work on Olympus E-PL1, and am very happy with it. Below a heavily retouched sample (softness is not from the lens, it's very sharp at f/11 I shot this at IIRC).

[michael]

My review of the Ricoh GXR with "M" module will be online early next week. It has a complete discussion of this issue, and also comparisons with using M lenses on the NEX-5n.

Michael

[bobtowery]

Here is a GXR/M mount discussion with samples:

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2011/09/28/the-ricoh-gxr-a12-m-mount-module-review-by-ashwin-rao/

Bob.

[douglasf13]

photzone.de has done some tests of legacy lenses on NEX.  typically resolution falls off pretty badyl at the edges.  all of the old lenses were designed for film cameras and NEX and 4/3 have some degree of coordination between chip and lens design, then do software corrections.  will be interesting to see how well Ricoh has designed their sensor to match film lenses. 

there are a variety of anecdotal reports of some lenses "working" with NEX or 4/3 cameras and Lloyd Chambers (diglloyd.com - worthwhile pay site) is planning to test both Ricoh and NEX-7 with Zeiss and Leica lenses.  Michael has an article on 4/3 as Leica backup.

you can create your own corrections in Lightroom (or hope that someone else reliable does it with the combination you have)

i'm hopeful, but not optimistic about using old film lenses on new mirrorless cameras

I look forward to Michael's test.  I've seen a lot of testing of the newer NEX-C3 and NEX-5N with rangefinder glass, and they are showing both more resolution and less color shift at the edges compared to their earlier NEX predecessors.