Canon 50/1.2 back from DAG

M

merciful

Guest
The lens that "can't be cleaned" by my local shop is back from DAG and looking new: full internal cleaning and USPS Express shipping for US$90. Results when I get 'em.
 
Wow. Do any of these guys CLA Russian lenses? Would like to get a Russian lens done here in the U.S. if possible.
 
peter_n said:
Wow. Do any of these guys CLA Russian lenses? Would like to get a Russian lens done here in the U.S. if possible.
Click to expand...

Lenses are lenses, as far as I know; drop Don a line at dagcam@chorus.net. He's quick to respond.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Congrats Merci ! Probably you don't know but I grabbed a 50/1.2 myself last weekend and... it arrived this morning ! Impressive piece of glass. It came from Huw Finney and as he said has a tiny bit of fogging in the rear element but it's excellent otherwise. I'll let you know about results if they are worthy... :)
 
I like this lens a lot, especially the effect you get when used wide-open. The central 1/3rd of the image area is very sharp with a quick softening as you go out from there. You get an almost 3-D quality as the in-focus area is distinctly seperated from the rest of the picture.

Somebody on Photo.net discovered that proper back focus (or whatever the term is that defines proper lens-to-film plane adjustment) is key with this lens. Quite a few of these lenses seem to be off a few tenths of millimeters which can drastically affect sharpness. Mine apparently is right on (when used on my MP) and delivers very useable images. I'll be curious to what other folks think once they take a few pics with their 50mm F1.2's.

Jim Bielecki
 
Mackinaw said:
I'll be curious to what other folks think once they take a few pics with their 50mm F1.2's.
i
Click to expand...

Mine has always been great, I think. This is at f1.4 or 2, I can't recall.
 
I should also mention that these lenses are pretty easy to clean by yourself. The element nearest the aperture (from the back) tends to fog on mine and I've learned that, with the right tools, that I can take the lens apart, clean and reassemble, in about 15 minutes.

Jim Bielecki
 
Thanks, guys.

The bokeh of the 50/1.2 is terrific: I can't see its relatively poor reputation being justified. There's no doubt I'll own a N'lux eventually, but this is a terrific stop-gap.
 
Beautiful shot, Merc. A very winsome child, yup. I second Roman's comment about the bokeh. Right up there with the best. Reminds me quite a bit of the classic Canon SLR 1.2/85, actually, with the narrowness of the DOF.

I bid on a couple several months ago on flea-bay and lost. Now I see what I'm missing ;-((
 
Mackinaw said:
Somebody on Photo.net discovered that proper back focus (or whatever the term is that defines proper lens-to-film plane adjustment) is key with this lens. Quite a few of these lenses seem to be off a few tenths of millimeters which can drastically affect sharpness. Mine apparently is right on (when used on my MP) and delivers very useable images. I'll be curious to what other folks think once they take a few pics with their 50mm F1.2's.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, interesting. I own a 50/1.2 (although it's out on loan right now) and when I tested it on my Epson R-D 1 I noticed it seemed to "front-focus" by several mm... in other words, at an intended focusing distance of 1 meter (100 centimeters) the actual plane of best focus was about 99-point-something centimeters.

I thought this might be a simple mismatch between this particular lens and camera body (and this still may be a possibility) but if enought people are encountering it to be noted on photo.net, then maybe there's more to it than that.

I can see how critical this adjustment is on this particular lens (not only because of its wide aperture, but because out-of-focus areas go blurry so dramatically) and easily can imagine the possibility that "back in the day," Canon simply aimed for a statistical middle ground in setting the focus position, and assumed that a critical user would have his/her individual lens select-fitted to his/her camera body!

Incidentally, the lens-to-film distance on this particular lens is set by a single ring-shaped brass shim that fits between the rear lens barrel and the mating surface on the focusing unit. I'm guessing that Canon's assemblers had a range of shims of different thicknesses from which to choose, and selected the one that provided the correct distance for that specific combination of lens barrel and focusing unit, so this sort of fine-tuning wouldn't have been difficult for anyone with access to the factory parts stash.

It would be tougher today, but I suppose a talented technician could adjust this by either removing a very small amount of thickness from the shim (taking great care to keep it parallel) if the distance needs to be decreased, or possibly adding a very thin additional shim (thin shim stock is easy to cut) if it needed to be increased.


Also -- One thing I noticed when gazing at this setup was that the shim sits in a shallow recess in the focusing unit. The outer diameter of this recess isn't much bigger than that of the shim -- so it would be all too easy for a DIY tinkerer to reassemble the lens with the shim NOT seated fully in the recess, but sitting up on the edge. The effect would be to move the optical unit outward by a significant fraction of a mm. It would be interesting to know what sorts of back-focus errors are being reported on photo.net -- if almost all of them are on the "long" side, this might well provide a partial explanation!
 
Thanks again, guys.

I'm lucky in that mine seems to focus absolutely dead-on with my M3. Of course, in a roll shot wide-open and close, there's always going to be enough movement in photographer and/or subject to blow the focus on any number of exposures. Low-light work is a bitch that way.
 
The Photo.net guy I referred to sent his 50mm F1.2 to Don Goldberg (DAG) for adjustment. Apparently it's no big deal to set the proper lens-to-film plane distance if you have the proper equipment.

Jim Bielecki
 
That really is a great shot, Merciful ! How well does the lens balance on your M3, if I may ask? I'm trying to picture how this lens compares with the noct in terms of size . cheers
 
Tom, I have used the Canon 1.2 and the Noct and the Canon balances beautifully. It is a similar (larger) diameter but is considerably shorter and doesn't feel so front heavy.
 
Flyfisher Tom said:
That really is a great shot, Merciful ! How well does the lens balance on your M3, if I may ask? I'm trying to picture how this lens compares with the noct in terms of size . cheers
Click to expand...

Thanks, Tom. I don't consider the lens on the M3 to be any trouble at all: I rather prefer a meatier lens than something tiny like my collapsible 50; so I'm happiest with the Nikkor 85/2 and the 50/1.2. Nice solid stuff to get a grip on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom