Interesting article about lens adapters

[GaryLH]

The lensrental website posted a pretty interesting article about lens adapters and the effects of slight tolerences differences can have on the hardness at the edge.

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/09/there-is-no-free-lunch-episode-763-lens-adapters

Gary

 

[Godfrey]

This subject came up on another forum recently, referencing the same article. As I said there:

The most important statement in this article is this one:

What Does It Mean in the Real World?

Like a lot of laboratory testing, probably not a lot. Adapters couldn’t all stink or people wouldn’t use them. Like a lot of tests, you can detect a very real difference in the lab that doesn’t make much difference at all in the real world. ...

I've used adapters to move my favorite lenses around a bunch of different bodies for a long time, and Leica uses adapters as a standard part of their lens system to enable long lenses for use on RF, Visoflex, and bellows fitments, as well as to enable several lens heads to be used on the same focusing mount in the R line, as well as to enable R lenses to be used on Leica M (Type 240) bodies amongst others.

While perhaps the laboratory testing results of such lens systems' use might show indications on an optical bench that are not as optimal as if they were on a dedicated mount and body, such investigations have little meaning in the real world UNLESS you're using lenses for very specific and highly critical data gathering purposes.

In other words, there isn't much of a mountain to build from this molehill. I wonder why they bothered writing and posting such a report.

G

 

[GaryLH]

I am actually one of those that have been never too concerned about having good sharpness to the edges and even after reading this, I still don't really care. If the adapters were good enough for me before, then they are still now.

On the other hand, what this article made me wonder is that how many of us that profess to want good optical quality at the edges are truly that picky about it.

They did mention that none of their adapters are the cheap 29 buck ones that u can find at ebay though. Given the slop I have heard about in terms of people saying the lens feels loose.. I suspect that these adapters, it maybe pretty easy to c the issues w/ the edge.

Gary

 

[Godfrey]

I am actually one of those that have been never too concerned about having good sharpness to the edges and even after reading this, I still don't really care. If the adapters were good enough for me before, then they are still now.

On the other hand, what this article made me wonder is that how many of us that profess to want good optical quality at the edges are truly that picky about it.

They did mention that none of their adapters are the cheap 29 buck ones that u can find at ebay though. Given the slop I have heard about in terms of people saying the lens feels loose.. I suspect that these adapters, it maybe pretty easy to c the issues w/ the edge.

Unless the lens is seriously off axis or the flange-to-flange planes are not parallel to a healthy degree, it's going to be difficult to see edge issues without serious instrumentation.

I've been upgrading my lens adapters to Rayqual, Voigtländer, and Novoflex. Just got the Novoflexes for fitting Leica M and R lenses on Micro-FourThirds. There's no comparison between these adapters and the $30 adapters when it comes to fit and finish ... that's what you're paying the big bucks for. The imprecise fit of the Kipons and the fact that the Metabones adapter simply doesn't work with 3/4 of my Leica M lenses is why.

I'm fairly picky about lens quality, but I rarely sit down with a scope and run rigorous tests. Some lovely rendering lenses are just full of weird aberrations and oddities. My usual test for whether a lens satisfies me is to make an 11x17 inch print of a well-exposed, well-focused subject and hang it where I can look at it pretty often for a while ... I don't look at it with a magnifying glass much. ;-)

G

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

The lensrental website posted a pretty interesting article about lens adapters and the effects of slight tolerences differences can have on the hardness at the edge.

I was seriously impressed with that link. Well written, informative and so far as I can judge, accurate. Not words I use too often, when describing web articles. 😉