New body, old lenses

[Bill Pierce]

Compared to the cameras that most of us use, the Fuji GRX is a relatively big and relatively slow handling camera. While it’s going to do a great job on architectural, landscape and studio work, it’ s probably not going to see a lot of use at football games. And yet, it has a strange fascination for us gear heads because the relatively thin, mirrorless body can accept adapters for a variety of lenses from medium format cameras, but also 35mm film and full frame digital cameras. In many cases the image on the 43.8mm x 32.9mm sensor are going to be soft at the edges. In some shots that’s acceptable. In others you will crop the image, but still have a larger usable frame than the standard 35mm size.

Obviously, these adapted lenses are going to have to be manually focused. Hooray!!! I see folks autofocusing on every shot, center autofocus, reframe, shoot, refocus. This really isn’t necessary with trees and buildings and, a lot of times, people, but it is the kind of distraction that can make you miss a shot. There are even times when manual focus is more dependable. The convenient Live View focusing of mirrorless digitals using the sensor itself for focus eliminates the problems wide open, high speed lenses have dealing with the difference between ground glass and sensor to lens distance in DSLRs or lens cams that are at the edge of their tolerances in rangefinder cameras. I have 3 Zeiss Otus lenses for Nikon. They are exceptional wide open and from frame edge to frame edge. But, as mentioned, they have focusing problems on the Nikon. If Santa brings me a GFX, I hope he brings me a Nikon to Fuji adapter. Then a Leica to Fuji adapter. And then....

I know it’s strange to view a relatively new camera in terms of old lenses. Your thoughts?

 

[PKR]

Hi Bill;

In the case of the phase one back in the studio, it's mated to a Sinar 4x5. It runs tethered to a mac work station. It's powered by the 12vdc FireWire cable. It needs lots of energy (not my choice for field work without a generator or a portable power source). And, it's very manual focus. It belongs to my studio mate, who has a hasselblad body and lenses for it, but I've never seen the back on the Hasselblad.

The big problem with older lenses and modern digital sensors is that many of those lenses can't resolve the sensor well. They weren't designed for that level of resolution. The PhaseOne has a set of digital rodenstock lenses that are amazing. They were designed for the big sensor on the PhaseOne. I'm sure the Fuji falls into the same category.

I've had okay results with a few old lenses and FX,DX sensors. The old Nikkor 60mm 2.8 micro D is one that's exceptional. But, most fall short. If image quality isn't a big issue, most of the older stuff will work. I have a set of older AI-s Nikkors I use with my film cameras plus the 60D. They rarely visit the digital cameras, with the exception of the 60 micro D.

http://www.rodenstock-photo.com/en/products/professional-lenses-digital



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[Bill Pierce]

In truth, when it comes to mounting old lenses you can probably have just as much fun with any mirrorless body thin enough to accept adapters for a variety of lens mounts.

A 24 megapixel camera with a standard 2:3 format is going to produce images 20 inches wide at 300 ppi. That’s going to hit the limits of human vision’s ability to see something as sharp even if someone is looking at the print from a relatively close distance. Bigger prints are usually viewed from a greater distance.

Even more important, when you are judging “sharpness” you are really judging a lens/sensor combination a la DxOMark’s P-Mpix. A lot of old lenses from the film world aren’t going to set the digital world on fire. (And there are lenses designed for the digital camera that aren’t going to set the world on fire.) Any improvement brought about by more megapixels is going to be pretty close to unnoticeable.

I get excited by new toys and old lenses. The thought of a relatively thin body and a relatively big sensor was just too much for me.