Godfrey
somewhat colored
I hadn't made any photographs with my Leica M4-2 for quite a long time. But my recent obsession with all things "instant film" caused me to pull out the M4-2 and the Instant Magny 35 back that was produced a couple of years ago.
I had to re-learn which lenses worked well with it ... Color Skopar lenses have too small an exit pupil and create a lot of vignetting. The three lenses I've tested and really like how they work are the Voigtländer Hyperwide 10mm seen in the photo above, the Pentax SMC-L 43mm f/1.9 Special, and the Minolta Rokkor-M 90mm f/4. I haven't had a chance to re-test the Summilux 35mm, Summicron-M 50mm, Hektor 135mm, or Summarit-M 75mm lenses yet. ... most should work pretty well too. By and large, lens openings larger than f/4 don't work very well, with too much corner and edge drop off.
Given the effects of the light pipe and enlargement, the ISO 800 Instax SQ films are best rated at ISO 50 to 25, depending on the lens match to the device. The 10mm shows a good bit of light falloff but the result is very pleasing; the 43 and 90 illuminate the frame quite evenly.
I shot through a pack of color and another pack of B&W film. The results are great! Time to get out the scanning setup and capture them for digital presentation. I'll add them to this thread when I have a few to post.
This little effort has re-invigorated my quest to build the "Mamiyax SQ Press" camera I've been collecting pieces for since about 2017. I have a spare Instax SQ processing unit I obtained from the Kickstarter group that did the Magny 35, and yesterday I butchered a broken Mamiya Press 23 Universal camera down to just the section of the front plate with the lens mount on it, removing and dumping the rest of the body and the viewfinder frame portion of the front plate. I've got a plan now for how to assemble that portion of the lens mounting plate onto the processing unit with the correct mount register. I'll use the Sekor 65mm lens with it, scale focus and "aimed by eye", netting the FoV of a 60mm lens in Hassy 500CM terms. Maybe I'll glue a viewfinder onto the top, but it seems a bit over the top. A field finder might be more appropriate, for something that will look like a modern, instant film version of Vince Lupe's Ermanox... LOL!
Anyway, I'm really pleased with the performance of the M4-2 and the Instant Magny 35 despite how clumsy it looks (and is ...!). It proves to be quite a nice bit of fun to shoot with.
Photos coming soon... 😀
G
I had to re-learn which lenses worked well with it ... Color Skopar lenses have too small an exit pupil and create a lot of vignetting. The three lenses I've tested and really like how they work are the Voigtländer Hyperwide 10mm seen in the photo above, the Pentax SMC-L 43mm f/1.9 Special, and the Minolta Rokkor-M 90mm f/4. I haven't had a chance to re-test the Summilux 35mm, Summicron-M 50mm, Hektor 135mm, or Summarit-M 75mm lenses yet. ... most should work pretty well too. By and large, lens openings larger than f/4 don't work very well, with too much corner and edge drop off.
Given the effects of the light pipe and enlargement, the ISO 800 Instax SQ films are best rated at ISO 50 to 25, depending on the lens match to the device. The 10mm shows a good bit of light falloff but the result is very pleasing; the 43 and 90 illuminate the frame quite evenly.
I shot through a pack of color and another pack of B&W film. The results are great! Time to get out the scanning setup and capture them for digital presentation. I'll add them to this thread when I have a few to post.
This little effort has re-invigorated my quest to build the "Mamiyax SQ Press" camera I've been collecting pieces for since about 2017. I have a spare Instax SQ processing unit I obtained from the Kickstarter group that did the Magny 35, and yesterday I butchered a broken Mamiya Press 23 Universal camera down to just the section of the front plate with the lens mount on it, removing and dumping the rest of the body and the viewfinder frame portion of the front plate. I've got a plan now for how to assemble that portion of the lens mounting plate onto the processing unit with the correct mount register. I'll use the Sekor 65mm lens with it, scale focus and "aimed by eye", netting the FoV of a 60mm lens in Hassy 500CM terms. Maybe I'll glue a viewfinder onto the top, but it seems a bit over the top. A field finder might be more appropriate, for something that will look like a modern, instant film version of Vince Lupe's Ermanox... LOL!
Anyway, I'm really pleased with the performance of the M4-2 and the Instant Magny 35 despite how clumsy it looks (and is ...!). It proves to be quite a nice bit of fun to shoot with.
Photos coming soon... 😀
G
