Teleconverters M....Madness!

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aaronphoto

aaronphoto
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This may sound completely mad. Does anyone know if any third party company produces teleconverters for the leica m bayonet mount.
The converter would need to be rangefinder coupled of course.
Why? As most of the best lenses are 50mm or under, this would give extra flexibility for longer focal lengths. Why not just use a 90mm etc.
Yes of course, but if you want the look of a lens not available in a longer focal length, this might give you more options. I have no idea how this would work.
Probably not, but hey, thought I would ask.
 
Possibly Komura. Leica had prototypes made when they considered dropping the 135/4 TE and matching a 1.5X converter to the 90/2.8 TE.
 
aaronphoto said:
This may sound completely mad. Does anyone know if any third party company produces teleconverters for the leica m bayonet mount.
Click to expand...

I guess this is a followup to your question about portrait lenses in the 60-90mm range that produce swirly bokeh? So the idea is to take one of these undercorrected 50mm lenses, strap it on a 2x teleconverter, get the field of view of a 100mm lens, and crop it on the M8 for the equivalent of a 135mm lens?

I wouldn't expect too much of the combination, but hey, it might be worth a try. Not sure how much of the bokeh you'd actually get, after all the teleconverter only crops the image to the center 50% and the swirliness tends to be more towards the edges, which are cropped away. And then the extra crop from the sensor. And image quality would be nothing to write home about probably. But if you get a teleconverter for cheap, you can always try it.
 
I think I might pass on the Komura Telemore 95 converter.
I have read some reviews about it and it does not look that great.
Unless someone else has had some success. I would be looking to use 35mm, and wider focal lengths.
It was worth a look though.
 
aaronphoto said:
I think I might pass on the Komura Telemore 95 converter.
I have read some reviews about it and it does not look that great.
Unless someone else has had some success. I would be looking to use 35mm, and wider focal lengths.
It was worth a look though.
Click to expand...

:confused:: wide angle combined with teleconverter?

Apart from other aspects, there is a sheer mechanical challenge to put a rangefinder wide angle lens on a teleconverter.
 
radi(c)al_cam said:
:confused:: wide angle combined with teleconverter?

Apart from other aspects, there is a sheer mechanical challenge to put a rangefinder wide angle lens on a teleconverter.
Click to expand...

And it doesn't really make sense. A 35/1.4 on a 2x converter will give you a mediocre 70/2.8, where you could just as well use a CV 75/2.5. For the shorter focal lengths it gets even less useful.
 
Surely the mediocrity is the point, for portraits. Many people don't want that much sharpness. Come to that, I love my Thambar...

Cheers,

R.
 
Komura products have been good. In the 1960s Spiratone also offered tele-converters for Leicas. It is necessary to remember that on a RFDR camera, both focussing and framing can pose problems.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Surely the mediocrity is the point, for portraits. Many people don't want that much sharpness. Come to that, I love my Thambar...
Click to expand...

My first serious camera was a Canon AE-1. I had two lenses, a no-name 70-200 zoom that produced flat and boring images, and a no-name 28-70 zoom, with a minimum focusing distance of 3 meters and a "macro" mode for everything shorter, that also produced flat and boring images. At some point I bought a 50/1.4 that opened my eyes to the notion that pictures can actually look vivid and sharp and beautiful. So after reading all about portrait lenses and their focal lengths, I got myself a 2x teleconverter, hoping that the vivid look from my 50/1.4 would translate into vivid 100/2.8 portraits, and that the optical flaws of the teleconverter would, if anything, render the picture more dreamlike and artistic. Surprise: the pictures looked flat and boring.

I guess there's mediocrity and mediocrity. There's the flat-and-boring kind, and then there's the painterly-and-interesting kind. Your Thambar may produce pictures of the latter kind, but I'm afraid the results from strapping a wideangle in front of a teleconverter will remain firmly in the former camp.
 
Leitz Extender-M 1,5x 11238

Leitz Extender-M 1,5x 11238

awilder said:
Possibly Komura. Leica had prototypes made when they considered dropping the 135/4 TE and matching a 1.5X converter to the 90/2.8 TE.
Click to expand...

One copy of Leitz Extender-M 1,5x 11238, Serial no. 3051601, will be LOT 178 at WestLicht's Kamera Auktion 17 (2010/May/29.)
 
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