Very wide manual lenses for A7x

[Sanders McNew]

My first digital was an A7ii -- I got it so I could mount old Leica lenses onto a full-frame mirrorless body. I've since invested in a second body, the original A7, that's been converted for infrared photography.

In film, I mostly shot Rolleiflexes, and didn't worry about lenses. But I've been shooting a lot of infrared landscapes through a 25/4 Voigtlander Snapshot Skopar and I love it! Now I want something a bit wider.

I hate big automatic lenses. I don't want the camera burning battery life making adjustments it thinks I should make on my own. As I go down this rabbit hole, it dawns on me that I don't have to stick with LTM-mount lenses -- any lens will do with the right converter.

This all leaves me with a profound sense of anomie -- so many lenses, so little time. I've lost too many hours already surfing eBay and gear reviews. So I turn, now, to the Brain Trust. (That would be you.)

It wants to be manual. It wants to be small. It wants to be inexpensive. I am thinking, for starters: (1) 20/4.5 Takumar. (2) 20/2.8 Flektogon. (3) 20/4 Nikkor (non-AI). (4) 20/3.5 Voigtlander Skopar.

Which, if any, of these do you like?

If not these, then which am I missing?

Dare I go wider than 20mm for landscapes? Hit me with your suggestions. I am extremely grateful for your thoughts.

Sanders

 

[shawn]

With any lens you of course want to try and find out how it does in IR to prevent getting something that hot spots. I used to have a A7II that was IR converted and I liked going wide with it. IR tends to be pretty surreal anyway so adding the very wide perspective to that can just be even more fun. It also makes pretty good panoramic shots if you turn on the square framing grid and shoot with the middle row, you get a 3:1 aspect ratio.

I used the Tamron 17-28 on that camera and mostly shot it at 17mm. I had a Voigtlander M mount 15mm Asph III but it tended to hot spot and was soft in IR. I have the Voigtlander 12mm now but no longer have the IR camera. Bet it would have been a fun combo to shoot though.

I'd suggest going wider since 25 to 20mm is only about 13 degrees difference diagonal.

Shawn

 

[dexdog]

i recently bought a TTArtisans 21/1.5 in Sony E-mount for $245. I am very impressed with results so far. I have had a CV 21/4 for about 12 years, and while it works quite well with film cameras, it vignettes significantly in the corners on my various Sony a7 bodies, about 2 stops or so. The TTArtisan is much better about vignettes in corners. Resolution is kinda fuzzy at f1.5, improves quite a bit at f2.8, and is very sharp at f/4. There is a thread about the TT lens on RFF, last post probably about 3 weeks ago.

 

[jsrockit]

Rokinon 12mm F2
Venus Optics Laowa 12mm f/2.8 Zero-D Lens
Venus Optics Laowa 15mm F2
ZEISS Batis 18mm F/2.8
Tamron 20mm F2.8

 

[JeffS7444]

16/2.8 Zenitar fisheye lens is a fun, fills the entire frame, and you can tame the fisheye effect considerably by simply leveling the camera. 8mm Peleng is much more extreme, but circular fisheye lenses can be fun too.

 

[Godfrey]

My favorite Nikkor 20mm lens has been the Nikkor 20mm f/3.5 AI-S with the 52mm filter thread. Not technically the best performer, but to my eye the nicest rendering and very small, very light weight.

Wider than that ... Well, what I have currently is a Voigtländer HyperWide 10mm f/5.6 ASPH. Covers full frame nicely and is*a very, very high quality performer. It's very inexpensive for a new FF capable lens in this focal length range (about $1000 IIRC). How well it works with the Sony A7II sensor or IR capture I cannot say; it works beautifully with Leica M-D 262 and CL sensors.

Portrait of a Bicyclist at Apple Park - Cupertino 2019
Leica CL + Voigländer HyperWide 10mm f/5.6​

Focus distance in the above from me to the camera was about 6 feet.

G

 

[Sanders McNew]

Thank you for the replies. If you could say why you recommend a lens, it would be appreciated.

Shawn said:

IR tends to be pretty surreal anyway so adding the very wide perspective to that can just be even more fun. ...

I'd suggest going wider since 25 to 20mm is only about 13 degrees difference diagonal.

So, a couple of things:

I agree that the wide angle complements the IR look in landscapes -- it was that discovery that led me to ping the group here. And I share your thought that maybe I want to go wider than 20mm. My concern is that I often compose vertical rectangles with an object of focus in the bottom of the frame, like this:

(25mm Snapshot Skopar)

My fear is that, if I go much wider than 20mm, I will have to deal with perspective distortions at the periphery that will diminish the composition (at least in the images where I am putting the subject at the periphery). But I am a naif at these focal lengths. Is it a needless worry?

 

[sonodoc99]

I recently bought an Irix 11mm f4 in a Nikon F mount. It is a manual lens. For such a wide angle, it has remarkably little distortion. It is marketed as a rectilinear lens. I have the Nikon 14-24mm lens in the F mount (not the newer Z version; I don’t have a Z body; still using manual film Nikons and a D850 digital). A crazy wide lens I have is the Venus Laowa 4mm f4 fisheye. I bought that in a Sony E mount. On my a6000 body, it results in a nearly complete circular image. You have to be careful not to include your hands or feet when shooting with this lens. It has all the typical fisheye distortion. A friend of mine made a “Spherecam” using a pair of Nikon F bodies back to back each with a 6mm/5.6 lens. Since the 6mm covers 220 degrees, the image overlap he uses to create a spherical image by stitching the two images together. He also has a Photoshop script he wrote that takes out the fisheye distortion. He can then synthesize very wide angle rectilinear images. None of these lenses, except maybe the Nikon 14-24, though it’s big) are really for point-and-shoot use. I have an older Sony NEX5 body that I have adapters for. I bought a c-mount to E-mount adapter to experiment with cine lenses on the NEX5. I have a 1.9mm fisheye that was for 16mm cine work (for what, I don’t know). On the NEX5 it produces a small circular image. I also put a Kern Switar 10mm cine lens on it and it has a large enough image circle that it vignettes only minimally. That lens is also quite sharp. But these I “play” with. The Irix 11mm is available in other mounts. I bought the “Blackstone” version which has a metal body. The “Firefly” version is less expensive (and lighter weight) with a partly plastic body.

 

[the_jim]

The pre-ai Nikkor 20mm f/4 is the only lens on your list that I have. It's relatively cheap, small and the image quality is quite pleasant. I haven't played with it much on my A7rII, but I figure it does better than most adapted wide rangefinder lenses.

Radio in Queen Anne by Jim Fischer, on Flickr

 

[raid]

I am happy with my Canon 17/4 FD. It does not smear the corners with a digital sensor. It is nearly rectilinear by design. Some say it is radioactive.No PS was used here.

 

[raid]

Vertical shots:Canon FD 17/4 with M10

\

 

[raid]

Sanders posted this thread in 2021. It is very likely that by now he has chosen his wide angle lens. Oh well.

 

[Nitroplait]

Sony is not as fit for adapted wide- and ultra-wide lenses as some other mirrorless cameras (like Nikon Z and Leica SL for example). However, I don't know about the IR converted Sony, as it is my understanding that part of the filterstack (the culprit) has been removed in the IR conversion.

In any case, I think that an SLR lens is likely the safer choice as the angle of the light rays are more acute than those of a Leica lens.

 

[Bingley]

Sanders posted this thread in 2021. It is very likely that by now he has chosen his wide angle lens. Oh well.

Sanders posts fairly regularly on Instagram and his infrared landscapes are beautiful. He appears to have settled on the Nikkor 20mm for his infrared landscape work.

 

[raid]

Thanks. The Nikkor 20mm is a very good lens. Good choice.

 

[raydm6]

Sanders is an amazing photographer. Miss his contributions here.

Nikkor 20mm with the HK-14 Hood:


Nikon FM2 w/HK-14 Lens Hood for 20mm by rdc154, on Flickr

 

[joe bosak]

These are inexpensive and lightweight (there are brief reviews on phillipreeve and rockwell):

Tokina 17mm 3.5
Tokina 20-35mm AF

The zoom will require an adapter that gives aperture adjustment (or one of those Sony LA-EAx adapters apparently will work, but that's more expensive than the lens).