Old lenses on a new body

[scott kirkpatrick]

There's an interesting thread going at the Leica-camera-users forum on old lenses, and how the M8 lets them come through. See http://www.leica-camera-user.com/digital-forum/12505-great-old-performers-m8.html , for the whole discussion, and several examples. Here are some of my experiments with a Canon 35/2.0, which years ago was my principal lens on an M2:

and

scott

 

[James Roberts]

Just wait till I get my Olympus OM adapter, Scott! I can't wait to try the 21 f2.0 Oly with the crop (and the 28 as well). They will both rock on the m8, I'm sure.

(and though I can't quite believe this, they're both around what? 23 / 24 years old now?)

 

[Asher Kelman]

Thanks for the posts Scott and Jamie!

We need to learn how the M8 can really be used.

New lenses can raise an entry barrier to this great camera. However, therer's a hug market of used older lenses from many sources.

It's exciting to think one can use these and return to the best B&W photography in a small form.

Asher

 

[Giulio zanni]

Hi Jamie,

where do you find an adpater for mounting OM lenses on Leica M?

Thanks, Giulio

 

[James Roberts]

Hi Giulio,

You can order many lens adapters from Stephen Gandy at CameraQuest (he's also the US distributor, IIRC, for Cosina Voigtlander).

http://www.cameraquest.com/adaptnew.htm

And here specifically on SLR->M with a rangefinder focus guide on the adapter

http://www.cameraquest.com/adaptslrRFM.htm

There's also a cheaper set of adapters without the rangefinder focus guide, which would be just fine for ultra wides anyway.

 

[Giulio zanni]

Thanks Jamie

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

CV viewfinders

Another thing that Cameraquest is great for is viewfinders for oddball lenses on the M-film or M-8. I just got a 25mm (full frame) Voigtlaender brightline finder to use on the M8 with my 19mm Canon 3.5. He carries a line of nice small finders in full frame sizes as well as their 1.5x equivalents ( focal lengths scaled up for use on the Epson RD-1). They are relatively inexpensive.

Having a real finder beats guessing or claiming that the full frame view of the M8's finder window might approximate what you will see.

scott

 

[Asher Kelman]

Who is coding their own Leica lenses and who is sending them to the factory to be coded?

For those still catching up, the M8 has stored correction info for vignetting and color corrections to perfect the whole line of modern Leica lenses. One can trick the camera to providing these corrections to any lens you wish by inking the right dots on a piece of tape!

Also what lenses are you using for the M8 and the RD-1?

Asher

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

Who is coding their own Leica lenses and who is sending them to the factory to be coded?

For those still catching up, the M8 has stored correction info for vignetting and color corrections to perfect the whole line of modern Leica lenses. One can trick the camera to providing these corrections to any lens you wish by inking the right dots on a piece of tape!

Also what lenses are you using for the M8 and the RD-1?

Asher

My day job(s) are keeping me pretty busy for the next 3-4 weeks, but one project I have in mind is to sit down with my oldest lens (a collapsible 50/2 from sometime in the 1950s) and see if I can code it's nice wide, interruption-free base for all of the binary numbers from 0 to 63, take a picture with each frame line setting, and then note what lens the firmware thinks is mounted. It might be wise to wait for firmware 1.10 or whatever it will be called before doing this, as there are known omissions in the lens decoder table. It may also be possible to just read the table in the firmware directly (but no one has found it yet).

My M-lens collection at present is CV15/4.5, Canon 19/3.5 rangefinder (symmetric), Leica 28/2.8 ASPH (coded), Canon 35/2.0, Leica 50/2.0 collapsible, Leica 90/4.0 collapsible, and Leica 75/2.0 APO ASPH (on order using the 30% discount -- don't know when I will see that one).

scott

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

My M-lens collection at present is CV15/4.5, Canon 19/3.5 rangefinder (symmetric), Leica 28/2.8 ASPH (coded), Canon 35/2.0, Leica 50/2.0 collapsible, Leica 90/4.0 collapsible, and Leica 75/2.0 APO ASPH (on order using the 30% discount -- don't know when I will see that one).

forgot to add CV50/1.5, which is quite a nice lens.

scott

 

[Asher Kelman]

My day job(s) are keeping me pretty busy for the next 3-4 weeks, but one project I have in mind is to sit down with my oldest lens (a collapsible 50/2 from sometime in the 1950s) and see if I can code it's nice wide, interruption-free base for all of the binary numbers from 0 to 63, take a picture with each frame line setting, and then note what lens the firmware thinks is mounted. It might be wise to wait for firmware 1.10 or whatever it will be called before doing this, as there are known omissions in the lens decoder table. It may also be possible to just read the table in the firmware directly (but no one has found it yet).
scott

Hi Scott,

Are you aware of the guy on the Lecia forum who has already assembled a list of many of the lens codes?

Asher

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

Hi Scott,

Are you aware of the guy on the Leica forum who has already assembled a list of many of the lens codes?

Asher

Yup. Actually two people. Carsten Whimster has compiled a list with pictures of the codes used. That list was first filled up by writeins, but was later completed by Carl Brettville, who simply found the table in the firmware that lists the codes that can be interpreted. I found the same table a week ago, didn't remember Carl's post, and started a little discussion of what else we could learn from that table. It turns out that it
contains the maximum aperture and focal length for each lens, the desired frame line set, and finally
points to a non-human-readable table of entries to routines to adapt to each of the 40-odd lenses in the table. Even if someone does find that table of entry points, it won't tell us much about what corrections are done for each lens and how they differ. That still needs experiment.

scott