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Leica R lenses on Canon bodies


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Hello,

 

I was just wondering. I have read on many forums about people

mounting Leica R lenses on Canon bodies. I was just curious how they

go about doing that? What does stop down metering mean? Is the

special mounting adapter stable. Do you loose any f/stops with the

mounting adapter?

 

Can anyone comment if the images are as sharp as they would be when

compared to a Leica body?

 

This question has Doug Herr's name all over it.

 

Regards,

 

Steve Persky

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There are a couple of simple adapters made to fit R lenses on EOS bodies, one made by Novoflex and another sold by Stephen Gandy (www.cameraquest.com). There's no auto-diaphragm or metering info passed between the lens and body; just a mechanical fitting that holds the lens on and keeps extraneous light out.

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Stop-down metering means you take your meter reading at working aperture. It's accurate, reliable, and a PITA or impossible to use if you have active subjects because it's much easier to focus at full aperture then once you've focussed you have to stop the lens down manually for correct exposure. No f/stops are lost.

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Under ideal circumstances the photos should be as sharp with the EOS body as with an R body but the focussing difficulties at working aperture with a viewfinder that was not optimized for manual focus could give you more out-of-focus pictures.

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I personally haven't used this combination. There are some incompatabilities that are not obvious at first glance, resulting from the different mirror clearance specifications. In plain language this means that the mirror of some EOS bodies will hit the rear element of some R lenses.

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IMHO it's far from an ideal setup. It probably works best with those R lenses that would normally be used at full aperture, like the f/6.8 Telyts.

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I've used my R lenses (cron 50, APO 90/2, APO 280/4, APO 1.4x) on a D30, mainly to get a quick sense of how they render images in terms of color, contrast, and bokeh. The D30 with the cron 50 is also a very nice, reasonably lightweight, little snapshooter. Perfect for that eBay shot or whatever. In terms of resolution, the D30 doesn't stress any of these three, although the 50 wide open doesn't have a whole lot more to give than the D30 can pick up. The cron 50 should be attractive to any Canon user given the poor durability of the EF50/1.4.

 

You lose aperture linkage with an adapter; this means as you turn the aperture ring the lens stops down. Stop-down metering means just that, you stop down the lens to the taking aperture and meter. The EOS bodies will show 00 for aperture and you can only use the A and M exposure modes.

 

I haven't checked tne EOS3 yet, but on the D30 with adapter the metering is highly inaccurate. It varies from image to image as well, of course with a DSLR you can simply expose according to the histogram. It seems to get reasonably reliable around f/8 to f/11. At f/2 it underexposes between 1/3 and 1 full stop. I got similar results last year when trying out a CZ Distagon 21 T* on the D30, 1D, 1Ds, and EOS3. (The owner of that lens used the Bob Shell adapter.) The CZ 21 wide open ran circles around my 24/1.4L stopped down to match. No comparison. I guess CZ still has the most experience with retrofocus designs. I'd suggest a handheld incident meter, but it might also be feasible to stop down to f/16 purely to meter -- at least in reasonably good light.

 

I use Stephen Gandy's REOS adapter (www.cameraquest.com), it's definitely a step up from the Bob Shell adapter which didn't use the lens' locking mechanism. The result was that the Shell adapter had a propensity to rotate out of position and sometimes get slightly wedged. Not good. SG's REOS adapter is very solid and mine now lives permanently on the D30 with an R body cap.

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Steve,

 

I use this combo all of the time, both with Canon film bodies, and the 10d and 1dmark 2.

It works great, though there are some caveats...

 

Works best, as Doug said with lenses that are normally used wide open, or close to it. I

use it the most with the apo system. I have canon glass as well from 300 down, but I used

to use it with the Leica 80-200 which was also fine.

 

But when you get into the Leica wides and wide zooms, you cannot use them as the Canon

mirror hits the back of the lens, as the leicas stick out farther than the Canons.

 

But for teles and short teles it is definitely the ticket. You can see the difference with the

Leica glass, and it really works fine.

 

I use the novoflex adapeter - from Sean Cranor, www.camerawest.com.

 

It's not that much of a PITA for me, but I'm a manual focus, manual metering kind of guy

anyway.

 

Mike<div>008Yak-18395084.jpg.3e198976e204f8bacc1bd1368d4dc7f9.jpg</div>

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I have been using my 560mm Telyt R lens on the 10D body with the Novoflex adapter. Have no problem with the stop-down metering however I concur with Andrew and Doug that focusing is a problem, split screen would help but some of the shots I have are acceptable however will not be as sharp as Doug Herr's photos.
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One extra trick, not mentioned in the Nemeth or other articles (but mentioned <a

href="http://www.botzilla.com/blog/archives/000312.html">here</a>) is that on

the 300D at lest, you need to do a +3 stop adjust on the flash exposure to get E-TTL

to function properly. Why? No idea. But it's been consistently correct at that higher-

than-normal strobe setting when mounting a manual lens.

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