Best of both worlds (for my need, of course..)

[Federico]

Hi Amin ( it's good to see another interesting project :smile , hi everyone
I'm Federico , a photographer
At the moment I'm living in Rome, Italy

I own a Nikon D3 and (i think) a very good lens selection (AFS 14-24 f2,8 AFS 24-70 f2,8 AFS 70-200 f2,8 VR AFD 85 f1,4 Zeiss 100 Makro f2,0 Ai-S 35 mm f1,4 AFD 50 f1,4 and the 21 mm Distagon f2,8 Zeiss is the next on my wishlist....)

I've just sold my Digilux 4 (I've owned several advanced compact cameras)
and I need to get , as soon as possible, a lightweight high-quality camera, to be less intrusive while working on the street

I love to work quietly to get natural snapshot
I can use the D3 , but it's not suitable all the times

I'd like to buy a GF1 with the 20 f1,7
I was thinking about a M4/3- Contax G -Zeiss adapter
But the question I have to do is about the manual focusing speed
I'd use this camera for street photography , and I need to operate quickly
Is it possible to achieve such kind of speed?

I can do that with D3 but sometimes it's not the right camera at the right place...

Maybe would be right to spend a little ( a lot...) more to get the 45 Leica and work with the good AF GF1 can offer

What do you think about this?

 

[cosinaphile]

federico , i own the gf1 and the ep-1 and use many manual focus lenses on them ,

if i understand you correctly the contax g lenses you refer to are the af lenses for the g1 and g2 af rangefinder cameras like the 45 f2 planar or the 90 2.8 sonnar

i use them on my ep1 , the adapter i use is the rj adapter with a small focus wheel adjacent the focus rod for the lenses . i find the focusing action with this tiny wheel to be somewhat slow . to speed things up i added a gear twice the size of the one that spins the gear rod to my olympus case in the exact position below the adapter and it make focus twice as fast

 

[Iansky]

GF1 + 20mm for street

Federico,

You cannot go wrong with the GF1+20mm combination for street, it is "Very fast" to focus especially if you use centre spot focus point (It focuses as fast as my Canon 5D did).

The quality of the 20mm lens is incerdible and you may well be happy to use this as your prime street lens. I did try the EP1 before deciding on the GF1 and found that the focusing screen on the GF1 at twice the pixel count does make a huge difference, especially when manually focussing.

You can see my current GF1+20mm images on my blogsite but I would encourage you to handle both cameras and see which is the "best fit for you", the results from both are too similar in quality to worry about.

 

[Amin]

Hi Federico, and welcome! I think the GF1 and Lumix 20 would be a good start. From there, you could see how well you liked the system before getting a Leica 45.

I can manually focus my Nokton 50 quickly enough at f/2.8 or higher, where the DOF is a bit more forgiving, but I cannot quickly nail manual focus at f/2 and below.

 

[Federico]

Thank you very much for your advices!
I'm going to try the GF1 and 20 mm

Iansky , thank you!
Great images on your site, really inspiring!

Happy new year!!