I have several kits of old lenses, all different brands. That was basically why I wanted to get a M43 body so I could have a digital body that would take them all with the right adapter. For me the Taks and the Yashica ML's seem to give me the best color results usually. The Viv's can be sharp too but the color and contrast isn't quite as good unless I pop it in Photoshop. The couple of Nikon E series lenses I have they're fairly sharp but they really are kind of blah in the color and contrast dept. No lens is perfect but I definitely do have my preferences and overall I think my Taks are the best choice for my E-PL1. Even on the non bright normal setting my E-PL1 tend to take very warm pics compared to my K-x. The white balance seems naturally that way and I always end up making my photos cooler in Photoshop anyhow or adjusting the WB in the camera to be less so.
Thank you everyone for your insights and comments.
In the small set of lenses I've used, I do find it to be variable lens to lens, ie much better color & contrast with the SP Tamron180/2.5 than the Nikkor 85/2 with both heavily hooded and on a Voigtlander adapter with a matte black interior. My Nikon Series E 50/1.8 is so soft it hasn't seen much use on the adapter. Haven't tried it yet on the EM-5, but I think it's a lens dependent phenomenon, and would be surprised if the results are different from the ol' G1.
I think another factor, especially evident on some legacy wide angle Leica lenses, is that towards the edge of the frame, IQ falls off due to the light hitting the sensor at a fairly oblique angle. This didn't matter on film, but the sensels on digital cameras have a limited field of view (even with micro lenses installed over them).
My understanding is that telecentric designs limit distortion (e.g. fisheye effect) while the sensor micro lenses or perpendicularity are meant to limit vignetting due to light fall-off at the edges.
that could be on the money ... however there is no doubting that a Leica 28mm lens is much more 'oblique' to the sensor (film?) than a Canon EOS lens and both are well corrected for barrel or pincushion distortion.
whatever is the right name for that design difference is what I was meaning.
As to why I nominated that for 'flare' is that I suspect its more likely to splatter light around inside the area between back of the lens mount and the camera internals. Sensors are much shinier than film surfaces.
having said that my experience with some 50mm lenses suggests perhaps something else may also be the issue.
For instance, when I compared my FD 50mm f1.4, f1.8 , Pentax 110 50mm f2.8 and OM 50mm f1.8 I got better contrast and less flare (IMO) from the Pentax 2.8 than the FD 1.8
flare samples
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shining a torch at the camera
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strongly backlight with sun directly into lens (but just out of frame) making lens hood tricky
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detail segments of that
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see my blog post for more details (and access to bigger images) if you wish.
So, it could be lens coatings or that the lens is designed to expect greater enlargement, or that the coverage intention of less area seems to effect that.
I dunno ... I've got one lens adapter (for FD) which has a 'window' at the back of the adapter to throttle the light that leaves the adapter.
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The adapter is also internally baffled too .. seems to make no difference to images.
See this blog post.
I really have to point back at the sensor and rear element again for this:
Look at how reflective your sensor is
Now look at how unreflective the matte areas around your sensor are.
Which one reflects more light?
Now look at a can of unprocessed film. Does the sensor look way more reflective than the film?
There's a reason that some film era lenses were "made digital" just by changing the AR coating on the rear element. Look at the designations from Tamron and Sigma where they designate lenses as "digital" even if you'd expect all of their lenses to be digital. They had some real nice designs from the film era they wanted to reuse and they did. By tweaking the AR on the rear element. Some lenses are notoriously bad about this and others are incredibly well behaved about the internal reflections so those designs didn't get tweaked.
With all the baffling and matte black, shouldn't I be suffering horribly with "legacy" glass given I have 135 format glass, which after the Speedbooster, still forms something close to an APS-C sized image circle and illuminates the area around my sensor? I seem to distinctly lack this problem. Look at your lenses. Borrow someone's "somewhat modern" digital era glass and try mounting it at the same focal length and shooting the same brightly lit subjects and review the images at 100%.
Interesting. I have been using a cheap adapter (brand unknown, purchased off ebay several years ago by one of my sons) which allowed me to attach my four legacy Pentax lenses to my G1. Despite the loose fit, I find the performance of the lenses especially the 50mm/f1.7 SMC Pentax-M, pretty good and am happy with the colour rendition. This with an adapter which is 25mm (1 inch) in depth. Which raises the question : Could I expect even better results with a shorter (i.e. Novoflex) adapter ?
There are a lot of good responses in this thread. :smile:
Just wanted to add that on my Df, my AI & AI-s glass works pretty darn good - but then again, the Df was designed with usability of this type of glass in mind.
Got a Non-AI piece of glass coming next week - I expect the same positive results with it too....
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