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Leica R and Hasselblad lenses on Canon


atournas

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I'd like to share my recent experience of shooting with R and Hasselblad lenses on a Canon 40D body (10 MP, cost me a bit more than $290).

 

The reason I took the Canon route is that I didn't want to modify the lenses' mount (the Nikon case with Leitax adapters), as I also shoot with film R bodies. As for the 1.6X cropping, the FF bodies like the 5D wouldn't accept all my R lenses, especially my trusted 28-90 ASPH.

 

I use adapters of the German brand Quenox ordered from enjoyyourcamera.com. They are of good built quality, not very expensive, and the R-to-Canon also features focus confirmation.

 

Shooting with the R 60mm f2.8 Macro has given many acceptable pictures. I shoot in aperture priority or manual mode. I focus with no problems with apertures up to f5.6; after that, there is no focus confirmation response. So, the best solution is to focus wide open, then select aperture through the on-lens ring, and finally compose and shoot.

 

The pleasant surprise was that all the metering modes appear to work fine, and so does exposure lock; I didn't try machine-gun shooting.

 

For accurate focusing, I use the live view alternative. Live view works fine, with 5X and 10X zoom, but it drains the battery, as expected. (Otherwise, the battery life is quite long.) I even tried hand-held live view with the 80-200 f4 on! The few keepers were with nice colors and clarity, though. All in all, the combination is a good poor man's alternative to M240.

 

Now, the 40D with Hasselblad lenses is a different story. No focus confirmation and the heavy lenses make live view and shooting on a tripod a necessity. Aperture priority or manual again, no limit to f5.6 for focusing, since there is no confirmation available, and the lens must be stopped down via both the on-lens ring AND the depth-of-field lock button. There is no need to worry about how to set the speed on he lens--it will be set via the Canon on-body function. There is no communication of any sort between the lens and the camera.

 

Perhaps all these are known to most people here. When I started reading various forums about medium format lenses on Canon (or Nikon) bodies, most posts were negative--especially as regards the quality of the images. Some went that far to talk about a degradation in IQ because the MF lenses, they claimed, were considered of low quality for the demanding 36X24mm sensors of today. Well, so far I saw no such falling in quality, and I have only used the 80mm Planar; I look forward to shooting with the 180mm Sonnar. Again, then, Hasselblad lenses on Canon bodies is also worth trying.

 

Paul

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I use my 28-90 asph with my Canon 5D MkII. All it took was shaving the plastic mirror with a Dremel tool so it doesn't catch the lens on its return. I'd never used a Dremel tool before and followed instructions on the web for taping the mirror box to stop the swarf from reaching the sensor. It took about 15 minutes to shave the mirror, I can use all of my R lenses with the 5D MkII and the only visible difference is that looking through the viewfinder loses maybe 5% of the top of the view.

 

I use a CameraQuest EOS-R adapter, which is very well machined.

 

Pete.

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