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Best digital camera for Leica r lenses


Joecamera

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Any advice would be appreciated! Here is the question, but first... I have 4 Leica R lenses,

a 35 Summicron, a 50 Summilux, a 90 Summicron, and a 180 f2.8, all pristine and immaculate glass. I presently use an R5 and shoot slides, but would like a digital body to use these lenses on as well. I hear and read much about a host of adapters, or changing mounts on lenses, this thing called 4/3rds, and on and on and on..... Most of what I read is to use a Canon DSLR with an adapter. What combination works the best?????

 

Thanks in advance for going to the trouble to respond!

Joe

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The best will be the R8 or R9 with DMR. It's still simple. crop 1.3

 

I do use a Canon full frame and an adapter with AF confirmation and splitscreen. I do so because the lens stays the same in use. 50mm is 50mm. And the A program works. The rest I don't use. Ofcourse it's cheaper developing and easy to change ISO. But all canon's are to advanced and think to much for you. So you will need a day to put every thing off with the 5d mkII, 1ds mkIII. less with the 5d mkI and 1ds mkII.

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Any advice would be appreciated! Here is the question, but first... I have 4 Leica R lenses,

a 35 Summicron, a 50 Summilux, a 90 Summicron, and a 180 f2.8, all pristine and immaculate glass. I presently use an R5 and shoot slides, but would like a digital body to use these lenses on as well. I hear and read much about a host of adapters, or changing mounts on lenses, this thing called 4/3rds, and on and on and on..... Most of what I read is to use a Canon DSLR with an adapter. What combination works the best?????

 

Thanks in advance for going to the trouble to respond!

Joe

 

Your best way would be sticking around this site and inform yourself, for which camera system (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, …) your specific lenses can be converted.

 

Leica & Pentax & Nikon | Leitax

 

Inform yourself, which of these camera systems offer you the sensor size (24x36mm vs crop sensor), resolution and user interface, fitting your purpose the best.

 

From the looks of it, the Sony FF DSLR A900 looks like a very interesting body for the sole purpose of using converted Leica R glass.

 

I would favor myself a Nikon D700, as I am a Nikon user by myself (recently sold my D300 and glass for more Leica M but still keep a D3 and selection of lenses for it).

 

If you are fine with a crop sensor and have no eye troubles with manual focussing a tiny peephole viewfinder, you can go as cheap as the appropriate entry level bodies from each manufacturer ;-)

 

There are vivid forums regarding converting R glass at DPReview (mostly the Canon forum I guess) and a few very interesting threads at the NikonCafe with some users, who seem to have great experience in converting R glass to Canon and Nikon. In any way, an interesting read (just search Leica R).

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Any advice would be appreciated! Here is the question, but first... I have 4 Leica R lenses,

... I presently use an R5 and shoot slides, but would like a digital body to use these lenses on as well. I hear and read much about a host of adapters, or changing mounts on lenses, this thing called 4/3rds, and on and on and on..... Most of what I read is to use a Canon DSLR with an adapter. What combination works the best?????

...

Joe

 

Joe,

 

I would not want to sound rude, far from me, but as always "the best" is a relative term, in this case the camera is as good as your pockets are deep, that's the limit of your choices because it will affect the basic one, the sensor size.

 

Now, you want to have a full format sensor or can you accept a cropped one?

Money-wise this will put you in different ballparks, though the range of your options can still be pretty wide in each one.

 

The top Nikon or Canon bodies will certainly give you your "best", but are they worth the expense? Let's remember that you will not be able to use many of their top features as they are planned to be used with their own lenses.

 

The cropped sensor bodies from the same brands (you can add Oly and 4/3 to the list here) will also get you pretty good results, but at the expense of the focal length of your current lenses, as the crop factor will kick in.

Money-wise they are much more acceptable, and results are good, but this is where you expectations and the use of your pictures do come in. Do not understate the latter. Maybe these are "the best" ... compromise?

 

Anyway with all these solutions you will have some things that can make your use more or less satisfactory, like the ease of focusing (unfortunately no DSLR is planned for manual focusing), so the brightness of the finder can affect it, but in any case you will have to deal with a fully manual camera, likely even more than your current R5. As many can prove, it's no big problem, but this will anyway make for a somewhat more sluggish use.

Besides, you should also evaluate the system as a whole, as one day you might wish to add some more lenses, maybe just to put to use a few of the wealth of features that the new body has.

 

Maybe the very "best" could be, as suggested, to get an R8/9 and a DMR.

On the flip side, there's a crop factor and, even used, this might make for one of the most expensive solutions, but it would keep the functionality and ease of use to what you are used to with your current camera. Just first check the full compatibility of your lenses with those "new" R bodies ...

 

I know this is not a direct answer to your question, but I sort of feel you still have to deal with these issues before actually setting on a specific camera. Please, forgive me if I'm wrong.

 

All the best.

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Joe - here is the most intriguing thread on the NikonCafe forum, I mentioned regarding your idea:

 

NikonCafe.com

 

In any option, you might decide, even if you don't consider using a Nikon DSLR with your Leica R lenses - make sure, you can read the thread and see the images.

They alone are worth a good look into the NikonCafe forum.

 

I almost fell for it and snapped up some Leica R glass for using on my D3 because of this thread ;-)

I just went the more sane way and got more Leica M lenses instead ;-)

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If you're going to continue shooting film with the R5 then the best option (excluding the R9/DMR which is more costly and harder to find) would be a Canon body and an adapter.

 

Just leave the adapter on the Canon and you can switch lenses easily. I bought an older 20D for this purpose and a cheap focus confirm adapter via e bay. It works very well for my purposes. Be careful using the aperture priority metering as the exposure does vary a little as you stop down, it seems to over expose if I use smaller apertures. If I stick to 5.6/8 I'm fine, otherwise I use an incident reading.

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I recently purchased a Sony Alpha 850 DSLR, purely to be able use my Contax/Y Zeiss lenses and Leica R lenses. I bought several mounts from Leitax Leica lens for Sony cameras

 

The Leitax website gives you fully illustrated step by step instructions on how to swop the mounts, it's very straightforward. David Llado who owns this operation is extremely helpful.

 

The Sony 850 is a full frame camera and reasonably priced. All my lenses work beautifully on the Sony body, with great results. The lenses obviously only work in full manual mode on the camera, from focus to exposure setting.

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You can also get Leitax mounts to fit Nikon cameras. :) So the world is your shellfish really. Pick a camera system, that suits your needs, and one that feels right for you, and then use your 'R' lenses with the appropriate mounts. Then if the day arrives when Leica again provide a system to use those lenses, you can convert them back again. :)

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Joe,

 

I use a Canon 5D MkII with my R lenses and it's an excellent combination because of Live View. I didn't appreciate the power of Live View until I bought the camera but it comes into it's own for focusing Leica R lenses. Since the camera can't control the lens's diaphragm it is necessary to use the 'stop down' focussing technique where you manually set your focus with lens wide open and stop down to your chosen aperture, as an automatic camera would do for you. (It is difficult to focus when stopped down because the image is dark in the viewfinder.)

 

Live View helps by projecting the the view through the lens onto the LCD screen on the rear of the camera and compensates the screen's luminance when the lens is stopped down. But the biggest advantage with Live View is that you can zoom in to the picture on teh PCD screen by 10 times and nail focus beyond doubt.

 

Live view is not to everyone's taste and is not necessarily the best method for all subjects but for macro shots and pretty much any shot where you can take your time it will perform superbly.

 

I use a CameraQuest adaptor (non-focus confirming) that is beautifully machined and happily stays on the camera while I change lenses.

 

Pete.

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I'm also very pleased with the D700/Leitax combination.

 

BUT, if you plan to continue shooting film with the R5, I would suggest Canon 5D/5DII since this will enable you to use the R-lenses both digitally and on film. The leitax conversion is no big deal, but you wouldn't want to do it everytime you go from digital to film or back...

 

A less costly solution could be the (m)4/3 solutions mentioned above.

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I'll echo the comments made above by Andy and Jakob regarding the D700/Leitax approach. It's a great solution for those wanting to use Leica R-glass with a digital body.

 

In my case, I inherited an SL2 and an R5 from my father, along with a fairly large selection of lenses. When it became clear Leica wasn't going to provide a digital R solution any time soon (if ever) I decided to acquire a D700 and convert my 21mm, 35mm and 135mm R lenses for use on that body. I purchased a Nikon 50mm when I acquired the D700, so I have a pretty good range of glass to use with this body.

 

I'm fortunate to still have a 28mm, 50mm, a Telyt and 2 Vario-Elmars to use with my two R-bodies.

 

I'm not sure I would have gone with this solution if I had only a few lenses to choose from. As Jakob states above, the Leitax conversion - while fairly simple - is not something I'd want to be doing all the time.

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For using my R lenses I'm starting to adopt this solution.

 

1. Convert the R mount to Nikon mount in order to be able to use these lenses on my Nikon bodies, and

2. use also a sensor shift-stabilized Olympus E body with a Nikon to 4/3 adapter (E3 and E30 are fine for this scope thanks to they larger viewfinders and possibly to Katz Eye focusing screens)

 

In this way, you can have both full frame 35 mm experience for your lenses and a 2x digital body for long telephoto work. I think that this is an interesting opportunity for all users with some Telyt lenses.

Best regards.

 

Paolo

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Although I have a DMR, I also have a Canon 5D and it works very well with a cheap focus confirm Chinese adapter. Unfortunately it will not work with some lens combinations and in my case it would not operate with the R 21-35mm lens because the mirror of the 5D fouls the rear element of the lens. This was a blow because it was that lens I particularly wanted to use because of the crop factor on the DMR. I have been told that removing the protective cowl from the lens will solve the problem but I haven't had the courage to do it!

Good luck

Ian

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DMR for sure produces the best quality..... i found it to reply on post processing - which is fine but i never perfected a digital workflow. i am quite happy with the Digilux 3 and R lenses - i use the leica adpater and it works like bread and butter.....

 

 

one thing that highly interest me is the olympus line, they have image stabilzation in the camera - a nifty feature ! , especailly for some of the longer and heavier R lenses...

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  • 2 weeks later...
If you're going to continue shooting film with the R5 then the best option (excluding the R9/DMR which is more costly and harder to find) would be a Canon body and an adapter...

Agree. R9 or R8 with DMR are big combos making crop pictures. Very nice IQ though. Setting aside other big cams like Nikon D3 or Canon 1DS3, if you want full frame the best results i've got were with the old Canon 5D and the current Nikon D700. The Canon makes sharper jpegs out of the cam but both give very good results anyway. Canon 5D2? I don't like its skin rendition that i find waxy. Matter of tastes though.

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