Leica T zone focus with M lens?

[Landberg]

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Hi!

I did the "mistake" of trying the Leica T with a Leica M lens, great combo! I have a question, if i zone focus a 35mm lens on the Leica T will the marks on the lens be accurate even with the 1.5 crop?

 

Thanks!

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[Guest]

It's not so much the 1.5 crop factor - but the M-T adaptor.  Using the adaptor increases the distance from the rear lens element to the focal plane (sensor) - so infinity isn't at the hard stop at the end of the focus collar (it's actually slightly before that).  If you just turn the focus collar to infinity and shoot - you may be disappointed.

 

I think the same might be true for the entire distance scale.  I use zone focusing often with M glass - but since I am guessing at the distance anyway I haven't really noticed if this adaptor issue is significant throughout the entire distance scale.  I stop the lens down to get enough depth of field to give me some wiggle room for my measuring  - and things typically come out fine. 

 

M lenses are special on the T.   You may want to consider the forthcoming 35mm T Summilux.  The optics are supposedly designed to 60 lp/mm and it's built just for the T - so it has autofocus.  You may have better white balance performance with this (albeit larger) lens.   It's also less expensive than a new, or used, 35 M Lux.

[firststream]

No, they won't. On the M8 with a 1.33x crop, the correct compensation is one f/stop. Thus, when shooting at say, f/8, one would zone-focus for f/5.6.

 

Because the 1.5x crop of the T (typ 701) is more demanding, you'll have to tighten the tolerances just that much more...

 

Good luck; I too have fallen for the T and M lens combo!