Leica S Adapter for Hasselblad V Lens for Leica S007 Body

[mgrayson3]

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21 hours ago, Milan_S said:

fun experiment David, do you happen to have the mythical 110mm Planar f2? Would be nice for some portraits

I have one and it works very well both on the S3 and Hassy X2D. Sharp, if low contrast, wide open. A special lens.

[Milan_S]

52 minutes ago, mgrayson3 said:

I have one and it works very well both on the S3 and Hassy X2D. Sharp, if low contrast, wide open. A special lens.

Would love to see some pics with it on the S3

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[mgrayson3]

38 minutes ago, Milan_S said:

Would love to see some pics with it on the S3

Not portraits, and all wide open, but the backlit buildings, while covered in purple fringing, are not actually soft. Buildings are 2 miles away. Hazy day with bright sky.

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Center crop

Edge crop

 

Now a tree

Slightly right of center

Far edge

I'll try to get a picture of a person, or at least a cat... Stop it down to f/4 and it looks like any other of the best Zeiss optics.

Edited June 8 by mgrayson3

[mgrayson3]

Ok, here's Soup with the S3 and 110/2 wide open. ISO 3200, as not great light. Still, you get a sense of the thing. Soup is not convinced...

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Edited June 8 by mgrayson3

[Milan_S]

15 hours ago, mgrayson3 said:

Ok, here's Soup with the S3 and 110/2 wide open. ISO 3200, as not great light. Still, you get a sense of the thing. Soup is not convinced...

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Soup is just the cutest, thank you for sharing. How difficult is it to focus the V lenses and certainly the 110mm on the S3?

[mgrayson3]

1 hour ago, Milan_S said:

Soup is just the cutest, thank you for sharing. How difficult is it to focus the V lenses and certainly the 110mm on the S3?

Not difficult at all, though perfection takes a few tries.

As much as I love the OVF, accurate focus, even with the longer AF lenses, means (for me!) checking with focus peaking under Live View - magnified, if conditions permit. In this case, for instance, I could see the band of peak lighting move forwards and backwards over Soup as I focused. As it turns out, I front-focused a bit. His forward eye could be a bit sharper, but it doesn't detract from the image, and the slight camera shake from 1/90 second on a 110mm lens may be as much responsible. Shooting in Live View means a camera not pressed against the face.

OTOH, while the X2D has IBIS and now has focus peaking, you're still restricted to the electronic shutter. A picture like the above would be banded from the interior lighting flicker. So ironically, the old adapted Hasselblad lenses still work better in some ways on the Leica than on the Hasselblad.

Edited June 9 by mgrayson3

[davidmknoble]

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From a focusing standpoint, the split image finder (which is not my favorite) also helps with the OVF.  I think @mgrayson3 is right from a critical wide open (110 at f/2 is pretty slim) and I know @Milan_S you do a lot of portraiture work.  I use the 120mm f/4 for portraits and stop down to f/5.6 or f/8, but I’m also pretty far away (i.e, a full body portrait sitting in a chair).  But, most of my work is landscape, so zone focusing f/11-f/16.

What I have not tried yet, is the s-adapter-L, coupled with the V adapter and hassy lens on the SL system.  It seems like the best of all worlds, center of the glass, EVF peak focusing…

???

[Stuart Richardson]

5 hours ago, davidmknoble said:

 

What I have not tried yet, is the s-adapter-L, coupled with the V adapter and hassy lens on the SL system.  It seems like the best of all worlds, center of the glass, EVF peak focusing…

???

It works. I have done it. The 350mm FE lens is much more usable on the SL2 than on the S (where it was completely unusable), mostly because of the ability to use the E shutter, but it is still mostly unusable because it is so soft. The 80mm and 110mm do much better. The 250mm FE is ok. Have not tried the 50mm 2.8 FE. Really most of the issues are the same. They are good lenses, but they are 30+ years old and designed for a larger format and for film, not digital. So while they may have a lovely character, in my experience they do not provide as good a result as more modern native alternatives. Think primarily chromatic aberration and softness/fuzziness when used wider open. I think they are really best used on 6x6 film, which is what they were designed for. The retain their intended angle of view and their aberrations are less apparent. The beauty of the 110mm F2 was that it was a slightly long normal lens, or a very short telephoto. It gave incredible subject separation and bokeh in a head and shoulders shot, for example. When used as a longer telephoto on 35mm, I think it loses much of that character, and ultimately I think you get better results out of, for example, a 75mm or 90mm Summicron. Probably the most similar lens to the 110mm f2 is the 75mm Noctilux. A huge shame about the price...

Edited June 10 by Stuart Richardson

[davidmknoble]

@Stuart Richardson good thoughts.  Much of my work is stopped down - both in the 6x6 and the S.  So, I typically do not shoot wide-open anyway.  I do agree the aberrations are not noticable as much on BnW film especially.  I am always looking for cross compatibility to take two systems that share some lenses.  The SL system is so much easier to accomplish that (with the gear I have).

I’ll experiment some more to see what works with my landscape work. At the end of the day, the S lenses are far too incredible not to use for the best work, but it is fun to try.

 

[Stuart Richardson]

I do not want to be too much of a curmudgeon...I think if you have these lenses already, then by all means use them. That said, I think sometimes newer photographers or enthusiastic amateurs come in and think "oh, this is a Zeiss lens for Hasselblad, it must be so much better than that Sigma 35mm format lens", when the reality is that in most cases the newer lens is going to be better technically, but often aesthetically as well, as modern digital sensors have different characteristics and requirements than the older lenses. And they often have that better performance in a smaller, lighter, cheaper package with auto aperture and auto focus. But don't get me wrong, I appreciate those lenses, they are fantastic. Here are two photos on 6x6 film where I think the 110mm planar shows its character. The color one is wide open at f2. I think if you were to take a 35mm crop out of that photo, it would lose most of its presence.

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[davidmknoble]

There is also the idea that the larger the format the more different you need to think in terms of lens clarity and structure. I think in the older film days, the lens was not as technically sharp because it a) had to cover a much larger are on the film (even thinking 4x5, 8x10) and b) the negative was not enlarged near as much.  With the 35mm size, the lens has to be super capable because the image is so much larger.

Those are beautiful images @Stuart Richardson, and yes I agree, I would not just go out and collect these lenses as a lower cost alternative to newer digital lenses.  But if you are as crazy as I am and still just love shooting film, well then it works! 

The real challenge today, regardless of the lenses on the S (since this is the S-forum section) is that traveling with film as a second medium to digital is tougher and tougher because none of the airport people understand film and they “have to scan everything.”  I am finding hand checks on film to be harder to accomplish, but I keep trying because a negative just doesn’t get deleted on a bad hard drive!

Nice dialogue, Stuart.

[BernardC]

18 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

Probably the most similar lens to the 110mm f2 is the 75mm Noctilux.

The 110 is a dead ringer for the Planar 1.4/85 for 35mm film. They came-out around the same time, and have the same "soft wide open, sharp past 5.6" character.

It is the only film-era lens that I regularly use with the S. I occasionally use a Mamiya APO 200/2.8, and enlarging lenses on a Hasselblad bellows, but those are rare circumstances. I would consider getting the S 180, but I rarely use long lenses.

Every other film-era medium format lens has been sold-off, or sometimes lent to a friend who uses them with film. They just don't measure-up with S lenses. The Planar 110 stands on its own because of its imperfections. It's a look that isn't easy to achieve with modern lenses, and the weaknesses don't matter for portrait-type imaging. I wouldn't use it for landscape.

[Milan_S]

I had the chance to try the Planar 110mm f2 on the S3 yesterday, wide open shot

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