Leica M lenses on Fuji GFX100/100S

[danieldouloslee]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I’m contemplating on using the Fuji GFX100S with M lenses in the 35mm crop mode. I’d be curious if anyone has experience with M lenses on this system, especially with the 28, 35 and 50 lux aspherical. 
 

i understand that vignetting would be pronounced given its lack of in-camera lens correction, but I’m looking at this more from a thick sensor stack perspective. What else would I be forfeiting, and how significant would it be? I shoot mostly documentary but with a keen eye for geometric shapes, where corners are in consideration. 
 

could anyone shine light to this?

[jaeger]

59 minutes ago, danieldouloslee said:

I’m contemplating on using the Fuji GFX100S with M lenses in the 35mm crop mode. I’d be curious if anyone has experience with M lenses on this system, especially with the 28, 35 and 50 lux aspherical. 
 

i understand that vignetting would be pronounced given its lack of in-camera lens correction, but I’m looking at this more from a thick sensor stack perspective. What else would I be forfeiting, and how significant would it be? I shoot mostly documentary but with a keen eye for geometric shapes, where corners are in consideration. 
 

could anyone shine light to this?

a user here name "frame it" or something like that uses a 50R with Leica lenses, the 50s has same sensor size and distortions.  

Edited April 12, 2021 by jaeger

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Casey Jefferson]

I had 50lux asph on gfx 50R for a while, only to realize that the sharpness (or rather, the focus) falls off gradually towards the corner, even stop down to f8. By f11 it looks ok, still not perfect if pixel peep. Placing your subject off center wide open pretty much result in soft rendering, defeating the purpose of spending for such fine lens.

Biggest problem IMHO is the heavy vignette wide open and color cast on edges. Flatfield plugin in LR can be used and effectively cure the problem completely with the expenses of extra workflow. Combining the above problems, you're just wasting the pixels and not to mention I hate manual focusing with evf, my hit rate is lower than using rf.

Not sure about wider lenses, I can only imagine worse on most of them.

TL;DR conclusion - you may have some fun if you also use GFX with native lenses. Solely just for adapting M lenses is a waste of time IMHO...

[frame-it]

1 hour ago, danieldouloslee said:

could anyone shine light to this?

dont believe everyone on internet forums, most people have never tried M/R lenses on GFX, but love to talk a lot

Make sure you get a novoflex adapter, not a cheap crappy one

Read Jim Kassons Blog

50 lux is fine, 90APO is fine and sometimes so razor sharp there is moire

R lenses are fine

i dont care about the 4 extreme corners, the crop if required is actually very little

Fuji GFX50R + Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH
ACROS-RED Jpg from Camera

 

Between f4 and f8, ISO 125, 1/500th, FULL 8256x6192 resized to 1280 for the forum.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited April 12, 2021 by frame-it

[danieldouloslee]

29 minutes ago, frame-it said:

Read Jim Kassons Blog

 

Thanks @frame-it, would you happen to have this link?

And @Casey Jefferson, just to make sure I understood you correctly, you are speaking in terms of 35mm crop mode as well, correct?

funny enough, I forgot to mention that I actually used the GFX100s briefly with my 28/50 lux, though it was not extensive enough to determine if the corners are compromised, especially with the 28. The 50 seemed acceptable from my usage, but the verdict is out there with the 28.. or even a 35..

 

Here are some photos in 35mm crop mode (I believe the first 2 were 50mm, and the last one was 28mm).

 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 

 

[frame-it]

7 minutes ago, danieldouloslee said:

Thanks @frame-it, would you happen to have this link?

And @Casey Jefferson, just to make sure I understood you correctly, you are speaking in terms of 35mm crop mode as well, correct?

funny enough, I forgot to mention that I actually used the GFX100s briefly with my 28/50 lux, though it was not extensive enough to determine if the corners are compromised, especially with the 28. The 50 seemed acceptable from my usage, but the verdict is out there with the 28.. or even a 35..

 

Here are some photos in 35mm crop mode (I believe the first 2 were 50mm, and the last one was 28mm).

 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 

 

i dont shoot in crop mode on the 50R, didnt even know it had a crop mode

[Casey Jefferson]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

@danieldouloslee My bad, I completely missed your point on crop mode. I was indeed talking about full 44x33mm mode, from my experience using the 50lux asph for two months exclusively. Can't speak about the result on crop mode I believe they are about the same you'd expect from adapting to other full frame mirrorless. You did show beautiful pictures with it, but I do think there's a hint if the color shift on the last one, they usually hidden in shadows (vignette) hence it's not noticeable until you try to correct them.

By the way someone judged people a little too early imho.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Casey Jefferson

[frame-it]

19 minutes ago, danieldouloslee said:

would you happen to have this link?

https://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/leica-902-summicron-m-asph-on-fuji-gfx-50s/

[Casey Jefferson]

This came just the right timing. All the lenses has this weird blue shifts at right edges. In fact, if the composition was flipped left to right, one can see the left side of the frame will have magenta shifts instead of blue. Either shifts will ruin some shots like asphalt and uniform color range across the frame, unless you use flat field to get rid of the shifts completely (it's very effective by the way). Most of these tests don't really tell you about real world shoots and off center performances. Fortunately, in my case although I bought the lens from my dealer, they're kind enough to let me trade in with minimum lost (cheaper than renting one) and that's how I got into the M system.

YMMV.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Casey Jefferson

[hdmesa]

Having tried many different full frame lenses adapted to the GFX — and following closely others doing the same:

Most full frame lenses at or below 50mm adapted to the GFX can produce usable results  at close to mid distance wide wide open. The typical/best use is for subject separation for portraits or plants/objects. But very few full frame lenses 50mm and wider work well at infinity across the entire GFX sensor. They almost all will have smeared corners that stopping down has no effect on. One notable exception is the Minolta 58 1.2 MD Rokkor, which has very small hard corners at infinity but is razor sharp at 5.6 all the way to those hard corners. The other exception would be full frame tilt/shift lenses. If used without any tilt or shift, they have a large enough image circle for good results at infinity. Some report being able to use minor t/s movements, but corner performance may suffer some.

If you need perfect GFX coverage, full frame primes 100mm and longer have better luck.

Some full frame zooms perform ok at infinity but only at one end of their range.

Edited April 12, 2021 by hdmesa

[Guest JMF]

The 50 Apo Summicron does well on the gfx50 bodies in 44x33 mode, no vignetting .

In crop mode, you'll be fine with the 50 summilux M Asph and with both 50 R summilux v1 and v2 lenses as well.

Edited April 13, 2021 by JMF

[hdmesa]

15 hours ago, JMF said:

The 50 Apo Summicron does well on the gfx50 bodies in 44x33 mode, no vignetting .

What about corner sharpness at infinity?

[Guest JMF]

58 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

What about corner sharpness at infinity?

Hi,

here you are:

Apo Summicron 50 M with Fotodiox adapter on GFX50R in full frame 44x33 , shot at f2.0 and focused in the center of frame, 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited April 13, 2021 by JMF

[Guest JMF]

Same conditions as above but shot at f2.8 and focused at infinity on far top center darker building (no filter no hood on both shots):

 

Hope this helps !

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[LarsHP]

If the Fuji GFX cameras have the same sensor glass thickness as a mirrorless camera like Sony a7 series, Nikon Z series etc. you should be able to get an idea about how the M lenses will perform by searching the net for that. To my surprise, I have more than once seen people using regular full frame (24x36mm) lenses on their 44x33mm Fuji cameras even without cropping.

I have used Sony a7II and Nikon Z6 with carefully selected M mount lenses with good results. However, after I got the 28mm Summicron-M Asph v2, which I originally thought should perform about as well as the other M lenses, I was dreadfully disappointed with the results (with that lens). It appears that 28mm is a difficult focal length for M mount lenses on mirrorless cameras (non-M cameras). I had either to part with the 28mm Summicron or get a sensor modification (and I ended doing that at Kolari Vision).

The M lenses I have used, that performs well on a stock Nikon Z6, are: Voigtländer Nokton 21mm f/1.8 and ditto 50mm f/1.2 Asph plus 90mm Apo-Summicron-M and Elmarit-M.

LensRentals did a test with various M mount lenses on a Sony a7 series camera versus a M240 (?) and found that certain lenses performed about as well as on the Sony while others underperformed. The key to how well M lenses work on mirrorless cameras seems to be exit pupil distance.

[hdmesa]

1 hour ago, JMF said:

Same conditions as above but shot at f2.8 and focused at infinity on far top center darker building (no filter no hood on both shots):

 

Hope this helps !

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Incredible that it doesn't smear at the corners. Must have a HUGE image circle. Thank you for posting.

[Al Brown]

As someone who uses Leica M and GFX bodies & lenses daily I can't imagine why you would want to use M lenses on the Fuji in crop mode? Your M10-P should do a significantly better job with correction, you have similar resolution (24 vs. 30 mpix in GFX crop mode) plus there is also your SL2... I have at least 12 adapted lenses on the GFX carefully picked to cover the 44x33 sensor size. Super picky about my edges on GFX sensor with adapted lenses. I refuse to use crop mode. I never got the Leica to GFX adapter though. Quite pointless if one has both systems.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Al Brown

[hdmesa]

34 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

As someone who uses Leica M and GFX bodies & lenses daily I can't imagine why you would want to use M lenses on the Fuji in crop mode? Your M10-P should do a significantly better job with correction, you have similar resolution (24 vs. 30 mpix in GFX crop mode) plus there is also your SL2... I have at least 12 adapted lenses on the GFX carefully picked to cover the 44x33 sensor size. Super picky about my edges on GFX sensor with adapted lenses. I refuse to use crop mode. I never got the Leica to GFX adapter though. Quite pointless if one has both systems.

#1 use for adapted lenses on the GFX is for subject isolation wide open at close distances. For that purpose, most M lenses will do just fine. I will say that with the release of the GF 80 1.7, there is less reason for me to adapt lenses since the GF 80 gives a superior result at close distances wide open and also has that character to the out of focus areas that many vintage lenses do.

For infinity use, I agree. Just use a GF lens (or adapted film medium format lens) and be done with it.

[Al Brown]

1 hour ago, hdmesa said:

#1 use for adapted lenses on the GFX is for subject isolation wide open at close distances

My Mitakon 65/1.4 with native GF mount isolates mighty fine 🙂 ...
The OP can isolate his subjects with fast lenses just the same on Leica M or SL2 bodies - the cropped GFX 30mpix format covers about the same, the results will not differ much apart from all the thicker sensor stack problems and lack of correction on Fuji. I totally get (and constantly abuse) your point about awesome fast lenses adapted to Fujifilm, but if you are using this setup in crop mode you might as well be using the original Leica bodies. I think the OP's question was about that, he said he wants to use in 35mm crop mode.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Al Brown

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[hdmesa]

8 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

My Mitakon 65/1.4 with native GF mount isolates mighty fine 🙂 ...
The OP can isolate his subjects with fast lenses just the same on Leica M or SL2 bodies - the cropped GFX 30mpix format covers about the same, the results will not differ much apart from all the thicker sensor stack problems and lack of correction on Fuji. I totally get (and constantly abuse) your point about awesome fast lenses adapted to Fujifilm, but if you are using this setup in crop mode you might as well be using the original Leica bodies. I think the OP's question was about that...

I was 100% talking about using the full 44x33 sensor. At close/portrait distances, a lot of full frame lenses cover the sensor when shot wide open. Some may get swirly at the edges, but some don’t..