Buy cheap buy twice - M39 lens mount adapter

[01maciel]

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I know the laugh is always on the loser. So please ignore my low budget decision on that.

My new URTH Lens mount adapter  M39 -> Leica M has a decent quality but refuses to work when I switch to Liveview. An error message comes up saying >No Lens Attached<. OVF works like a charm. Is there any trick to get the adapter working with Liveview and my new Jupiter 3?

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[michali]

25 minutes ago, 01maciel said:

I know the laugh is always on the loser. So please ignore my low budget decision on that.

My new URTH Lens mount adapter  M39 -> Leica M has a decent quality but refuses to work when I switch to Liveview. An error message comes up saying >No Lens Attached<. OVF works like a charm. Is there any trick to get the adapter working with Liveview and my new Jupiter 3?

I've had this same issue as well with more expensive adapters. 

Does your LTM adapter have the cutout? If so, that's the issue. The cutout ends up over the lens mount sensor which is located in the "4:30" position & there's nothing for the sensor to read. You need the LTM adapter without the cutout.

See below-

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Edited August 10, 2021 by michali

[01maciel]

vor 10 Minuten schrieb michali:

You need the LTM adapter without the cutout.

Thanks. OK it's not only a budget issue. Is a cut out visible on the photo?

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[michali]

9 minutes ago, 01maciel said:

Thanks. OK it's not only a budget issue. Is a cut out visible on the photo?

 

Yes it is visible.

I've replaced all my LTM adapters with these Fotodiox adapters which have no cut out & also have the the indents for 6 Bit coding which you can fill in with a permanent marker. 

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[jaapv]

You may run into trouble using lenses with an infinity lock. The cutout was made to avoid it jamming on some lenses with a small clearance. An alternative is using a bit of opaque tape to block off the cutout.

[ianman]

2 hours ago, michali said:

the indents for 6 Bit coding which you can fill in with a permanent marker. 

This may be a silly question but what’s the point of having the six bit encoding for LTM lenses?

[jaapv]

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To get the focal length into EXIF, for instance.

[Ecar]

40 minutes ago, jaapv said:

You may run into trouble using lenses with an infinity lock. The cutout was made to avoid it jamming on some lenses with a small clearance. An alternative is using a bit of opaque tape to block off the cutout.

You can always take the Dremel out of the drawer and cut an infinity lock clearance for those (few) lenses that need one.

Or buy a Japanese (black) Rayqual adapter with infinity lock cutout, 6-bit sensor coverage and perfect dimensions. Expensive, though.

I also have a Kenko made like the Rayqual, but it came with a lens and may not be widely available.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Ecar

[michali]

3 hours ago, jaapv said:

You may run into trouble using lenses with an infinity lock. The cutout was made to avoid it jamming on some lenses with a small clearance. An alternative is using a bit of opaque tape to block off the cutout.

 

2 hours ago, Ecar said:

You can always take the Dremel out of the drawer and cut an infinity lock clearance for those (few) lenses that need one.....

I've done exactly that where there's been an issue with clearance.

[UliWer]

Better and easier option than a dremel and other manipulative devices is just to switch lens detection off. Liveview will work without complaining, that it "feels" no lens. 

With a 50mm lens - like the Jupiter 3 - you definitely need no lens detection.

(The EXIF "problem" mentioned above will be a very small one - since I am sure everybody will recognize the results from an old lens at once. If not ...)

 

Edited August 10, 2021 by UliWer

[UliWer]

5 hours ago, Ecar said:

Or buy a Japanese (black) Rayqual adapter with infinity lock cutout, 6-bit sensor coverage and perfect dimensions. Expensive, though.

Can you show how this adapter works?

All I know from the 28mm Summaron or 28mm Hektor is that they need the clearance for the infinity lock exactly in the region of the 6-bit sensor. So either cutout, or 6-bit-sensor covered - but not both. 

 

[ianman]

12 hours ago, jaapv said:

To get the focal length into EXIF, for instance.

It seems rather silly as it could also result is some corrections applied to an image which shouldn’t be, it would result in a wrong lens being included in exif. If the only reason is to get the focal length it’s probably better to add the info manually, it’s easy enough.

[Ecar]

7 hours ago, UliWer said:

Can you show how this adapter works?

All I know from the 28mm Summaron or 28mm Hektor is that they need the clearance for the infinity lock exactly in the region of the 6-bit sensor. So either cutout, or 6-bit-sensor covered - but not both. 

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[jaapv]

2 hours ago, ianman said:

It seems rather silly as it could also result is some corrections applied to an image which shouldn’t be, it would result in a wrong lens being included in exif. If the only reason is to get the focal length it’s probably better to add the info manually, it’s easy enough.

Corrections for a 50 mm lens are virtually nil. It is indeed easy to add the focal length manually, but depending on the number of images it can be a bit of a chore -and it assumes an infallible memory. 

[jaapv]

9 hours ago, UliWer said:

The EXIF "problem" mentioned above will be a very small one - since I am sure everybody will recognize the results from an old lens at once. If not ...)

Assuming that one has only one old lens  

[Ecar]

9 hours ago, UliWer said:

Better and easier option than a dremel and other manipulative devices is just to switch lens detection off. Liveview will work without complaining, that it "feels" no lens. 

Only on the M240, not on the M10 unfortunately.

[Ecar]

3 hours ago, ianman said:

It seems rather silly as it could also result is some corrections applied to an image which shouldn’t be, it would result in a wrong lens being included in exif. If the only reason is to get the focal length it’s probably better to add the info manually, it’s easy enough.

You are absolutely right in principle. But also consider that the corrections applied in-camera are mild to barely noticeable for most lenses with a focal length of 50mm and above and that, in any event, such corrections reflect some kind of "compromise" value across both aperture and focus ranges. Ideally, you'd usually want a higher level of edge/corner correction for an image taken wide open at infinity than for one taken at f/8 at close range. Yet, that doesn't quite happen on M digital cameras because, unlike other cameras, no such information is passed from the lens to the body. In all instances (including native 6-bit coded Leica lenses), perfect or near-perfect correction would be best achieved by building profiles for several aperture/focus distance combinations and applying these in post-processing.
AFAIC, I use all sorts of vintage lenses and find in-camera lens correction to be rather light-handed in the vast majority of cases, as long as a "nearest match" code is selected. I'm happy to live with that as being able to identify the lens used for a specific picture through its Exif info is indeed particularly useful (to me) when going on a trip with several lenses. On my return, I then batch run LensTagger in LR to overwrite the Exif and show the correct lens identification.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Ecar

[Thury]

5 minutes ago, Ecar said:

You are absolutely right in principle. But also consider that the corrections applied in-camera are mild to barely noticeable for most lenses with a focal length of 50mm and above and that, in any event, such corrections reflect some kind of "compromise" value across both aperture and focus ranges. Ideally, you'd usually want a higher level of edge/corner correction for an image taken wide open at infinity than for one taken at f/8 at close range. Yet, that doesn't quite happen on M digital cameras because, unlike other cameras, no such information is passed from the lens to the body. In all instances (including native 6-bit coded Leica lenses), perfect or near-perfect correction would be best achieved by building profiles for several aperture/focus distance combinations and applying these in post-processing.

From a purely technical point of view, the distance information could be available to the computing part of the Leica M : the rangefinder cam position is directly linked to the distance and independent of the focal length or anything else in fact. One could imagine a sensor or encoder linked to the rangefinder mechanism to retrieve, use and store the distance information. This should work with any rangefinder coupled lens of any brand or age.

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[Ecar]

12 minutes ago, Thury said:

This should work with any rangefinder coupled lens of any brand or age.

Not quite. The focus range varies (whilst all lenses - hopefully - reach infinity, the minimum focus distance is not the same).

[wizard]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb ianman:

It seems rather silly as it could also result is some corrections applied to an image which shouldn’t be, it would result in a wrong lens being included in exif.

There are also LTM lenses which optically fully correspond to their M-mount alternatives, such as the 2/35 asph, the 2/50 v5 and the 1.4/50 pre-asph. Coding them via an adapter will thus not result in a 'wrong lens being included in exif'.

Andy