www.cjo.info
20190628-0057
So yesterday I took out my new Sony A7 Mark II, with another film era lens, the Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f4.5 lens in L39 Leica screw mount.
I had read on the interweb how awful this lens was on digital, so I wasn't expecting much! The problem is that the rear lens element is just millimetres from the sensor. This caused light to hit the sensor at highly oblique angles. This causes no problem with film but it causes strange magenta colour casts towards the periphery of the frame on digital. Vignetting is also strong on this lens when used on digital.
But since I already had the Sony A7, the lens, and a suitable adapter I though it couldn't do any harm to try it out for myself. So it's a complete non-starter, right? Hell no!
I had a blast with this lens which I found to be surprisingly effective. In many situations the peripheral magenta colour cast can be dealt with effectively simply by selectively reducing the saturation of the magenta colour channel, and/or my adding a little green tint to the periphery of the frame. And in situations where that doesn't work you can just convert to mono. Since about 2/3rds of my photos get converted to mono anyway this isn't a big problem for me.
And of course the big advantage of this lens is it's size: even with the adapter it only weighs around 140 grams! Unlike pretty much any other ultra wide-angle lens you really can just slip it into a corner of your camera bag and not notice it at all until you need it. This makes it well worth dealing with it's limitations. Would I buy this lens specifically for use on digital? Perhaps not. But is it worth adapting if you already own one...? Hell yes!
20190628-0057
So yesterday I took out my new Sony A7 Mark II, with another film era lens, the Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f4.5 lens in L39 Leica screw mount.
I had read on the interweb how awful this lens was on digital, so I wasn't expecting much! The problem is that the rear lens element is just millimetres from the sensor. This caused light to hit the sensor at highly oblique angles. This causes no problem with film but it causes strange magenta colour casts towards the periphery of the frame on digital. Vignetting is also strong on this lens when used on digital.
But since I already had the Sony A7, the lens, and a suitable adapter I though it couldn't do any harm to try it out for myself. So it's a complete non-starter, right? Hell no!
I had a blast with this lens which I found to be surprisingly effective. In many situations the peripheral magenta colour cast can be dealt with effectively simply by selectively reducing the saturation of the magenta colour channel, and/or my adding a little green tint to the periphery of the frame. And in situations where that doesn't work you can just convert to mono. Since about 2/3rds of my photos get converted to mono anyway this isn't a big problem for me.
And of course the big advantage of this lens is it's size: even with the adapter it only weighs around 140 grams! Unlike pretty much any other ultra wide-angle lens you really can just slip it into a corner of your camera bag and not notice it at all until you need it. This makes it well worth dealing with it's limitations. Would I buy this lens specifically for use on digital? Perhaps not. But is it worth adapting if you already own one...? Hell yes!