Micro 4/3 and C mount or D mount lenses.

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super8man
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Micro 4/3 and C mount or D mount lenses.

Post by super8man »

Is anyone using a micro 4/3rds camera system and making use of the C mount adapters? Has anyone had luck mounting D mount lenses?

I have a half dozen Canon bayonet mount 8mm lenses and happen to have a few Canon-to-D-Mount conversion rings (talk about rare). When I used a d-c conversion ring and mounted the that on the c-m4/3 adapter, I had blurry focus.

So, anyone experimenting keeping the old movie camera lenses in use in the digital format?

Cheers,
Mike
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aj
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Re: Micro 4/3 and C mount or D mount lenses.

Post by aj »

The focal lenghts are a bit short to use them for still photography (or video filming)
And are these 50 years lenses up to lighting HD sensors?

I have a few Angénieux and Nikkor Ciné D-mount lenses which I bought because the design looks so nice :)
The sharp image is formed so close to the flange that it is impossible to mount it in a C-mount and get sharp images at infinity.
The C flange is out way too far. In the D at infinity there would be no room for the shutter.

It would work on a 4/3 camera only when you have an adapter with a cup to bring the lens the close enough. And can it then light the full sensor?

Modern lenses, despite their plastic mounts, often enough have aspheric ED glasses and win hands-down.
The trouble of course is when using these modern short focal length DX lenses to control the aperture and focus by hand.
This is hardly foreseen as proper usage and the rims and grips for that are very spartan. Closing the aperture is only possible with a proper inside actuator. Use the original Nikon F-C adapter.

Nowadays there is an incredible flood of lens-mount-adapters. So many suppliers showed their capabilities at the photokina in Köln
Check eBay and see what is available to the consumer. In the past a Hasselblad to Nikon could easily take Euro 200.
Now they are barely over 40. Enlarger lens reversing adapters at Euro 20 etcetc.
Kind regards,

André
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cameratech
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Re: Micro 4/3 and C mount or D mount lenses.

Post by cameratech »

Plenty of people messing around with C mounts on MFT cameras, can't imagine another reason why they go for hundreds of dollars on ebay. Endless shots of flowers and tree trunks with swirly out of focus backgrounds if you search the forums. I don't think D mounts are as popular, too much vignetting I guess, although they've gone up in price too lately. The wide angles barely cover a Standard 8 frame so they'd vignette severely, the 36/38mm telephotos nearly cover a Standard 16mm frame, the occasional longer focal length you might find cover even more. A D mount would need to sit around 7mm inside the MFT mount to properly reach infinity.

This German site did an interesting comparison of some D mount lenses using a Pentax Q:
http://www.filmkorn.org/d-mount-objektive-im-vergleich/

I've got a pretty decent collection of D mounts myself, haven't bothered using them on anything but 8mm cameras, but I manufactured a mount for my lens projector at work to properly check them out. The best of them easily resolve 200 line pairs/mm in the centre with decent contrast, which far exceeds even HD sensors. Top of the bunch would be certain ones made by Kern, Taylor Hobson, Angenieux, Schneider Kreuznach and occasionally Som Berthiot or Elgeet. I haven't got the Canon bayonet ones to test, but I reckon they'd be pretty sweet. I've got some very early (pre WWII) ones by Zeiss Jena in a bayonet mount for an 8mm Zeiss Ikon camera that are really exceptional, even though they're uncoated. The post-war Zeiss Jena (East German) lenses for the 8mm Pentaflex (another proprietary bayonet mount) are also among the best I've come across. All time favourite is probably the Kern f/0.9 13mm.

Because they are such short focal lengths and so tiny, mechanical issues like play in the focus threads or a slightly off-centre alignment of the elements can really degrade the image quality, especially at wide apertures. At least half of my D mounts have some sort of issue like that, or coating damage that plays havoc with contrast. And because there was no need for the manufacturers to correct aberrations outside of an 8mm frame image circle, they will generally fall off pretty badly at the edges if used with a larger sensor digital camera.
Dom Jaeger
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BAC
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Re: Micro 4/3 and C mount or D mount lenses.

Post by BAC »

I tried to make something work for my Olympus EM-5 using a m43 to C mount adapter and a C to D mount adapter. Getting that close to the sensor made me nervous and the C mount to D mount adapter wouldn't seat the lens properly against the M43 to C mount adapter. I wanted to use this just to asses the condition of my lenses, not for taking good photos. I was never able to find a M43 to D mount adapter. There are plenty of adapters for D mount to Pentx Q which I believe has a smaller sensor than M43.
super8man
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Re: Micro 4/3 and C mount or D mount lenses.

Post by super8man »

Thanks for the replies. I discovered pretty much what all of you have stated. Well, so much for my plan of using those old Canon lenses. They may still fetch a decent price on ebay should I go that route.

Otherwise, I am quite enjoying the cameras and in particular the Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8 is a very good performer.

Cheers,
Mike
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http://super8man.filmshooting.com/
testwrench
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Re: Micro 4/3 and C mount or D mount lenses.

Post by testwrench »

Hello Mr. Nyberg,
I'm a longtime fan of your webpage. Some great information there and I refrence it often.
While doing a web search for a Canon D mount coupler your thread came up. Would you possibly be willing to sell me one of your D mount couplers ? As you said they are very hard to find.
Thank you very much,
Doug.
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