Kipon adaptor dilemma

[David Kilpatrick]

I have just ordered a Kipon M42 tilt adaptor for NEX with reservations. Kipon does not make a tilt adaptor yet for MD lenses, only for M42, C/Y, Leica R and Nikon. To buy any bayonet adaptor limits you to either that bayonet, or what can be adapted to it. M42 can be fitted to Leica R, but not so easily to C/Y and not with infinity focus to Nikon. Nor can MD, or M-AF, or many other useful lenses be adapted to these mounts.

At the moment, I can fit M42 to the NEX straight and simple using an M42 on either the Sony AF adaptor, or my MD adaptor. But in the end, I decided there was no way I was planning to fork out £500+ for a Contax or Leica lens of the type I want, or £300 on a Nikon of probably much lower quality.

The problem with the M42 tilt adaptor is that ONLY M42 will ever fit it. You almost can't adapt any other mount to M42. And there are very few decent lenses with specifications like 17mm f/4 or 20mm f/2.8 to be found in M42 thread. But I've found a 30mm Pentacon (aka Lydith) late model 30mm f/3.5 with the manual aperture ring, ideal for this use, for £25 inc post and after testing this on a plain adaptor I am surprised. I owned a Lydith in 1968-70 and it was pretty awful, but this one is more than acceptable.

What I have found is that ALL lenses of any worth, and many which are mediocre, have increased in value vastly in the last year. Lenses which could not be given away now command £100+ and good glass is likely to fetch many hundreds, when it was once worth maybe around the £100-200 mark. Certain systems' lenses are vastly overpriced, others remain underpriced. If you want a superb long lens, think Mamiya 645 or even Hasselblad as all medium format lenses are currently underpriced. I wonder what will happen to change that, suddenly?

David

[pakodominguez]

I have just ordered a Kipon M42 tilt adaptor for NEX with reservations. Kipon does not make a tilt adaptor yet for MD lenses, only for M42, C/Y, Leica R and Nikon. To buy any bayonet adaptor limits you to either that bayonet, or what can be adapted to it. M42 can be fitted to Leica R, but not so easily to C/Y and not with infinity focus to Nikon. Nor can MD, or M-AF, or many other useful lenses be adapted to these mounts.

Same situation with the new Lensbaby tilt composer, only for Nikon lenses; I won't buy it until they "rectified" and offer it for MD mount, I don't have any Nikon lens (i can borrow from my brother if needed) and I don't want to buy any Nikon lens, I have a battery of Minolta MD lenses and a battery of Minolta/Sony A mount lenses and that's enough. If Kipon or somebody else bring it first, I'll go for it and forget about the Composer Tilt -also because it is 1/3 the price of the Lensbaby...

The problem with the M42 tilt adaptor is that ONLY M42 will ever fit it. You almost can't adapt any other mount to M42. And there are very few decent lenses with specifications like 17mm f/4 or 20mm f/2.8 to be found in M42 thread. But I've found a 30mm Pentacon (aka Lydith) late model 30mm f/3.5 with the manual aperture ring,

In that case, buy a tilt adapter for Pentacon (I saw a couple on ebay yesterday...) on NEX and A-mounts and you'll have two solutions...

What I have found is that ALL lenses of any worth, and many which are mediocre, have increased in value vastly in the last year. Lenses which could not be given away now command £100+ and good glass is likely to fetch many hundreds, when it was once worth maybe around the £100-200 mark. Certain systems' lenses are vastly overpriced, others remain underpriced. If you want a superb long lens, think Mamiya 645 or even Hasselblad as all medium format lenses are currently underpriced. I wonder what will happen to change that, suddenly?

David

Film is dead... No; it is not dead, but it is not commercial anymore. Do you remember I told you about the Arca Swiss I bought a couple of moths ago? clean, with a Fujinon 210 f5.6 for 400 US$! I spent more money on the Fuji instant film holder -well, I got some free film and a free preloaded film holder... and this holder was because the REP told me that Fuji haven't decide yet if they will produce this film next year!

So, anything that can be adapted to a digital body easily will increase in value. The rest will die. Do you want to hear a sad history: I sold my XPan system (body + 30mm; 45mm and 90mm) for this very reason, about 500 US$ less than I expected, and I was selling already cheap! But no regret: beautiful machinery but no digital future and, if you think that it is hard to get optical printing from regular 35mm film, tell me about a panorama!

My friends are buying Hasselblad 5xx series in perfect condition for "cheap",a s you can see here http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... 794#p45794

I think a couple of emails to Kipon will help them to decide bringing a tilt adapter on MD mount...

[David Kilpatrick]

The Pentacon 30mm is not the 6 x 6cm fisheye one, it is the tiny Meyer Lydith made for Praktica. I do already have the large Pentacon tilt adaptor, and their shift adaptor, coupled from A-mount to Praktisix/Pentacon bayonet. I have a 50mm Flektogon and an 80mm ARSAT (Kiev) which work pretty well on A900.

David

[pakodominguez]

The Pentacon 30mm is not the 6 x 6cm fisheye one, it is the tiny Meyer Lydith made for Praktica. I do already have the large Pentacon tilt adaptor, and their shift adaptor, coupled from A-mount to Praktisix/Pentacon bayonet. I have a 50mm Flektogon and an 80mm ARSAT (Kiev) which work pretty well on A900.

David

so, why don't you just use the Sony adapter, and your existing lenses/adapters?

[David Kilpatrick]

Because I want a 17mm to 20mm tilt lens on NEX, not a 50mm or an 80mm.

David

[pakodominguez]

when do you use, for tilt stuff, a wide angle, a normal or a small tele lens?

[David Kilpatrick]

Tilt is not of much use at with long lenses outdoors. In the studio, it is sometimes used to handle large still life shots combined with drop front to keep verticals straight. To work well, a lens used with tilt must have a larger circle of coverage or the tilt must rotate around the rear nodal point. That means a lens like your Fujinon on the Arca Swiss is OK, but a tele zoom on a DSLR would not work even if you could tilt it. The image would darken and move off the sensor area before you got the right degree of tilt.

With a normal lens view (such as the 50 and 80mm on full frame) tilt is practical enough, and can be used for zone focusing (defocus) effects as well as Schiempflug plane of focus alignment (such as making the entire top of a table be the plane of focus, with the camera aiming down at an angle).

With a wide-angle, a retrofocus design may be very effective for tilt, as the rear node is often in the same position as a standard lens. The tilt adaptor must try to keep the lens axis centered on the sensor. A small amount of tilt can enable a wide-angle to have depth of field from a few cm to infinity, even wide open at f/4 or f/2.8. It also exaggerates the wide effect.

With the NEX I am most interested in field shots using wide to standard lenses.

Ideally, I would like a tilt-shift adaptor but nothing has been developed yet.

David

[Kenneth Sky]

This thread raises the question, "Why does an advanced amateur ( or better ) with other cameras want to buy this camera?". I, for one, would not want to put this camera on a tripod with T/S lens and fart around with the Schlumfug effect. I bought this camera to be my "carry anywhere" unit to grab shots that I would otherwise miss. If I want to use a special effects lens or a big lens, I use my A900. Am I missing the boat?

[David Kilpatrick]

A bit, there's no reason to use a tripod. Tilt is pretty predictable and once you had set it for a given lens and height above ground and horizon position, you can shoot hand-held without any real worry. I've often used tilt and swing hand-held. It is just a different focus plane and you set it and use it.

Also, for tripod based tilt work you need full live view focusing and the ability to move the focus point round the whole frame. The NEX offers exactly that. With the A900, I have to use the finder to guess (because even the A900 finder is not accurate for manual focus with tilt lenses) then take a shot and track all over it at maximum mag, then fine tune the tilt or of the focus or both - it's a very long process.

With the smaller NEX format and real time 14X live view manual magnified focusing, setting up tilt will be 100% accurate for tripod work, and practical for preset hand held work (once set for a given condition).

I will use the NEX connected to a 7 inch monitor in the studio, mounted next to the camera, like a view camera screen.

David

[Dr. Harout]

A bit, there's no reason to use a tripod. Tilt is pretty predictable and once you had set it for a given lens and height above ground and horizon position, you can shoot hand-held without any real worry. I've often used tilt and swing hand-held. It is just a different focus plane and you set it and use it.

Also, for tripod based tilt work you need full live view focusing and the ability to move the focus point round the whole frame. The NEX offers exactly that. With the A900, I have to use the finder to guess (because even the A900 finder is not accurate for manual focus with tilt lenses) then take a shot and track all over it at maximum mag, then fine tune the tilt or of the focus or both - it's a very long process.

With the smaller NEX format and real time 14X live view manual magnified focusing, setting up tilt will be 100% accurate for tripod work, and practical for preset hand held work (once set for a given condition).

I will use the NEX connected to a 7 inch monitor in the studio, mounted next to the camera, like a view camera screen.

David

So basically that should be even better with SLTs

[KevinBarrett]

So basically that should be even better with SLTs

Except that the SLTs lose light and contrast, and they haven't got all that extra flange distance for adapters.