p.46 #1 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Advice please.
I just had my a7r modified recently and I am now thinking about trading it for an A7 MKII. My reasoning is that I don't own much in the way of problematic M glass. My WATE was good before the mod and good after. I am thinking that the IBIS might give me more benefit than the conversion as I hate to use a tripod. Does this make sense or should I just stay with what I have.
p.46 #2 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
ebookman wrote:
Advice please.
I just had my a7r modified recently and I am now thinking about trading it for an A7 MKII. My reasoning is that I don't own much in the way of problematic M glass. My WATE was good before the mod and good after. I am thinking that the IBIS might give me more benefit than the conversion as I hate to use a tripod. Does this make sense or should I just stay with what I have.
If money isn't an issue (you're not going to get back what you've put in, probably), then by all means go for it. The A7r has higher res and AA-less to begin with compared to the A7/II. I'd say borrow or rent one before making this, IMHO, big decision.
p.46 #3 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
ebookman wrote:
Advice please.
I just had my a7r modified recently and I am now thinking about trading it for an A7 MKII. My reasoning is that I don't own much in the way of problematic M glass. My WATE was good before the mod and good after. I am thinking that the IBIS might give me more benefit than the conversion as I hate to use a tripod. Does this make sense or should I just stay with what I have.
Hi Dale, I am fortunate to have the A7rM, A7II and the A7s. I have now sold all my problematic M glass, and kept a select number. The A7r M is great for the high resolution with wonderful DR. I am still blown away by my prints with the A7r M and WATE. That said, my wife and myself pick up the A7II first, as the improvements in ergonomics and usage far out weigh the increased resolution IMO for 95% of shots. In fact the 24 MP shot without vibration or movement will be sharper that the A7r with some degree of vibration.
I would strongly suggest to borrow or rent one for a week and see what you think
p.46 #4 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Hi Folks,
Goodie packaged just arrived from B&H... the new Voigtlander 15mm Series III. Ran outside and did a quick couple of shots with the A7M. Really nice corners at f8 (very usable at f4.5, but they improve to about f8) and no noticeable color shift at least on blue sky and gray sidewalk.
I'll shoot some this weekend and post on the A7M Flickr group.
p.46 #5 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
My a7 is in the mail to Jersey.
And already I can hear some Elmarit-M 24 calling me, saying, "Forget the tech camera. Remember how much you loved shooting with me? Remember that snow storm in New York? Or that time in SFO at Coppola's restaurant and then walking up to City Lights? We were so good together. Come back to me."
Am I the only one lenses talk to or am I just the only one who listens?
p.46 #8 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
pdmphoto wrote:
Lenses talk! Mine always remind me not to buy any Sony/Zeiss lenses for my A7r.
Yep. As much as I think the Distagon 35 would be fun to own, my Summilux 35 (that speaks in Bruno Ganz's voice) laughs and asks, "Do you really think you're ever going to pick up that monstrosity over me?"
p.46 #10 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
After a greater than 2 month wait, I've received my a7 back from KolariVision. I sent a ZM 50 Planar with calibrated/shimmed adapter for exact infinity focus on my Sony E camera. While close, all of my lenses now focused past infinity enough to re-calibrate/shim the adapters. Image quality degrades fast if the lens focuses past infinity. I'm OK with this, as I am sure it is a complicated mod and we are dealing with exacting tolerances and Kolari is offering a unique service. Just be aware of the possibility you may need to re-adjust your adapted lenses for infinity.
My ZM 25 is the main reason I ordered this camera mod, and it has indeed lost most of the corner color cast at infinity. Sharpness has increased moderately. The field curvature is still there and focusing back a bit is required to get sharp corners. (and can be done without compromising the center frame) Examples to follow.
25mm is wide enough for me, and I suppose the contenders are the M 24 Elmar, or going mainstream with the Batis 25.
I can definitely make this work for me, but the modded sensor re-enforces attention to hard stop infinity focus and field curvature to maximize infinity sharpness.
On a closer focus, yes dim light, but this has no corner color correction:
p.46 #11 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
JimBuchanan wrote:
After a greater than 2 month wait, I've received my a7 back from KolariVision. I sent a ZM 50 Planar with calibrated/shimmed adapter for exact infinity focus on my Sony E camera. While close, all of my lenses now focused past infinity enough to re-calibrate/shim the adapters. Image quality degrades fast if the lens focuses past infinity. I'm OK with this, as I am sure it is a complicated mod and we are dealing with exacting tolerances and Kolari is offering a unique service. Just be aware of the possibility you may need to re-adjust your adapted lenses for infinity.
My ZM 25 is the main reason I ordered this camera mod, and it has indeed lost most of the corner color cast at infinity. Sharpness has increased moderately. The field curvature is still there and focusing back a bit is required to get sharp corners. (and can be done without compromising the center frame) Examples to follow.
25mm is wide enough for me, and I suppose the contenders are the M 24 Elmar, or going mainstream with the Batis 25.
I can definitely make this work for me, but the modded sensor re-enforces attention to hard stop infinity focus and field curvature to maximize infinity sharpness.
Congrats. My A7s was stuck at Kolari for 1 month while waiting for the new weather-resistant glass. What I noticed on my Elmar 24 is that with Leica Wide, the color cast seems to be more pronounced compared to the equivalent Zeiss lens. However, the corner sharpness of the modern Elmar line is phenomenal at WO. I guess because they were designed for digital M. I didn't need to compensate for field curvature at all.
Also interesting about the infinity calibration. So what you mean is that even by sending in your ZM 50 and adapter combo, it still focuses past infinity?
p.46 #12 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Jim, what adapter did you send them with your ZM50?
I do have a change of heart regarding adapters; one for each lens and shimmed or hard stopped (Hawk's) for ∞
Perhaps because I am trimming my lens line up, but it's much convenient to have each lens 'aligned' and ready for shooting.
Sunrise over Mitchell, OR (with B+W Kaesemann CPL @ f/8)
p.46 #13 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
hiepphotog wrote:
Congrats. My A7s was stuck at Kolari for 1 month while waiting for the new weather-resistant glass. What I noticed on my Elmar 24 is that with Leica Wide, the color cast seems to be more pronounced compared to the equivalent Zeiss lens. However, the corner sharpness of the modern Elmar line is phenomenal at WO. I guess because they were designed for digital M. I didn't need to compensate for field curvature at all.
Also interesting about the infinity calibration. So what you mean is that even by sending in your ZM 50 and adapter combo, it still focuses past infinity?...Show more →
As I speculated, maybe a 24mm Elmar will be competitive with the ZM25. I like the non field curvature part ...
Yes, I sent the ZM Planar and a very accurate adapter, and it still focuses past infinity, by a small amount. I had conversations regarding my goal of having the modded camera focus register be the same as before mod. That way my M lenses and native lenses would be effectively the same as before. Maybe .003"-.004" is their error tolerance, or they go by "it's better to over focus than under focus infinity", I don't know. Again, it is what it is and the significant event here is the improved image quality of short register lenses. I have a good precise procedure for shimming adapters, so that helps me to maximize the infinity performance.
I also like the idea of having an adapter for each lens. I have been using the Metabones M to E adapters. They have a tab spring versus the split metal ears common to the cheaper Chinese adapters. I always make sure the threads on each side are in good shape and I mic the thickness all around to make sure it is consistent.
Nice shot with the SEM 21. Any LR FF plugins used for the corners?
I may have to rent the M 24 Elmar to compare with the ZM25.
p.46 #14 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
ebookman wrote:
Advice please.
I just had my a7r modified recently and I am now thinking about trading it for an A7 MKII. My reasoning is that I don't own much in the way of problematic M glass. My WATE was good before the mod and good after. I am thinking that the IBIS might give me more benefit than the conversion as I hate to use a tripod. Does this make sense or should I just stay with what I have.
I would stay in a holding pattern until we know what the totally new A7RII sensor does. It's possible that backlit sensor may do really really well with film glass in general, and the M wides as well.
In fact, the cat's meow may by a backlit A7(3) which may not be long in coming.
p.46 #15 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Not to knock the a7rII, which looks fantastic, but I don't understand the optimism around the BSI aspect of the sensor design and performance with problem lenses. Is the thinking that they've also thinned the filter stack?
p.46 #16 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Yes, understandable wishful thinking, IMHO. I would be VERY surprised if Sony had changed the filter stack thickness at all. My realistic bet is that, regarding smeared corners, the A7rII will have exactly the same behaviour with RF wides of the other A7x cameras. If any, it will seem a bit worse by comparison, because of the increase in Mpix.
Concerning vigneting/color cast in the corners, probably the BSi will help to reduce it to some extent but the higher pixel density is a negative factor to consider. Remember that the A7r is clearly worse than the A7 in that aspect.
Jun 16, 2015 at 03:46 AM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.46 #17 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
freaklikeme wrote:
Not to knock the a7rII, which looks fantastic, but I don't understand the optimism around the BSI aspect of the sensor design and performance with problem lenses. Is the thinking that they've also thinned the filter stack?
I don't think they will have thinned the filter stack, but the BSI sensor will have shallower light well to collect the light and that should translate into less colour cast and perhaps better resolution especially in the corners.
p.46 #18 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Actually, thinking about it, BSI might help with reducing vignette. However, one of BSI's past problems is the color cross-talk due to shallow well depth. So the color cast could even be worse since this is a cross-talk problem. As for edge/corner smearing, I don't expect to see any real improvement if the glass thickness remains the same. The light is focused to the back of the sensor in these problematic areas. If anything, shifting the diode forward would cause more problem, but the amount of shifting is in microns I imagine so not a big deal. Sensel's size has minimal effect on smearing; that is, comparing the A7r to the A7s, smearing is almost similar.
p.46 #19 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Folks,
Added two test shots with the Voigtlander 15mm Series III on the A7M to the Flickr A7M group. No artistic merit... just shot off the 8th floor balcony of my office in San Francisco. First at f4.5 (wide open) and the second at f8.0.
Focus was on the grey building at the center of the image. Processed in Lightroom with minor adjustments to exposure and color balance. Reduced to 3000x2000 for convenience.
A little bit of CA is visible (not corrected here) and some obvious miore on the windows with the horizontal slat shades to the left of the center of the image.
Sky color might be a little magenta, but it's quite even so I think that's primarily a color balance issue (I did this quickly by white balancing on the white paint on the building) more than color shift in the corners. Maybe a tiny bit, but certainly not bad. There is some apparent 'banding' in the sky when viewing the .jpg on the notebook I'm working on right now (not the greatest screen)... if anyone has a wide gamut display, let me know if you still see that. I don't see the banding in Lightroom 6, even when soft-proofing in sRGB...
Overall, I'm really pleased with the performance of this lens. They really addressed the issues with the Series II version. It's a keeper for me.
p.46 #20 · A thinner sensor stack may be possible after all!
Michael - yes, I bought one too but I've only used it on my M240. I also have the previous version. The biggest difference I see is zero color shift and it has somewhat better distortion correction. As a results it's very slightly less wide than the previous version. Otherwise, color, contrast, tonality seems similar. It has a fair amount of CA, like the previous one. My finding is central sharpness peaks at f/8 while f/11 improves the outer 1/3 and overall looks a touch better. I haven't tested this carefully, but wonder if it has a bit of field curvature and if focusing on the edges might improve average across-frame performance further, though possibly at a slight cost of central sharpness.
Overall I think it's a really good lens, but am not quite impressed enough with edge performance to be really excited about it. But it's an UWA and at this focal length there is almost always some degree of image content stretching at the extreme edges.
