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As an amateur photo enthusiast, I have been struggling in getting better cameras and lenses within budget for many years. Fortunately to me, this money-burning and time-consuming practice has somehow satisfied my exploring curiosity as a technical man and improved my photography skills. I believe many people in this forum have the same situation like me.
Like many others, at the beginning, I tried to adapt different types of 3rd party lenses to GFX since I got a second-handed 50s last year. Recently I switched to a new 100S, I of course will continue to do so. My practice involved 35mm full frame lenses, enlarging lenses, industrial line scan lenses, movie projection lenses, and traditional medium format as well as some large format lenses. I know there are shortcomings with all of these adaptions, but this cannot stop me doing so, because I choose to focus on the better part and ignore the worse, and I am not intending to make professional prints for business, and I am not a photography criticizer either.
Almost all of the 35mm full frame lenses I used are vintage manual focus ones, except Tamron 15-30, 45, 85 are relatively modern glasses, even with which GFX will produce images with obvious CA, “soft” extreme corners and some distortion. The older manual lenses may suffer more. After studying a lot on internet, I think many lenses I tried are “usable” to me (note: generally, no dark corner, need no crop when wide open at close distance or small aperture f8 or f11 at distance to infinity; or need some crop if it is a very characteristic lens. Of course, post-process is necessary for geometry correction and detail enhancement). My “usable” lists include (please be noted this is not a serious test result):
1)Many of my Minolta MC Rokkors and MDs, I especially like MC28/2 (approx. 12% crop for infinity with smaller aperture, no need crop for wide open at closeup), MC 35/1.8 (almost no crop needed), MC 55/1.7 (no crop), MC 58/1.4 (no crop), MC 58/1.2 gen#1 (close distance with large aperture is fine but need 2:3 crop mode for smaller aperture at infinity. But be aware 58/1.2 later version has smaller image circle than early one), and MD45, MD50/2, MD 50 macro. And of course, all Minolta lenses at longer focal length I have.
2)Olympus OM Zuikos: I tested 55/1.2, it works fine, cover the sensor better than Minolta 58 PG, infinity under small aperture need no crop, 50/1.8 may also fine, and I found OM ZUIKO 24/2.8 cover the sensor also (need massive post processing work), other OMs not tested.
3)Nikkors: I found ais 25-50f4 are fine from 35-50, and of course the legendary Nikkor H.C AUTO 50/2 almost ranked No.1 with regard to coverage and corner sharpness among all the vintage manual focus 35mm full frame 50mms I tested.
4)Leica R: I only tested R50/2 and 60/2.8 macro, I think they are all fine to use.
5)Contax Carl Zeiss CY: I have 85/1.4, 120/4 macro bellow lens, and a 135/2.8 as well as 180/2.8 sonnar, they are all good with GFX.
6)SMC Takumar 50/1.4, maybe need some minor crop.
7)Rangefinder lenses: Cannon LTM 85/1.9, I have to say this lens is quite different than others, it works the best with large aperture (no vignette from close to infinity), but become worse when stopping down to F8 or smaller, which make it quite an old-fashioned portrait lens for GFX??
8) 35mm/70mm Movie projection lenses, I was quite obsessed with those golden barrel Schneider Super Cinelux MC f2 lenses, and I have tested 80/2 (with simple adding a focusing helicoid, and 120/2 (with full precise modification including adding aperture and focusing ring), they all work great with GFX, I also bought 65/2 and 70/2, but I have not tested yet. I heard that 65mm is the shortest focal length of this series which may cover 4433 sensors.
Come to medium format, I have several ordinary Hasselblad CF lenses such as 40/4, 80/2.8, 120/4 macro, I like the last two, my copy of 40/4 CF has no sharp edge! For GFX, I recollected some Pentax 67 lenses including 55/4, 55-100 Zoom. I use them with a China-made technical view camera gear, can produce very good result. 55-100 Zoom have larger image circle than the prime, and I cannot tell the difference about sharpness between them. With these two lenses, I can stitch shifted images up to approx. 1.2 -1.5mega pixels pictures with 50S.
I have posted most of the sample images for above-mentioned lenses before.
I also have some enlarger lenses, such as Rodenstock Rodagon WA 60/4, Apo-Rodagon-N 80/4 and 120/4, they all support film size more than 60mm*70mm under recommended enlarging scale (2x to 15X), so their image circles at infinity are also quite sufficient for 4433 sensors, I haven’t tried shifting capability for them. I have also collected Schneider enlarging/industrial (mix-used) lens such as HM APO 60/4, and an apo-digitar 80/5.6, as well as an apo companon 90/4.5, and apo 120/5.9, they all work fine, especially HM 60/4 and 90/4.5.
Since very reasonable-priced industrial lenses are widely available in China online market, I also dug very hard into this section. I soon found Schneider Xenon E 50/2.2 is almost perfectly fit the GFX (very minus viginette under all aperture, and almost no distortion! CA is also very well controlled), although it was designed for full frame sensor. Almost same case comes to a LINOS Inpec.X M 50/1.4 (none NIR version), which is even better cover the sensor but with significant distortion. And other industrial line scan lenses such Pentax 35/2.8 and 50/2.8, these are deadly cheap, but cover the sensor very well, and again no visible distortion! Image circles of these four lenses are all 43mm, but I think they work very fine with GFX, resolution of the last two may not be good enough, but the first two are definitely my favorite!
Industrial lenses are almost all good at close up photography, but with careful selection (choose those with small optimized magnification ratio), you may find some of them also good at distance to infinity, such as LINOS Inspec.X L 120/5.6 float (minimum magnification is 0.07X, image circle is 83mm), another industrial beast-Schneider Sapphire 96/3.5 (magnification is 0.3X) is only better for close-distance photography. I have both! I believe these glasses are the modern top quality with digital sensor!
I also tried some large format lenses, such as Rodenstock Apo Sironar digital 55/4.5, and Apo Sironar digital 120/5.6 macro. The later can shift a lot, I am able to stitch a 2.3 mega pixels image with 50S, almost equal to a 35mm-40mm view angle. Unfortunately, the 55 digital cannot be shifted with GFX due to its large rear element.
End of the story, and excuse for my English if there is any mistake or confusion!
Edited on Dec 05, 2023 at 07:54 PM · View previous versions
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