The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

thrice
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p.3 #1 · p.3 #1 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

Or focused as fast.

envydd wrote:
The 55 is hard to beat

wish it was the same weight as the 45.....

Feb 16, 2024 at 06:58 AM

olegkin
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p.3 #2 · p.3 #2 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

thrice wrote:
I went to Japan with the 23, 55 and 110. Almost all photos were taken with the 55. It's the most versatile focal length and it's so impressive at f/1.7 I regret packing my tripod other than for deliberate long exposures.

I also have the 45 and it is also amazing but it just sits in the cabinet these days 😔

It is hard to put gf55 down, but I needed a wider angle, put gf45 on, and now gf55 is in the storage for a month. A magic spell is broken

till I need to shoot only portraits again. For everyday stuff gf30/gf45 (in my case) are better lens most of the time.

Feb 16, 2024 at 10:31 AM

_Refraction
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p.3 #3 · p.3 #3 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

thrice wrote:
Or focused as fast.

Does your 45 focus more quickly than your 55? I haven't done a rigorous test, but my impression has been that, on the 100 II at least, my 55 is slightly faster than my 45 in continuous AF - not distinguishable for me in single AF. By slightly I really mean a very small speed difference...not sufficiently faster to make a real difference for anything I do. Neither is what I'd call fast. Would be interested to hear if it's the other way around for you.

Feb 16, 2024 at 11:47 AM

thrice
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p.3 #4 · p.3 #4 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

Definitely faster on the 100S. Fujifilm put some magic sauce in the 100II for non-linear-motor AF.

_Refraction wrote:
Does your 45 focus more quickly than your 55? I haven't done a rigorous test, but my impression has been that, on the 100 II at least, my 55 is slightly faster than my 45 in continuous AF - not distinguishable for me in single AF. By slightly I really mean a very small speed difference...not sufficiently faster to make a real difference for anything I do. Neither is what I'd call fast. Would be interested to hear if it's the other way around for you.

Feb 17, 2024 at 07:16 AM

speedgraphic
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p.3 #5 · p.3 #5 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

It may seem silly but I'm having a bit of a crisis on confidence in the 100S purchase. I almost think I should just get a Nikon ZF which is a bit more affordable and has similar, though lower resolution, pixel shift capabilities.

Feb 17, 2024 at 09:31 AM

Peter Figen
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p.3 #6 · p.3 #6 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

speedgraphic wrote:
It may seem silly but I'm having a bit of a crisis on confidence in the 100S purchase. I almost think I should just get a Nikon ZF which is a bit more affordable and has similar, though lower resolution, pixel shift capabilities.

I think you're fixating on the wrong things here. Forget about the pixel shifting and instead, buy a great macro - either the Pentax, Mamiya or the Contax and use the full frame whenever possible and you won't need the pixel shift. I bought my Contax 120mm macro from Sean's Camera West in Palm Springs (I knew Sean from when he had a shop in Monterey) for only $800 and the Fringer adapter for another $700 making it $1500 for one kick ass 1:1 macro. And if you do want to try pixel shifting, you certainly can but it also adds multiple steps to each frame you use it on and there's a good chance that it will not be successful if even one frame is not perfect and on top of that you need a whole 'nuther software package to process those into dng's and then process those into usable tiffs. And having done camera scans of 35mm and 6x7 frames using as much of the GFX frame as possible, with the best lenses available, I can say with a high degree of certainty, because I've compared these to my own drum scanner, that there is precious little difference. The 35mm copies using the full frame are damned close to scanning at 8000 dpi on the Howtek and the 6x7 cm frames using the full GFX format are very very close to scanning those on the drum scanner at 4000 dpi.

You keep talking about backing off and using the center of a lesser lens using pixel shift to make up the difference. The main reason that won't work, and there are actually more than one, is that that resolution, even if it works as advertised on the sensor, would likely be far greater than that lens is capable of, and secondly, you're working at a distance that the lens is not optimized for, further diminishing your potential resolution.

If I were in your decision predicament, I'd probably rent the camera for a couple of weeks, but I don't really know what you'd do about renting a quality macro as you'd probably only find the 1:2 ratio Fuji macro, which would not be a good pick for you.

Feb 17, 2024 at 01:00 PM

mjm6
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p.3 #7 · p.3 #7 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

Peter Figen wrote:
I think you're fixating on the wrong things here. Forget about the pixel shifting and instead, buy a great macro - either the Pentax, Mamiya or the Contax and use the full frame whenever possible and you won't need the pixel shift.

Peter, I totally agree with you with one exception… he mentioned copying the 35mm frames, which does require beyond 1:1. I have never seen any discussion of the performance of any of these with an extension ring added to it so I don’t know if that recommendation will hold that far past the minimum focus distance of the really excellent 645 macro lenses. Have you tested the Contax out there?

Feb 18, 2024 at 10:00 AM

Peter Figen
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p.3 #8 · p.3 #8 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

mjm6 wrote:
Peter, I totally agree with you with one exception… he mentioned copying the 35mm frames, which does require beyond 1:1. I have never seen any discussion of the performance of any of these with an extension ring added to it so I don’t know if that recommendation will hold that far past the minimum focus distance of the really excellent 645 macro lenses. Have you tested the Contax out there?

He specifically talked about using the pixel shift feature to make up for the lack of close focusing in whatever lens he was using and only using the center part of that lens to overcome any peripheral shortcomings in said lens performance.

Adding an extension tube to any lens with internal floating elements will degrade the performance but it really matters where the lens is actually focused to (on its distance scale) with the tube in place. For instance, if you add a short extension tube and the lens is focused at minimum focusing distance, the results will be considerably better than if you use the same tube and the lens is focused closer to infinity, but the tube in either case will degrade image quality to one degree or another.

I have not tried any tubes on the Contax, mostly because I don't have any and because I already have the Rodenstock for going closer than 1:1, but I have used moderate extensions with the Canon 135mm t/s-e at minimum focus, which worked fairly well on a Canon 5DSR, adding an amount of blue color fringing that was fully correctable in Capture One.

I have also added tubes to the Zeiss Milvus 100mm f/2 Makro, with which the results were rather disappointing despite the Zeiss west coast rep's claim to the contrary. I didn't understand at the time just how critical the positioning of the floating element or groups can be and anything that takes those groups away from being in their optimal position for whatever distance you're shooting at will degrade the image. With some image this won't matter so much and with others it's unacceptable.

It also makes me remember the instruction booklet for the fabulous Mamiya RZ 65mm f/4 with the manually set floating element where they said that if you were focusing closer than the closest markings on the floating element ring, to just set it at the minimum focus, which worked pretty well in that lens.

And of course, you're absolutely right about needed greater than 1:1 to copy 35mm and use more or less the full GFX frame, so maybe one of those macro lenses that goes natively to twice life size might be a good choice as well.

Feb 18, 2024 at 10:25 AM

gclipper
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p.3 #9 · p.3 #9 · The One GF Lens to Rule Them All?

I recommend Sigma 70mm ART via an adapter.

Mar 03, 2024 at 09:54 AM

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