johnvanr
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 p.2 #15 · Best non M camera for M-mount lenses | |
Steve Spencer wrote:
I have also settled on using Canon with the Shoten adapter for M lenses. The Canon focus aids are very nice. I slightly prefer them to the focus aids for Nikon, but I haven't used the most recent Nikon cameras. I think the Nikon focus aids are also excellent. I think as you consider a non-Leica M camera for M lenses whether you want focus aids is a potentially important question. If you want focus aids, then Canon and Nikon have them and Sony and the Leica SL system do not.
A second important question is the sensor cover glass. You can get the cover glass replaed to match the thickness of a Leica M camera on pretty much any camera. This will allow almost all Leica M lenses to work properly with your camera without field curvature and astigmatism particularly in the edges and corners degrading performance of the lenses. That will be an issue with a lot of Leica M lenses if you don't replace the cover glass. This change in performance may or may not matter to the individual photographer. It will be worse the shorter the exit pupil for the lens and the wider the aperture being used. For some lenses the field curvature and astigmatism issues will be so small to basically not matter, for other lenses it will be a problem for at least some photographers.
A third and related question is the design of the sensor and color issues. Back side illuminated sensors have very little issues with false color patterns across the sensor, but front side illuminated sensors tend to have the Italian flag pattern for some lenses. This can be corrected in post, often with a plug-in in your RAW processor, but can be a potential issue. If you replace the cover glass you will also need to tweak auto white balance as it will be a bit off. Fred has a thread for how to do that for Sony cameras, but it will likely require some fiddling no matter what camera you use.
Finally, a fourth question is do you want to use M like lenses designed for the native mount of the camera. Juha, in particular, but many other people including myself, prefer these lenses to adapted M mount lenses. There are simply more of these lenses for Sony, almost as many for Nikon, only a few for Canon, and none with electronic contacts for Leica L mount (and in fact with Leica L mount, you are typically better off with adapted M lenses than using a L mount manual focus lens).
So, if you want the best camera for using M lenses, I think you want to start by asking yourself these three questions.
Do you want the focus aids that utilize the AF system of the camera? If so, then only Nikon and Canon have them.
Do you want to modify the sensor cover glass thickness? Doing so allows more lenses to work well with the camera, but may affect how well some native lenses work with the camera and you will have to fiddle with white balance.
Do you want to avoid color issues? If that is of central concern, then make sure you get a camera with a back side illuminated sensor and you may want to avoid replacing the cover glass. Replacing the cover glass allows a lot more lenses to work without unwanted field curvature or astigmatism, but it does take more work to get color right.
Do you want to use M like lenses in the native mount of the camera? If you like these sort of lenses, then you likely won't want to modify your sensor and Sony and Nikon but especially Sony offers more options for these type of lenses.
Personally, I went with the Canon R5 II because I want focus aids, and I really like the Canon focus aids. This camera has a BSI sensor so it avoids the color issues of other Canon front side illuminated sensor cameras. It also is a moderately sized camera (740g in weight) with a very robust AF system for the focus aids, and a very fast sensor scan speed for using an electronic shutter. I can create a really great set of lenses for the camera even though it only has a few native M like lenses (my most used lens is a native mount Voigtlander 40 f/1.2 that performs a lot like the Voigtlander 40 f/1.2 made for Leica M does on a Leica M camera). There are some lenses I could and would use on other systems (e.g., the Voigtlander 28 f/1.5) that aren't available for Canon and suffer too much field curvature for my tastes when adapted as Leica M mount lenses. No solution is without tradeoffs, but hopefully the questions I identified will help people decide how to build the best camera sysyem for them.
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Very good overview. In my case, the R5 gives the cleanest images among my Canon bodies, but I prefer the R8 for its smallness. Still figuring out which lenses I can safely use with it.
And like Steve, I sold my Voigtlander 40/1.2 in M mount but just bought another copy for the RF mount. I also have adapters from M to Fuji X and GFX, but haven’t played much with those combos.
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