carstenw wrote:
Samuli and David, doesn't RRS or Kirk make a replacement mount for this lens? Samuli, is 400/5.6 enough? You could try the Leica APO Teleconverter, although I guess it is not easy with a Leitax mount... If you need 400/4, look at the Contax N lens, with conversion from Conurus (http://conurus.com/contax). Not cheap, but great.
Unfortunately not...they do for the Nikon 300/4, 100-400 and a couple of 80-200's that suffer from the same problem, but the Leica 180 is probably too small a market to justify building a custom product.
I've been thinking about trying to get the 180 working with an extender, and it would be nice to use the Leica 2x APO extender, but since there's no replacement bayonet mount available for the front of the Leica teleconverter, it would require removing the Leitax and re-installing the Leica mount on the lens each time I wanted to shoot with the Leica extender.
I shoot Nikon, and when I first tried to mount one of the Nikon TC20-III teleconverters, I noticed that although it appears to fit the lens otherwise, Nikon's teleconverters require a small cut-out in one of the lens bayonet flanges so it would take a bit of surgery on the Leitax mount to get them working together.
Has anyone any experience with shooting this lens with a Canon teleconverter?
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Few more photos from Ylinenjärvi, Nokia
...I wonder if this lens on a D800e at a 1:1 crop would show cell phones growing on those trees.
davidrwilliams wrote:
... do you find that your STA-1 tripod mount isn't all that rigid? I find that even after really tightening it to remove the initial flex where it clamps to the lens, that it still tends to flex between the ring and the base plate, which leaves me wondering whether I'll use the ring for much other than as a convenient base for hand-holding.
No personal experience but those who have tried the Burzynski tripod collar tell me it's much more rigid. Burzynski collars are available through isarfoto.com, however their shipping charges to North America are outlandish. Supposedly they have an affiliated store in France with much more reasonable shipping charges. The foot of the Burzynski collars also have Arca-style dovetails so no separate plate is required.
I have a Burzynski Ball Head II, and it is the most solid piece of photography-related engineering I have seen, so I would expect the collar to be similarly good. I guess this is the item:
Good point Carsten. 400/5.6 would be enough, even f/8 would be OK if performance is good enough without closing down. Made me realize I have somewhere Canon 2x mkII...and found it after some searching...it fits Canon Leitaxed 180/2.8APO! Ok trying to shoot some images - the camera + 2x + 180 without lens collar is really unstable, had to use 10s self timer to kill the vibrations, 2s self timer was not enough. Some samples in end of the post.
There must be error in the Burzynski webpage - it says the collar is for 80-200/4 and 100APO and 180/2.8 APO. No way it can fit 80-200/4 and 180/2.8APO: my 80-200 collar is way too big for 180/2.8APO, if these lenses use same lens collar it's design has to be pretty "universal" to fit so range of diameters.
With the Canon 2x MkII it seems performance wide open is decreased slightly and bokeh even more, but at f/8 (=lens f/4) performance seems quite good. All samples I shoot are from 1.5-2m focusing distance.
back bokeh (both 67mm if you need size reference) - wide open - larger
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
fine example of "ninja star" aperture shape as well
I was concerned about this ninja star bokeh when I ordered mine from Germany, but fortunately my copy of the lens doesn't do this. Are the aperture blades different on varying production dates of this lens? Mine is one of the later "v2" models and it's aperture blades never take a position that creates this effect at any aperture stop.
Your images with the lens and the Canon extender look pretty good and could convince me to try the Nikon TC20-III. How's the sharpness across the frame?
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
There must be error in the Burzynski webpage - it says the collar is for 80-200/4 and 100APO and 180/2.8 APO. No way it can fit 80-200/4 and 180/2.8APO: my 80-200 collar is way too big for 180/2.8APO, if these lenses use same lens collar it's design has to be pretty "universal" to fit so range of diameters.
davidrwilliams wrote:
I was concerned about this ninja star bokeh when I ordered mine from Germany, but fortunately my copy of the lens doesn't do this. Are the aperture blades different on varying production dates of this lens? Mine is one of the later "v2" models and it's aperture blades never take a position that creates this effect at any aperture stop.
Your images with the lens and the Canon extender look pretty good and could convince me to try the Nikon TC20-III. How's the sharpness across the frame?
Mine is from 2008, so "v1". The ninjastart shape may have been also used to "break" the sharp edges of bokeh balls - the 180/2.8APO bokeh circles have pretty bright edges?? (or just poor design of aperture...)
I suck at doing test pictures - hope this answers to "sharpness across the frame", shoot lens closed 1 stop down with 2x = f/8 - larger (1458px by 972px
Link to FULL SIZE, don't download if you really don't need it - 3.2MB size: link to JPEG 8 packed full size 3.2mb file
telyt wrote:
The Leica STA-1 fits all three of these lenses.
Yes it seems so - I tried it to 80-200 and it did fit. This might be the reason for "flimsy" build of STA-1. If it would be proper metal one, it could not make the contact to whole lens on such different diameters.
Burzynski collar interests me a lot since this lens seems to shine with Canon 2x MKII, I personally like the rendering better than Canon's 300/2.8L IS never gave to me. Surprisingly also bokeh is fine, with Canon's 2x did always seem to cause bokeh quality to go bad. I'll try to post some outdoor samples, but that may not be possible since I have quite many things to do today and weather also seems unstable.
Leica APO-Elmarit-R 180mm f/2.8 with Canon 2x MkII @ f/8, 1/50s, ISO 100 - larger
Maybe make an offer for the collar to the Polish seller of the APO-Macro-Elmarit? Or you could ask Isarfoto, although they seem to say that there is limited availability and they have none right now.
carstenw wrote:
Maybe make an offer for the collar to the Polish seller of the APO-Macro-Elmarit? Or you could ask Isarfoto, although they seem to say that there is limited availability and they have none right now.
Got STA-1 stable using 300mm lens plate and using proper height piece of rubber between lens and the lens plate, and heavy duty rubber band around the lens and lens plate
I think best alternative for STA-1 is tripod collar for Canon 70-200/4. I think the one I came with Leica 80-200 is made Canon 70-200/4 collar by removing the padding (allowing slightly larger diameter lens to be used with collar). If I get one and DON'T remove the padding it should be correct size for Leica 180/2.8APO. Ordered one from Hong Kong for 10USD, I'll report within ~1 month fron now when the collar gets here.
Day was too busy to take any shots - shame, weather was really nice looking "sun shining after the storm"-type of. So I have to put the samples I shoot in morning from backyard:
Considering this is with 2x converter I'm really pleased to the rendering (about 5m distance) - Leica APO-Elmarit-R 180mm f/2.8 + Canon 2x MkII @ f/8, 1/60s, ISO 100 - larger
Wide open bokeh from ~6 meters, front and back of focus plane, really good (bettet at f/8) - Leica APO-Elmarit-R 180mm f/2.8 + Canon 2x MkII @ f/8, 1/60s, ISO 100 - larger
another difficult bokeh scenario from ~25 meters - Leica APO-Elmarit-R 180mm f/2.8 + Canon 2x MkII @ f/8, 1/60s, ISO 100 - larger
Can't shoot butterflies with this combo (too difficult, maybe with some practice), but I think my search for long lens is over; for all static subject shooting I can do with 2x and Leica 180.
Thanks Carstens, I did not think that tele-extended would be useful, since they used to make lenses more or less suck (Canons) - without your comment about APO extender I would not considered to try the Canon 2x - even when I tried it felt stupid, but it was worth it!
Well, I'm happy that it worked out I have heard before that the 180 APO lenses, and the 280/4 as well, take extenders well. I will try my 180/2 APO one day, although right now I have only the latest 1.4 extender.
By the way, here is an old, similar worst boke scenario shot from my 180/2. I think these two lenses are quite similar in the rendering.
Samuli, glad you are enjoying your 180/2.8 APO. I am interested in what you come up with for a tripod mount for it. I have been enjoying my 180/2.8 APO and 2x APO extender for awhile now as my long lens solution when I don't want or need to carry the 500L. My Contax N 70-200 zoom is not bad either and I use that a lot too although it is not quite as sharp as the 180 APO but not much is.
Though, I think it is sacrilege putting on a Canon 2x extender on a fine Leica 180 APO.
wayne seltzer wrote:
Samuli, glad you are enjoying your 180/2.8 APO. I am interested in what you come up with for a tripod mount for it.
Answer you don't want to hear (I tried many and this worked best for vibration reduction - naturally this is TEMPORARY solution): Eraser taped to long Arca-Swiss rail
wayne seltzer wrote:
Though, I think it is sacrilege putting on a Canon 2x extender on a fine Leica 180 APO.
I was quite suspicious of putting anything made by Canon to optical path
davidrwilliams wrote:
The IQ of the 180/Extender is pretty good at f/5.6 (effective) and shows a modest improvement in IQ moving by f/8 with a bit lower contrast but a hair more depth of field by f/11, with all apertures producing roughly equal sharpness across the frame and good micro contrast in the plane of focus.
Sounds like Nikon extender is suiting better to Leica (or is just better quality). I have same findings but improvement between f/5.6 and f/8 is not modest, it's quite big actually, sometimes so that I prefer to focus with f/8!!! And at f/11 lower contrast like you noticed as well.
I also found out that evaluating 360mm lens performance is REALLY difficult. The air is vibrating (heat waves or how they are called, the thing you can see with bare eye if you have long stretch of hot asphalt for example) and due to poor tripod collar even small wind makes the image to shake (didn't help hanging 15kg extra weight to tripod so it's not tripod - it's the collar). Also focusing was quite challenging at times.
Unfortunately many of the subjects I shoot on Saturday are not representable in internet. For example this 55 shot panorama, look quite crappy in internet size, but at my screen 1600x1600 (or even better if printed large) really really shines. I made 1920px by 1920px image (your browser WILL scale this so please make sure you are looking non-scaled version) shows a little look how the final image looks (at ~10000px by ~10000px pixel to pixel sharp, you can count the leaves on that tree if you wish so...) - 1920px by 1920px
Some more ordinary single frame shots (not very good test photos, just stuff I shoot normally) - all f/8 & 360mm (=Leica 180/2.8 APO with Canon 2x MkII):
