highdesertmesa
Offline
Upload & Sell: On
|
 Re: Nikon Zf as a platform for adapted/native manual focus lenses | |
Fred Miranda wrote:
A great alternative to a dedicated M body is the original SL typ 601. It has a beautiful 4.4MP EVF and it works great with M lenses. The best performance I’ve seen aside from a modded body. The only two drawbacks is the lack of Ibis and the higher weight compared to the competition. The new ZF and MF aid seem interesting too but it won’t work optimally with M lenses with short exit pupil.
nehemiahphoto wrote:
Fred Miranda wrote:
nehemiahphoto wrote:
highdesertmesa wrote:
Fred Miranda wrote:
highdesertmesa wrote:
Could you start a new thread for this? I don't want this to devolve into a brand wars discussion if possible. Nikon Z in general has thinner cover glass which can improve performance for some M lenses.
I haven't personally tried this, but I'm really curious to find out the details. Has anyone compared how a wide-angle M lens performs on a Sony camera compared to a Nikon camera and checked for any differences in IQ?
I suppose I could give a ZF lens a shot and then compare its performance with my Sony A9 using a couple of M lenses.
Choose the camera you want to use. Plenty of people use both systems and produce great results with M lenses. If you want the best results from M lenses, buy an M camera or have your current camera's sensor modified by a 3rd party to replace the sensor cover glass with one as thin as Leica's.
I'm aware that this is a common sentiment, but I've personally verified that the SL series delivers excellent performance with M lenses, second only to the M body or modded cameras, which are the top choices.
Would any sane person own both a Nikon and Sony at the same time? Wouldn't they lose their minds with both of those complicated menus? 
Z sensor cover glass thickness (1.1mm) sits between E (1.75mm) and a Kolari modified sensor, so I would assume the Z sensors are better than E sensors for M lenses but still a far cry from a Kolari-modified sensor of either mount.
It would be cool to see a side-by-side test (corners, color shift, field curvature shape, and vignetting) using one of the most difficult M lenses for digital sensors to handle like the Voigtlander 21mm Color-Skopar F4.0.
Cover glass thickness:
– GFX 100S (BSI) – 3.1mm cover glass spaced 9mm away from the sensor (per Fujifilm illustration)
– A7R4 (BSI) 1.75mm cover glass (per Kolari)
– Z7 (BSI) 1.1mm cover glass (per Kolari)
– SL2 (FSI) or SL2-S (BSI) cover glass thickness unknown but has parabolic microlens array that is M lens-friendly
– M10-R (FSI) or M11 (BSI) parabolic microlenses shifted to further accommodate the ray angles from wide angle M lenses
That's not quite accurate I think (on the Nikon front) because:
"That was what many people thought, including me. However, what this teardown shows is the thickness of the removable glass. There is also a glass layer epoxied to the sensor itself, which adds to the total thickness. If the real, total, sensor glass thickness actually was 1.1mm, then even "difficult" M mount lenses would perform flawlessly on a stock Nikon Z camera. Unfortunately, that isn't the case."
https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/336520-nikon-z7-compatible-with-m-mount-lenses/
That's From LarsHP who is quite active on FM as well. I have a NKIR modded A7r2 with a v3+ version, which has a thickness of 0.75mm. Their WB issue is far less severe than Kolari, otherwise I would have went Kolari UT mod. They were working on a V5 a while ago, which would would result in .58mm. I am curious about that as it might make even Contax G lenses better.
This really gets back at that, I wish someone (not me), would do some legit testing of BSI Z bodies versus a native Leica or UT Mod which is a known quantity at this point.
Thanks for sharing this. I have confidence in LarsHP's evaluation because it aligns with what others have discussed on the Nikon board. There's a possibility that the sensor stack in Nikon bodies could show very slight improved performance with M-lenses, but problems related to induced field curvature and astigmatism still persist.
For sure Fred. I am not doing any lifting here--just passing along helpful LarsHP's info. I am also of the mind that the improvement would be marginal from my research. Still, I'd like to see how much--ideally, I would like to a) move on from my A7r2 NKIR as that camera is dying and b) not have to deal with modding a sensor again if I can help it.
If the performance was, let's say, half between native M performance and E mount performance, I'd probably just accept the IQ loss and go with a Nikon. Especially cause I think the Zf is quite attractive (great MF aids, love the no grip body and all the manual controls), and the EVF and price point are fair.
I loved the original SL when it came out, but having used the SL2/SL2-S, I tried an SL again a few months ago, and I couldn’t go back to it. The EVF is indeed nice, but the magnified live view for manual focus is very far behind the SL2/S in low light. I would even say the image in low light when magnified is well behind the more recent 3.X million dot EVFs simply due to the quality of the feed off current sensors.
|
