Help choosing a manual lens
 

Hi,

I've had my 5D for a couple of weeks now and I'd like more manual control. I know that I can do that with a lens that has an aperture ring. I was looking at getting this 85 F1.4 PLANAR T*MM (67) 35MM SLR MANUAL FOCUS TELEPHOTO LENS from KEH.

KEH Camera: Contax - Fixed Focal Lengths - 85 F1.4 PLANAR T*MM (67) 35MM SLR MANUAL FOCUS TELEPHOTO LENS

I was going to mate that to this Fotodiox adapter:

Fotodiox.com

My questions are:

1. Will this work?

2. Is this a good lens? I've got lots of good (but slightly worthless) L glass. I don't want this lens to be the weak link.

thanks for your help.

Grant

For the Contax lens you need a Contax Adapter, not Nikon! like this:
Contax C/Y Lens to Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II III AF adapter bei eBay.de: Lens Accessories (endet 12.01.09 06:58:08 MEZ)

you can also look on ebay for Zeiss Jena M42 Lenses and a M42 Adapter.
Will be cheaper and have good quality.
I own a lot of M42 Zeiss Lenses all tak sharp

also.... don't get the MM contax lens... get the T* c/y mount.

Grant - I picked up a cheap Nikon 85mm F1.8 from KEH (Bargain grade) and the adapter from Fotodiox. The video images from this lens with the 5D are stunning. I plan to collect some additional Nikon lenses as I really like the manual control vs the hoops that you need to jump through to contol exposure in video mode with the Canon lenses.

Art

so this one then?
 

I was listening to Leo Laporte recently and when it comes to getting a Canon Lens for the 5D the expert (can't remember his name) stated, you want a "L" lens, something with a red stripe. The reasoning is the processor (in the camera) will out perform the lens otherwise. Cheaper lens will start showing artifacts like blurring in the corners, etc...

Thought it interesting, The tech guy show 520

This is a fairly blanket statement, but.... mainly important for zooms and or shooting with the aperture wide open. Most EF prime lenses are pretty good. Where "L" lenses really shine is when shooting wide open. Also, they tend to be more "corrected" regarding things like chromatic aberrations, barrel and pin distortion, vignetting and color/contrast rendition. You get what you pay for.

With a 21MP FF35 camera.... the lenses need to be able to resolve incredible detail otherwise the cameras resolution is not as effective. I here countless stories of photographers stepping up to the 5d2 and most of the lenses they felt were good are now leaving them wanting more. Even thought this camera ( 5d2 ) is relatively affordable.... the bag of "L" lenses to get the most out of it will set you back some serious money. In fact.... I bet I could sell all my "L" lenses on ebay and have enough cash to buy a turnkey RED.

Remember though that we're talking about two very different things here between stills and video - 21 megapixel vs. 2 megapixel. You need far less resolving power to generate a very good image at 2mp, and any decent 35mm film lens should be up to the task. In fact resolving too much detail is probably likely to be a bigger problem than too little as it will worsen the aliasing problem.

I don't buy the "less is more" idealism when it comes to optics.... I like the comfort of quality and perfection driven design and manufacture with the "option" to dirty things up in post.

Regarding aliasing... I'm not seeing any of this when the output resolution matches the device resolution. I see it in brick walls in the distance ( but in my head I here " wow... look at that resolution" ), but have found that if it really bothers me... I add a touch of mist or minimal blur.

Christopher,

Regarding aliasing, you can't always get rid of it in post. By definition aliasing means misinterpreting high frequencies as lower frequencies. For instance, when a patterned shirt aliases into large patterns of dark and light areas, you can't filter that out in post.

Fortunately, large aperture shots put the background out of focus, and that helps us avoid aliasing in large areas of the image. This won't help though, if your subject is wearing fine plaid.

The best solution would be a great lens with an ideal blur filter. The perfect filter would have a sharp falloff - removing aliasing frequencies, but keeping 1080p level detail. In practice, the best we will be able to do with a good blur filter is 720 lines of resolution or so.

BTW, I spoke with Tiffen at CES and let them know about the business opportunity of selling OLP filters for the 5D, D90 and other DVSLRs. I need to follow up by showing this thread and others.

Personally, I think the biggest benefit of good lenses on the 5D is low light falloff at wide apertures. Sure, you can correct for the light falloff in post, but the dynamic range of the picture ends up being non-uniform - the corners will have crushed blacks compared to the center of the image.

reminds me of back in the 80's when I'd put some forehead grease on my red dot dagor shooting 8x10 sheet film of a nude model. smoothed out the skin o-so-nicely. I miss that lens.... it was purdy.


heaven forbid someone show up with a Herringbone shirt/coat..... I'd be screwed!

I'm not talking about 'dirtying' things up via the optics, that's a whole different topic... I'm just saying that if the lens was designed as a high-quality optic for 35mm film it's going to work just fine for video on the 5D. In terms of used nikkor lenses I think it would be hard to argue that most of them weren't 'quality and perfection driven design and manufacture' - they're only 'cheap' now because the market favors auto lenses.

I here ya..... yes..... it'll work just fine. Sometimes I just need to self-justify all the bank I've waisted on upgrades in my life. Especially wife #2.... hehe

Just looked more closely at that and noticed it says "Diaphragm action: fully automatic" - so that's definitely not the lens you want if you're looking for manual aperture control (unless the listing is wrong). The ebay one looks right.

MM contax lenses will not work.....Zeiss lenses in the C/Y mount came in either AE or MM varieties. MM lenses were more recent, with a setting that allowed the camera to select the aperture as part of its autoexposure system, while the older AE lenses did not. There was often no difference between an older AE and a newer MM lens apart from this feature. Sometimes, the older AE lens may be worth more on the used market because it may be a German-made example, while the newer lens may be Japanese-made, despite their optical formula and build quality being identical.