Lenses
 

What lenses can this use? I heard it has to have a manual aperture ring?

Thanks!

Here is a quick summary as I understand the current lens situation.

The great thing about micro 4/3 is that the lens mount is very close to the imager. This means pretty much any 4/3 lens or any lens for larger imagers will work with an adapter without optical element.

Currently mechanical Nikon and Canon (FD and FL) glass work as well as various cinematic lenses.

These adapters are available. The adapters for modern Canon L and new Nikon lenses are in the works and should ship soon.

Some lenses will display information in your view finder and have AF capability, but not all. Personally I like mechanical manual better anyway.

I still have a bunch of FL and FD Canons as well as lots of new L glass. I have ordered an AF100 because I love the idea of a video camera for this price that will be able to use my still lenses. And it will work with the NanoFlash.

I will be posting some photos using those lenses in my Lumix cam that I just ordered, I also ordered a couple adapters. Stay tuned. This is an exiting time.

The Canon FD lenses are all old now but are very cheap on eBay not least because they cannot be used with any modern Canon so people buying manual lenses for their 5D/7D etc have gone for Nikons etc which has driven up the prices on those brands. They are beautiful lenses as they are very solidly built & have lovely optics. The only downside as with all other lenses designed for 35mm cameras is that when used on Micro 4/3 format cameras there is a 2X crop factor so wide angle lenses will be a problem as even 14mm rectilinear (the widest non-fisheye FD lens) becomes an effective 28mm on the AF100. On the other hand the long end becomes very interesting as the 50mm F1.2L becomes an 100mm & the 400mm F2.8L becomes an amazing 800mm! http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography...nses/index.htm

I'm i reading this right, that you can use the canon FD lens on this camera ? Do you think we will be able to use Any medium format lens too ?

There may be medium format adapters available. I have not searched for any yet.

Certainly it is possible. I actually still have a Hasselblad 180 from the 60's, let me know if you find an adapter.

Will the Tokina AT-X 116 PRO DX work on this camera?

If so where do I get the adapter and what do I ask for?

What mount is your Tokina lens set-up for?

It mounts on a Canon 7d.

Then you just need to find a Canon EF to 4/3 adapter, which is definitely coming.

What zoom lense will have full auto function for run and gun situations?

I don't think there will ever be any for this camera. It's not designed for ENG style run'n'gun shooting. The best you can hope for is electronically controlled aperture and focus with manually controlled zoom.

This is why I am keeping my HMC-150 camera for run'n'gun shoots.

Thanks, you just saved me some money.

What about micro 4/3 lenses...?!

Some 4/3 lenses have electronic focus and aperture, but I don't know of any that have a motorized power zoom.

I think that a 4/3 lens with motorized zoom control would be very big ( heavier than the AF-100 camera body ) and very expensive. ( more expensive than the camera body )

Oh... I see. I thought it had a zoom rocker on the right side but then I looked again and it doesn't. Oh well, looks like extra gear for zooming:)

Even the lenses that Panasonic sells for this camera are not zoom (parfocal) lenses they are variable focal lenses. They don't keep the same focus position for different focal lengths.

It is not an ENG cam. If you want that buy an EX1 or whatever.

There may be third party solutions in the future, but Panasonic has no plans to make zoom lenses for this camera, and I think rightly so.

Oh... I thought I've hear or read somewhere that Panasonic is going to release a zoom lens in the near future. Guess I thought wrong.

I hope so because I would like to have this camera to use for personal creative projects. However it would also have to be used for work and that is more run and gun for me. I am also considering an EX1.

I may be wrong too. But according to Jan Crittenden the Product manager for the AF100. The Pany lenses are made by the still camera consumer division, and there are no plans for them to make their own video specific ENG lenses for this camera.

She was very clear on this, she was specifically asked about this. Also the camera does not do lens specific corrections like a lot of camera lens combos these days.

So it will pay to get good lenses from this camera. The choices are huge.

I am not selling my EX1R, EX3 or 5DmkII. But I am selling my 7D.

Remember this is not an ENG cam. Nor is it a 5DmkII. It is really a huge improvement over a 7D like cam. Perfect for a lot of people, me included. But it is just one specific tool.

They already have a few zoom lenses available in the micro 4/3rds mount such as the 7-14mm, 14-45mm, 45-200mm, 14-140mm. And I'm sure there's more on the way in the near future.

However, just because they are zoom lenses does not mean that they are power zooms and parfocal. Because these zoom lenses are not designed primarily for video (the 14-140 is an exception here) it means they do not have electronic zooms which can be controlled by a rocker - rather they have a manual ring on the lens. And becasue they are designed to work on still cameras where you aren't going to be changing zoom in the middle of a shot (unless you're going for a zoom blur effect but thats a whole different story!) they are not parfocal, meaning that if you change the zoom on the lens, the focus will change also - so you can't do a standard focus like on a videocamera where you zoom in fully to focus then zoom back out to the disired framing, otherwise the focus will change also. Neither can zoom midway through a shot without having to adjust focus - although some of the micro 4/3rds lenses support continuous autofocus in video mode.

So while it might be true that Panasonic are releasing a new zoom lens soon, that doesn't necassarily mean you'll be getting a zoom lens that works exactly like the one in a camcorder.

What a shame. I thought this was going to be the one.

Oh well things change fast in the video world. I know the camera I want is on the way.

You could use a fluid drive, as were common on 16mm film cameras. They're a very effective tool, if less common these days with powered drives being around in large numbers.

http://www.chrosziel.com/data/chrosz...omdrives_E.pdf

I came across this zoom, which may interest people. Schneider seem to be getting back into the lens again.

http://www.chrosziel.com/data/chrosz...25-95_v3.0.pdf