Checking out the new adapter and a relatively new lens. How? With photos, of course.

I've been buying up rangefinder lenses lately. Don't know why except that I like the small sizes and the high center sharpness. One thing to be aware of is that most rangefinder lenses, designed for film, have rear elements that sit very close to the sensor planes of modern cameras. The light rays that reach the sensor edges do so at a very oblique angle which means there will be vignetting. Also, some are not as well corrected for even color across the sensor plane so one can experience color drift across the frames. This is mostly seen in the corners. Because of their thick filter packs it's not recommended that one use rangefinder lenses on Sony's current cameras. Just an FYI.

Because of the color shift across the sensor I tend to use these rangefinder lenses with cameras set to raw. The raw files allow me to use dedicated lens profiles in Lightroom Classic. You don't get the same options when processing Jpeg files. It's a good reason to shoot raw when using this older tech.

I didn't really pay as much attention as I should have to some of the issues that crop up when using lenses initially designed for film rangefinders. I have successfully adapted several different types of SLR and DSLR lenses to L mount cameras with complete success. These include Canon FD lenses and a range of Nikon F lenses (any Nikon lens, or Voigtlander lens in a Nikon F mount, that has an external aperture ring!). These adaptations give good results and it's only a very rare lens that shows any color shift across the sensor. I expected to get the same performance from M mount rangefinder lenses adapted to the L mount. It didn't work out that way. I had some "teething issues" getting started.

The first M mount lens I picked up was a brand new Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 Nokton lens. I bought an inexpensive, Urth M to L mount adapter and then took that lens and a Panasonic S5 on a vacation trip to Vancouver. I didn't notice until I got to my destination that the lens in the adapter was able to focus past infinity. That's okay, I guess. I'm pretty vigilant about nailing exact focus so not having the hard stop wasn't a disaster. But it did preclude my sometimes practice of zone focusing. I couldn't depend on the distance scale on the lens. It was all shifted by about 3 or 4 feet away from infinity (and beyond). This also altered the system's close focusing abilities. Now I could not focus anywhere near as close as I should have been able to. 

I never had a focus issue with any of the dozens of adapters I've been using since around 2009 so my first thought was that the lens was mis-calibrated. But then I read grumblings around the web about the "inaccuracy" of M mount adapters when it comes to focusing. Many makers of the adapters can machine their products to high standards but choose engineer them to allow lenses to focus past infinity because poorly calibrated rangefinder cameras are sometimes part of the problem. Armed with the consensus that there is wild variation in the calibration of the adapter rings for M lenses I experimented with two different varieties of Fotodiox adapters and also an additional Urth adapter. All of them allowed for focusing beyond where infinity should have been. All limited my close focusing capability.

My next step was to borrow a couple of Leica M lenses which were known to be very accurately focus calibrated. They exhibited the same behavior as the 40mm VM lens. At that point I came to understand that adapter makers live in fear that their customers won't be able to focus on infinity so they err in that direction while gutting the attached lenses' close focusing abilities. An interesting trade-off.

In all my reading there were two exceptions to the prevailing fashion of adapter compromise. One was from Hoage. They make an M to L adapter that does hit right at infinity but also provides a helicoid ring that allows for a range of close focusing distances as well. Adapter meets close focus ring. I ordered one for $89 and tested it. It's perfect. It's perfect as long as you make sure the helicoid is set for infinity. If you bump the assemblage in the camera bag or with your hand you will end up moving the ring off infinity and into the close-up regions. That's fine if you are carefully focusing through an EVF but if you are using zone focusing techniques it can make for a lot of out-of-focus frames... A LOT.

I liked the accurate infinity focus stop of the Hoage adapter and bought a second one for one of the other rangefinder lenses I've recently picked up. 

But the other exception to the sloppy adapter rings was the one I heard most often and that was about the Leica branded M to L adapter. While all the other adapters are "dumb" adapters that transfer no information between lens and cameras the Leica model has pass through electronic contacts that allow a Leica lens with coding (lens model) to communicate with a Leica camera. Across all the current interchangeable lens cameras. Attach a current Summicron via the Leica adapter and it will tell your Leica SL2 or M11 which lens it is and what kind of profile it needs to cut down on vignetting, correct distortion and cure color shift across the frame. While this is all well and good for Leica owners with recent vintage M series Leica lenses all it does for me in the moment is add cost to an adapter. 

But I decided to buy one to see if it was as accurate as so many other users declared. Would it stop neatly and accurately at infinity? Was it worth a new price of $450? Was it worth the $325 I paid for a mint condition used one?

The Leica adapter arrived yesterday around noon and after a hard day at the office (nap, novel reading, web browsing, snacking) I attached the adapter to an SL2 on one side and the Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 Biogon ZM to the other side and walked over to the UT Campus area to make a bunch of photos before the light faded away. 

Yes. The Leica adapter is as accurate as its reputation suggests. I can confidently hit infinity and I can also, happily, zone focus. I kind of expected, for the price, that it would deliver. 

But, since the adapter is not transferring any information from the lens to the camera I found that some of the corners of Jpeg images had turquoise color casts. I switched to (dot)DNG (raw files) and then pasted the exact lens correction found in the Lightroom lens profiles across the entire folder of imported files. It worked very well. Now I could get to work post processing without distraction. The profile cleaned up things nicely!

I'll likely use this adapter most with the 40mm and 35mm lenses since I use them most. When I shoot with the CZ 28mm Biogon ZM lens I am slower and more careful so I'll be fine using the Hoage adapter with that one. I reflexively check the adapter now, from time to time, to make sure it's firmly stopped at infinity. I tend to shoot more off the cuff with the other two lenses. The Leica adapter will compensate for my sloppy handling.

So, what have I found out about shooting with the 35mm lens now that I have a proper adapter in the mix? That it's quite sharp, the colors are very rich, the size and layout are perfect for me, and that I like the lens very much. So, all good here. Now ready to go out shooting --- as soon as that new passport hits the mail box. 

Swim comments and more below....

St. Austin's Church is somewhere on the other side of this protected 

pedestrian walkway. Hence the paintings on this side. Always lots of color 

in urban Austin. 

If you take a moment to enlarge and really look at the image just above you'll see that the 

lens profile works well, that the lens is quite sharp, and that the colors are wonderful.

The SL2 really is a nice camera to use with the rangefinder lenses. It's nice to be

able to view through a very high resolution EVF. 

At one point, in the late 1970's, I lived at the 21st Co-op. It was pretty modern back then. And very "green" for the times. We actually had a solar water heating system which consisted of most of the roof areas covered by metal boxes which had black pipes running their lengths in between mirrored reflectors. The sun would heat the pipes which would heat the water and the water was then pumped into a 20,000 gallon, very well insulated, storage tank. The system worked well. Even in the winter month (not a typo.. it really only got very cold about one month out of the year). 

Since it was a co-op we all had to sign up for jobs. My girlfriend and I volunteered to cook breakfast twice a week for nearly 60 residents. We even made donuts from scratch one day. It was a fabulous place to live and only a five minute walk to campus. 

The 21st Street CO-OP is still there. Now it's behind metal gates and it's starting to show its age.

The 21st Street property was one of many co-op living set-ups close to campus. A "flagship" in its day. Some others were a lot more barebones. The next two images are just details of another old house adjacent to 21st Street which is also a co-op. It's a fun idea for housing and dining. You just have to make sure that your co-op is organized and that everyone pulls their own weight....

Around the corner from my old co-op is the Ark co-op. It's bigger and used to be the Tri-Delta sorority house back in the 1960s. It's built around a big central court yard with a swimming pool. Friday and Saturday parties at the poolside were legend around campus. The Ark is where several of my friends and I built a co-operative darkroom, complete with an Omega D2 Enlarger. Legend is that the room we converted to a fully functional darkroom was once the dorm room of actor, Farah Fawcett. The rumor was that she was expelled from the Tri-Delts for sleeping with an African American football player. Never solidly proven but still a rumor swirling around the property to this day....

Sadly, the darkroom is no longer there. Sign of the times. 

The area just to the West of the UT campus is now a jungle of enormous dormitories that are more like luxury hotels than any dorm I ever set foot in. I walked by one multi-story development that even featured valet parking for the students. Must be nice....Gotta take care of those Lambos.

Swim news. Another gray day. The water was too warm at 83°. But one of my favorite coaches was on deck and writing a fun workout. J.T. swam for UT and graduated about a year and a half ago. He's working for a software company but still coaches Saturday mornings and fills in at other times. 

He writes workouts that mix up short and long distance sets so we get some endurance work mixed with speed work. I did too much ab strength training at the gym on Thursday and I could really feel it as I stretched out and swam freestyle this morning. It's always a bittersweet experience to do good strength training. Mostly sweet and not very bitter. You get to be sore but you also get to experience a better core, more stroke control and better rotation in your stroke. Some core work and a lot of lat work and you can count on faster swims. 

Ben recommends doing push ups every day. 50 or 60 of them. Now that I'm spending time at the gym doing strength training I've lowered my push-up target to two sets of 20. That seems to be enough to maintain for now. 

All good here. No other news to report. Not yet, anyway.