Another new lens manufacturer in M43 mount - SLR Magic

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Barry_Green

Moderator
Looks like there is another manufacturer out there offering lenses in native micro 4/3 mount (usable on GH1/GH2/AF100 etc).

SLR Magic. They offer at least two lenses right now, a 35mm f/1.7 (available only on ebay) and a 26mm f/1.4 "Toy" lens (designed for funky weird photography, not necessarily high-quality photography).

Nice thing is that they're cheap; the 26mm is $79 (plus $20 shipping) and the 35mm is $99 (plus $20 shipping).

No idea how they perform, just throwin' it out there in case anyone's interested in checking 'em out.

Current auctions:
26mm

35mm
 
digitalfilmmaker said:
Yeah I'm excited about these lenses as well as throwing on funky old russian glass.
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I am curious to see the character of these lenses, just for curiosities sake. You never know when a specialty type lens can be the perfect match for a particular film your shooting. Sort of like having a 102 year old adapted russian lens in your arsenal, heh.
They also have a great return policy.
 
digitalfilmmaker said:
Yeah I'm excited about these lenses as well as throwing on funky old russian glass.
Click to expand...
I'm testing old Zeiss Jena, Jupiter, Industar and Pentacon on AF101 in these days. These lenses have a poor mechanic and, sometimes, a poor coating so an hood is mandatory to avoid flares when shooting versus light. But they are simply superb optically and the results with video are fantastic. I have used these lenses on GH1 and 7d and now on AF-101. The most of them (ie jupiter 85mm or zeiss jena 135mm) are high resolution lenses, they are very sharp even wide open and have a low contrast. These are ideal parameters for HD video shooting. It is really hard (if not impossible) to distinguish an expensive modern zeiss from a good copy of a good Zeiss Jena DDR lens and it is note rare that some old lenses (if good copies) are even better. But forget to use the most of them with follow focus. For this I use old canon FD: good mechanic and a solid rock mount, that is mandatory if you want to avoid image wobblig using FF

Regards

gary
 
I've received the camera yesterday and I'm working hard these days. So, for the moment, I am making stupid tests only home, at night, with artificial lights. From friday I'm in vacation so I can start serious tests outdoor. I want to test these lenses on the field because I'm interested to evaluate the character, the 'mood' of the image in real shooting. So I've decided to shoot a video in the center of my city (an old medieval one) using only old russian lenses (I have a set from 20 to 200mm, 12 lenses totally). I have also a title 'Tovarisch AF-101'.
Giving life to 30-40 or even 50-60 years old lenses, in my opinion, is one of the most interesting and emotionating opportunities of this camera. Surely I will post the link as soon as I will upload the video on vimeo

Regards

gary
 
Can't wait to show up on a shoot and the lens actually says "Toy lens" on the front. All kidding aside, the 25mm might make for some fun experimentation.
 
yes they look like c-mounts. question is: will they vignette on a GH1 or AF 100 ? I have lots of c-mounts from last year when I got my GH1 and the only reason to buy a GH2 now is the new "crop" function, cause they all vignette.
25mm yup: Dreamy, color twist, and noticeable vignette.
 
I guess this is the thing that concerns me the most about this lens "Dreamy, color twist, and noticeable vignette." It seems they are making excuses for it?
 
I can see a real technological advancement.
:(

Zeiss, in their wisdom introduced the three blades aperture: "stunning" #&#@ triangular bright spots all over. It is about time to move up, to get the square look. WOW!!!!
Six blades????? Are they joking? That was the standard for the cheap lenses from Canikon in the 70's, when they gave the "top end" ones 8 blades. Almost everybody today, REALY considers rounded aperture as a standard. Unless you live under a rock, or enjoy the past-modern Cookes, not the classics.
 
Have you missed the hipstamatic craze?

These weird, cheap and crappy lens can produce organic images that would take MagicBullet four hours to render a single minute. They instantly give character to a once clean image. Once City of God was nominated for the best cinematography Oscar, crappy beautiful became mainstream. :)
 
Barry_Green said:
They offer at least two lenses right now, a 35mm f/1.7 (available only on ebay)
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I have the 35mm f1.7 SLRMagic lens and it's a convenient little snapshot lens on the GF1. It's certainly not one of the sharper lenses I've used, but it's definitely the smallest I've seen that doesn't vignette on M4/3 cameras. The aperture ring has no click-stops, so in practice you just twist it and the focus ring till you like what you see. I did have an initial problem mounting it on the GF1 - it didn't provide a deep enough hole for the lens detection pin on the camera mount. The Ebay vendor quickly sent me a replacement mount that worked fine.

Here's a sample still frame, shot at about f4 on the GF1 (resized to 50% resolution in Photoshop, nearest neighbor):

slrmagic0197.jpg
 
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I think it would be interesting to use this or any old vintage lens. I came really close to buying a 70 year old cinema lens just for this purpose.... and it was also only 50 bucks so if it didn't work, I'd have a lens to destroy... I think it's important to have some lenses you don't mind getting toasted in harsh environments... That's one of the biggest things that I'm so excited about for this camera...

A friend just gave me two old pentax lenses. One's a 50mm F2 and the other is a 135 2.8. I can see myself using both of them and the adapter only cost 20 bucks... That's a huge blessing and I am sure that within a couple of years I'll have 10 plus lenses for the Gh2/Af100... It feels like Christmas all year round..... and especially cause lenses don't depreciate nearly as much as cameras do....
 
So why didn't you buy that cinema lens?
A friend gave me a and old Russian Nikon 80-200mm zoom, I can't even say what brand it is because all text is in Russian. Still have to try it on my GH2, I'll try to find some time this weekend.
 
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