GH2 Any Good Contax/Leica Lenses for new Metabones MFT Adapter?

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Benjobe

Well-known member
I've been looking at Contax & Leica lenses on Ebay searching for a fast wide lens that would pair well with the new MFT Metabones adapter. But all I can find are these:

Contax Zeiss Biogon 21mm f2.8
http://www.kenrockwell.com/contax/g-system.htm

Voigtlander 21mm f1.8 Leica M-mount
http://www.kenrockwell.com/voigtlander/21mm-f18.htm


The Voigtlander looks it'd be a nice wide fast lens with the Metabones, becoming a 30mm f0.95. But it's expensive. The Contax is cheaper as there are plenty of used ones on Ebay, and with the Metabones it would be a 30mm f2.0, not too shabby. Does anyone have any other ideas for lenses with the MFT Metabones adapter?

Here's a link explaining the MFT Metabones adapter:
http://philipbloom.net/2013/05/19/speedbosterblackmagic/

Incidentally, I'm also interested in how a combination of Contax/Leica lens & Metabones Adapter would look on the will-it-ever-ship Blackmagic Pocket Camera. The BMPC has a crop factor of 2.88x so the Metabones adapter would bring that down a bit to be more like the GH2 crop factor 2x, which would be really nice. But that's a little bit off-topic for this forum.

Is anyone else interested in pursuing these lens options? Any ideas out there?
 
There are different Leica mounts... the MetaBones adapter is for R mount. Voigtlander makes lenses for Leica M mount.

C-Z and L-R were made for full-frame reflex bodies, so as typical in that format wide, fast lenses will be relatively rare and dear. Off the top of my head, the Leica Elmarit-R 19/2.8 would become a quite respectable 14/2, but at around $1200-1500 for that lens used, it might give one pause. The Super-Elmar-R 15/3.5 would turn into a quite attractive 11/2.4, but again... over $3500 average used price curbs enthusiasm.

That said, Contax-Zeiss and Leica-R are some of the best legacy lenses available, so it would be hard to go wrong. I'm working with a 30+ year old set of L-R primes that I plan to boost as soon as a particularly large invoice is paid - the glass and mechanics of them easily match or exceed anything currently produced.
 
I was looking at Leica and Zeiss for the Speedbooster as well. Great lenses but expensive and being legacy mounts, what's out there is all you'll get.

I'm going Nikon mount lenses. Lens manufacturers are still making lenses for the Nikon mount, there is a huge selection of glass and the Nikon Speedbooster will be out extremely soon ;-)
 
Benjobe said:
I've been looking at Contax & Leica lenses on Ebay searching for a fast wide lens that would pair well with the new MFT Metabones adapter. But all I can find are these:

Contax Zeiss Biogon 21mm f2.8
http://www.kenrockwell.com/contax/g-system.htm

Voigtlander 21mm f1.8 Leica M-mount
http://www.kenrockwell.com/voigtlander/21mm-f18.htm


The Voigtlander looks it'd be a nice wide fast lens with the Metabones, becoming a 30mm f0.95. But it's expensive. The Contax is cheaper as there are plenty of used ones on Ebay, and with the Metabones it would be a 30mm f2.0, not too shabby. Does anyone have any other ideas for lenses with the MFT Metabones adapter?

Here's a link explaining the MFT Metabones adapter:
http://philipbloom.net/2013/05/19/speedbosterblackmagic/

Incidentally, I'm also interested in how a combination of Contax/Leica lens & Metabones Adapter would look on the will-it-ever-ship Blackmagic Pocket Camera. The BMPC has a crop factor of 2.88x so the Metabones adapter would bring that down a bit to be more like the GH2 crop factor 2x, which would be really nice. But that's a little bit off-topic for this forum.

Is anyone else interested in pursuing these lens options? Any ideas out there?
Click to expand...
I thought the Metabones adapter made lenses wider rather than longer.
 
I didn't know about the different M and R mounts for Leica lenses. Thanks for explaining that.

Those two lenses you mentioned, the Elmarit-R 19/2.8 and Super-Elmar-R 15/3.5, sound like they'd be fast & wide with the Metabones but a little too pricey. The question becomes why not just get the Olympus 12mm f2 ($700) or the SLRmagic 12mm f1.6 ($550)? I suppose that there's something to be said for the quality and character of old lenses.
 
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