FS100 glass advice

D

D.Garza

New member
Hello,

I'm getting ready to purchase the FS100 and I wanted to know if anyone is
using the ​
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Voigtlander Nokton 50mm lens and if so please give me your feed back on it.. ​
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Any suggestion on other glass would be very much appreciated I have a budget of $12K for the camera, glass,rig and other accessories.


THANK YOU. ​
 
What gear do you have already?

Are you willing to go secondhand or do you only want new?

What type of shooting will you be doing?

More info would help.

Oh, and welcome!
 
D.Garza said:
Hello,

I'm getting ready to purchase the FS100 and I wanted to know if anyone is
using the ​
Voigtlander Nokton 50mm lens and if so please give me your feed back on it.. ​
Any suggestion on other glass would be very much appreciated I have a budget of $12K for the camera, glass,rig and other accessories.


THANK YOU. ​
Click to expand...

Which 50mm Nokton, there are a few? I'm guess you mean the fastest, latest one - the f1.1?

I have one and it seems to work well. It's a nice lens, well built, good focusing action. It's a bit 'glowy' at f1.1 and can suffer magenta edges in high contrast situations but most fast glass is the same. It has a great 'feel' to it. It's not a noctilux but it's also a tenth of the price.

One downside is that the minimum focus distance is 1m, this can be awkward at times. To get around this it's possible to get a M - NEX adapter that has a focusing helicoid in, so that you can use that to push the lens out then your minimum focus distance is closer to 30cm at the expensive of infinity focus. But twist it back and you're back to normal.

You could of course mean a f1.5 nokton but i suspect that will also be fine, i've had no issues with rangefinder lenses on the FS.

cheers
Paul
 
The voigtlander lenses are generally excellent, they're quite small and i'm primarily using them for stills - my preferred stills set up is a Nex 5N rather than a dSLR. It's great to have that option on the FS though.

There's plenty of wonderful SLR glass out there. Resolution wise there are no real issues on the FS as it's only really 2mpix. But speed, focal length, distortion and style of focus are all important factors.

Both FD and Nikon will give you great results. The question whether each range has what you're looking for. They all have excellent f2.8 primes but a modern zoom will get you that. So, for me, primes are all about speed.

In fact you may be better off with modern primes again although older SLR glass is a lot easier to focus.

If you want true vintage glass then very old rangefinder lenses can be beautiful. I have both a Canon 50 f1.2 and a f1.4 in Leica screwmount and then you can appreciate character. Beautiful skin tones and flare :)

cheers
Paul
 
morgan_moore said:
I have nikon glass - its good - but focusses the wrong way

I really like the look of some of the voigtlander lenses because they are so small and good glass too..

S
Click to expand...

you must be really used to the other way if it bothers you that much.
 
Paul, can you elaborate which adapter is needed for using old Canon rangefinder lenses (from late '50s) and where I could pick one up?
I have a few I'd love to use on my FS100. Many thanks!
 
eheath said:
go nikon glass
Click to expand...

Amen.

Nikon AIS Primes = Great image quality, Incredible all metal jewel-like build quality (I just LOVE the smoothness of the focus ring, not like those new crappy plastic lenses) and a lot cheaper than Zeiss ZF or Leica primes. I own three of them (35mm f2, 50mm f1.4, 85 f2) and I'll buy the 20mm or 24mm soon.

Just a word about lens speed. Some people are obsessed with fast lenses. These lens draw so much attention, but they are IMHO quite unpractical. Wide open they are (for most of them) quite soft, and you constantly battle to hit focus within a 2 inches margin. Most of the time you end up slowing them down by 1-2 stops anyway, which gives you a far sharper image and less focus pulling nightmares.
 
+1 for Nikon - best bet for the buck, especially the older ones from the 90s.
Build like a tank, all metal, precise, smooth, robust.
If you treat them right, they outlive your next 5 cameras.

For the record, faster lenses are also faster at f8 than a slower lens at f8 - it´s all about the t-stop.

Frank
 
funkmusicinstitute said:
Paul, can you elaborate which adapter is needed for using old Canon rangefinder lenses (from late '50s) and where I could pick one up?
I have a few I'd love to use on my FS100. Many thanks!
Click to expand...

Any Leica Screwmount to NEX adapter, there are hundreds on ebay. They'll either be called M39 or Leica Screwmount. If you want you can buy a $200 brand one, or a $20 chinese one. Somewhere in between are a good balance. Kipon seem okay to me, Metabones too. A poorly made one may be uneven (not flat) and focus will change from edge to edge. Some are just the wrong thickness and you may struggle to get infinity focus but most are fine.

As for Nikon, i'd always avoided them because of the reverse action, i'm so used to the other way. I'm quite tempted. I've just done a massive lens comparison though and to be honest most SLRs are really quite similar, although i'll have to go through my footage properly. Disappointing performance from the 24-70z though.

Fast lenses have their uses, sometimes you just need that extra stop. Also stop a fast lens down and it seems to perform better than a slower lens at minimum aperture, i.e. an f1.4 down to 2.8 can be better than a straight 2.8.

I completely agree about too shallow depth of field, but then i find fast apertures useful for medium shots, not close up. Where, because of the distance, your depth of field is workable yet you can throw the back ground out. There's some thing utterly unique about a shot with a f1.1 50mm at a medium distance. Even better on full frame but we can't do that. There's a lovely 35mm f1.2 which is quite a unique 35mm lens, good for that style of shot

cheers
Paul
 
Nikons: Pros: Peerless build quality for AI/AIS lenses, great optical quality. Cons: Focus the wrong way (compared to MOST cinema lenses)

Canon FD: Great optical quality, build quality. Cons: Somewhat more breathing on most lenses than their Nikon equivalents. Short flange focal distance means limited adaptability to only the NEX and M4/3 cameras.


I just bought some zeiss compact primes. In the end the limitations of still lenses for dramatic work frustrated and irritated me as a former focus puller.
 
Hello, hello. (first post)

I'm using Zeiss ZF lenses with the Novoflex NEF/NIK adapter. (One thing about this adapter is that it doesn't appear to lock into place so you really have to make sure it stays screwed on all the way). I haven't had the camera (former EX1 owner) or lenses for long, but I'm loving the combination. I did handle the CP.2 lenses at the store and decided against them because (in addition to costing way more than the ZFs) they are very large and have a huge focus throw, which I know you sometimes want but I didn't think I could operate the camera and pull focus with those lenses. The ZFs have a nice long throw compared to most photo lenses, but I can turn them all the way with one grip of the hand if I'm not using a ff mechanism. And most importantly I find they look great--sharp, nice colours and, to my eye, nice contrast.

I also have an older 50mm Nikkor 1.8 (ser#4184461), which I don't know much about, but it looks and works great and is small, light and sturdy. Picked it up for $80 down the street.
 
That novoflex adapter should definitely "lock" into place...

And welcome!

I would have gone ZF but for the same price as two or three of them I was able to get 8 nikkors...
 
I'm going to take a look at the nikons i think.

i have a number of zeiss contax (28,50,85) which are lovely lenses but i still need to find a decent 35 f1.4 and either the 21 or the 18. I have to decide whether it's worth the cost of acquiring the missing lenses or whether a fuller range of manual SLR lenses would be better all round.

I've been looking at Zuikos which have a great reputation however you don't often hear about them being used. They're quite compact, perhaps too compact and the aperture ring is always at the front which could be logistically awkward, but the range as a whole is very comprehensive. However the performance wide open for the zuiko vs the zeiss is night and day.

There are the FDs which i've found a little uninspiring so far.

Both Zuiko, FD and Nikon have full ranges of focal lengths and zooms to consider.

The CY Zeiss are a little more restricted and quite a bit more expensive for the good ones.

Leica R is again, very nice, but very expensive for the faster lenses.

Of course there's the new kid on the block, the Samyang, with 14,24,35 and 85 so far, all very fast and seemingly a pretty good reputation plus they come as declicked versions as well

Too many choices!

cheers
Paul
 
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