GH2 GH2: FD Devotees?

M. Gilden said:
Nice. But at that price, wouldn't a voitlander or SLR Magic be a better buy?
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Exactly. You really have to be in love with the FD look to pay that much. the 50mm f1.2L isn't exactly cheap either.

Some people still prefer the vintage look that you get from the older lenses. Different lenses have different personalities. Wish I knew exactly what this lens would look like on a GH2 or GH3. From what I read it was a killer lens back in the day so I'm sure it would look pretty darn good.
 
...this thread should boom when the m43/fd "speedbooster" copy is released ! My collection started with a 35,50,135, and 35-105 came into my possession free of charge. Then I bought a 17mm 3.5 tokina and a 28 2.8 canon ...for a song. Love'm ! Now I wait for that $200 fake speedbooster to bring the fd's back to their real glory days. If it works it's miracles, I'll pick up the 20 and 24. Then hopefully by that time the real speedbooster will be available for the eos, and my 17-40 and 70-200 will have a home as well .
 
kurth said:
...this thread should boom when the m43/fd "speedbooster" copy is released ! My collection started with a 35,50,135, and 35-105 came into my possession free of charge. Then I bought a 17mm 3.5 tokina and a 28 2.8 canon ...for a song. Love'm ! Now I wait for that $200 fake speedbooster to bring the fd's back to their real glory days. If it works it's miracles, I'll pick up the 20 and 24. Then hopefully by that time the real speedbooster will be available for the eos, and my 17-40 and 70-200 will have a home as well .
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Speedbooster?
 
DPStewart said:
Yup - the Black Diffusion 3.
My results have been the same - the 20mm is a REALLY sharp lens on the GH2 and adding the BD3 has given me some seriously nice results. I quickly found the same thing you did - the saturation and contrast need to be up at 0 usually.
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OK...It was a posting of yours that motivated me to order that Black Diffusion #3! Thanks!

When the movie "Somewhere In Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour first came out I couldn't fully enjoy watching it for taking notes on the back of my business cards. I was so taken with the haunting look of the portrait of Jane Seymour's character in that "museum" room in the hotel that it influenced the way I photographed women ever since.

I had loads of fun with what I called the "Somewhere In Time" portrait and had women coming in with dresses their Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers made and wore. Diffusion at the camera lens figured heavily into this and most commerially made diffustion filters didn't cut it, so I had two solutions.

One was that "graduated" set of Cokin diffusion filters I mentioned in a post above and on the Mamiya RB 67 I didn't even have to use Cokin's filter holder, the square filters four corners would "grab" the ribbing on the inside of the Mamiya RB lenses 77mm rubber hood.

The second solution was to purchase the 150mm Soft Focus lens for the RB 67. The lens elements formula was "tack sharp" when only the central portion was used, the outer portions deliberately had all the aberrations that can make a lens "unsharp" left in. So at f8 or smaller you had a lens that was as sharp as any medium format lens made for the RB (and some of them were more than plenty sharp enough). But at wider apertures the wider you opened the softer it got. And the lens came with a set of 3 control disks. Unscrew the whole front element assembly and put one of the disks over the back of the rear element in the group, then screw the whole front assembly back in.

These disks controlled the "mix" of central lens portion and outer portions that made the image. The strongest effect looked much like the result using the Tiffen Black Diffusion #3 (think I'll be trying to use the Tiffen more and more).

Thanks for the original tip!
 
I shoot with FD lenses often on my GH2's. I use them because they're cheap and produce great images.

Currently I use

1x 50mm f/1.4
3x 35-105mm f/3.5 (mainly used in wedding ceremonies)

As others have mentioned, the real weakness of the FD lenses is that they cover a full frame sensor and therefore do not have many great wide options for a crop sensor. For wide lenses, I use

Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95

I use this kit for everything I shoot. I have some extra lenses also as backups just in case, but none worth mentioning. I built my own 35mm adapter with an FD mount after purchasing a vintage camera set from CL. They fit on the GH2 when I got that as well, so I rolled with it. In the future it would be nice to pick up the 85mm f/1.2 and also the Voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95 to round out my kit.
 
If there is going to be a Speedbooster type device for FD to M4/3 then that awesome 24mm f1.4 FD lens could become a 17mm f1.0. Pretty darn awesome lens. Although there is a Voigtlander 17mm f0.95 which would arguably be a better lens for the same money. For those that already have FD lenses however it would be pretty exciting.
 
DPStewart said:
Yup - the Black Diffusion 3.
My results have been the same - the 20mm is a REALLY sharp lens on the GH2 and adding the BD3 has given me some seriously nice results. I quickly found the same thing you did - the saturation and contrast need to be up at 0 usually.
Click to expand...

Hi DPStewart - what filter size did you go for for the 20mm - bigger than you needed?

EDIT - could you possibly post a link to the one you have on BHPhoto etc?
I'm getting confused as to all the types available
 
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Fresno Bob said:
I'd take that over a SLR Magic lens any day. Really don't know what people see in them. I sold mine, it was very poor.
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Completely agree with you on the SLR Magic lenses, but the Voightlander ultra fast f/0.95 primes are in their own unique category.
 
@TheDingo (slightly OT) which lens do you find yourself using more the 12-35 or 35-100? Those are the weather sealed variety, no?
 
Steve Kahn said:
Weren't the SLR Magic lenses rehoused security camera lenses?
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That was the rumour. I had the 12mm 1.6 hyperprime and came to that conclusion myself without hearing about that beforehand.
The distortion on the image and weird swirly bokeh reminded me heavily of cheap & nasty CCTV lenses.
 
You're not the first person I've heard complain about their bokeh. I have the Voight 25 and personally love it. Even love the soft wide open part about it. Great for faces.
 
Steve Kahn said:
@TheDingo (slightly OT) which lens do you find yourself using more the 12-35 or 35-100? Those are the weather sealed variety, no?
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Yes, they're weather sealed and extremely sharp.

If I had to buy one lens first, I would start with the 12-35mm lens because it covers such a wide range of shots and it's hard to replace this focal range with prime lenses. ( not many fast aperture wide to short-tele zoom lenses for the micro 4/3 format ) You can shoot so many different shots with this lens.

The 35-100mm I use mostly for single person interviews, close-up shots, and for still photography. There are lots of fast lenses available in the 35-100mm range, both as primes and zoom lenses, so it would be easy to get by with something cheaper until you could afford the Lumix 35-100mm zoom. ( I own a few old Canon FD and Nikon AI-S lenses that could easily fill this gap )

Because neither of these lenses is parfocal, I am learning to use GH3 focus-tracking to keep my subject sharp while I slightly change framing with a slow zoom. ( very handy when you are doing quick'n'dirty corporate work by yourself ) I was really resistant to shooting this way, but I am seeing that it can work really well in good light.
 
Fresno Bob said:
Hi DPStewart - what filter size did you go for for the 20mm - bigger than you needed?

EDIT - could you possibly post a link to the one you have on BHPhoto etc?
I'm getting confused as to all the types available
Click to expand...

Sure Bob!

I got the 62mm filter and a step up ring so I could use the one filter on both of my Panny lenses as those are the most likely to need it.
(20mm and the 14-140 kit zoom)
Get to use the stock full size lens cap on both then too.
Here they are mate:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/204262-REG/Tiffen_62BDFX3_62mm_Black_Diffusion_F_X.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/160235-REG/Heliopan_700177_46mm_62mm_Step_Up.html

~Cheers
 
Bruce Foreman said:
OK...It was a posting of yours that motivated me to order that Black Diffusion #3! Thanks!

When the movie "Somewhere In Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour first came out I couldn't fully enjoy watching it for taking notes on the back of my business cards. I was so taken with the haunting look of the portrait of Jane Seymour's character in that "museum" room in the hotel that it influenced the way I photographed women ever since.

I had loads of fun with what I called the "Somewhere In Time" portrait and had women coming in with dresses their Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers made and wore. Diffusion at the camera lens figured heavily into this and most commerially made diffustion filters didn't cut it, so I had two solutions.

One was that "graduated" set of Cokin diffusion filters I mentioned in a post above and on the Mamiya RB 67 I didn't even have to use Cokin's filter holder, the square filters four corners would "grab" the ribbing on the inside of the Mamiya RB lenses 77mm rubber hood.

The second solution was to purchase the 150mm Soft Focus lens for the RB 67. The lens elements formula was "tack sharp" when only the central portion was used, the outer portions deliberately had all the aberrations that can make a lens "unsharp" left in. So at f8 or smaller you had a lens that was as sharp as any medium format lens made for the RB (and some of them were more than plenty sharp enough). But at wider apertures the wider you opened the softer it got. And the lens came with a set of 3 control disks. Unscrew the whole front element assembly and put one of the disks over the back of the rear element in the group, then screw the whole front assembly back in.

These disks controlled the "mix" of central lens portion and outer portions that made the image. The strongest effect looked much like the result using the Tiffen Black Diffusion #3 (think I'll be trying to use the Tiffen more and more).

Thanks for the original tip!
Click to expand...

Right on Bruce - I was always a big fan of "Somewhere In Time" and that portrait was KEY. It had to look right, and whoever did it was quite skilled - it set the tone for much of the whole film.
 
Steve Kahn said:
Weren't the SLR Magic lenses rehoused security camera lenses?
Click to expand...

Fresno Bob said:
That was the rumour. I had the 12mm 1.6 hyperprime and came to that conclusion myself without hearing about that beforehand.
The distortion on the image and weird swirly bokeh reminded me heavily of cheap & nasty CCTV lenses.
Click to expand...

Their cheapo toy lenses were more-or-less CCTV lenses that had been adapted for m4/3 mounts, complete with swirly bokeh and vignetting due to the smaller image circle. But their new lenses (12mm F1.6, 25mm F0.95, 35mm T0.95 and 50mm T0.95 HyperPrime CINE) are not! Those are original optical designs that are fairly impressive in tests against other performers. In fact, Steve Huff implied that some of the hyperprimes (the high end models not to be confused with the toy lenses) were a bit sharper than the Leica lenses he compared them too.
Andrew at EOSHD felt the same. Don't lump these into the same group as cctv- their modern coatings and the like make them arguably more desirable than FD lenses in some ways, however each has a distinct look. FDs are a great value for the money, but the rare ones that approach a $1k street value might not offer more than an SLR Magic or Voit at a similar price point.
 
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