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What tecniques do you use to focus alt. MF glass on the NEX 7?

philber

Member
I thought that both of my Leica 35's seemed fine (35 'lux asph and 35 summarit). But perhaps I wasn't critical enough.
I just briefly tried a Leica M 35 Summicron, and it has some corners issues until F:4.0. Pretty much as was reported with the Zeiss ZM 35 f:2.0.

As concerns focusing, the viewfinder plus loupe plus peaking gives me an almost 100% score at getting the focusing right. Not as pretty to view as an optical viewfinder, but it delivers big time!
 
V

Vivek

Guest
I think the last of the old designs was probably the 28 elmarit (which was released with the M8). . . . I'm sure the work they did on that suggested to them that very steep angles of light were not a fab idea with digital sensors.

all the best
Thanks.:)

When Leica themselves have moved away from the old designs, I see little point in splitting hair about how NEX X behaves vs NEX Y. ;)
 

bugsbugs

New member
I am using NEX5 with a NEX-M adaptor which also has the macro function. It's works great with my Leica lens which convert my 35/2 from 0.7m min focus to 0.2m.

I tried to attach some sample here, first one is the normal min focus distance, and the 2nd one activated the macro function.

Focus peaking & enlarging to 10x works fine for me when doing the focusing.
 

Joe S

New member
At first glance, my 35mm Summicron ASPH seemed to work fine with the NEX7, but more than the trace amounts of magenta corners, I'm concerned with edge sharpness.

An otherwise perfect lens on the M8, I'm getting sharpness falloff from center on the NEX7. I don't know if the high pixel count is being hard on the 100% crops, or the 35 Summicron has mild field curvature, or there is something to the Zeiss Nasse Distagon paper that describes the sensor filter thickness shifts focus to greater distances at the edges thereby appearing to be field curvature. At any rate, I can sharpen the edges a little by focusing for the edges which is back from infinity a bit.
I was looking at a copy of Ansel Adams "Moonrise" recently and noticed that there was some softness on one of the crosses in the low right corner. Too bad he didn't have better equipment to help him make a really effective print.
 

philber

Member
I can now confirm that my Zeiss ZM 35 f:2.0 has no issues whatsoever with my NEX 7. I tried colour shift, and haven't found any. I looked for corner softness, and couldn't find any, even at infinity wide open, contrary to what has been reported by others. In my case, at infinity wide open, sharpness is a bit less than in the centre stopped down, as is illumination. That is the case with pretty much all lenses, and has nothing to do with NEX 7 issues.
Furthermore, my experience with NEX corner issues is that magenta fringing is the first problem to appear, and corner softness "only" happens in more severe cases. This converges with the fact that pics from lenses such as ZM 18 can be cleaned up in Cornerfix, which takes care of colour but can do nothing is the corners are mushy. A similar situation has been reported (but I haven't verified that yet) with the CV 12 and Elmar 24. So an issue with corner softness on ZM 35 f:2.0 wide open, but not stopepd down, but no magenta shift, is not congruant with this experience.
One observation which might or might not explain matters. On my camera, I use a Voigtländer M-mount-to-E-mount adapter. My ZM 35 is the only one of 7 lenses where infinity is right on the infinity hard stop. The 6 others reached infinity before the focus ring reached the hard stop. So an adapter just a tad different from this one might not let the lens reach infinity wide open, with corners showing it the most, and all righting itself with more DOF when stopping down. Just a guess.
 

kit laughlin

Subscriber Member
In the meantime I got a NEX 5N and the EVF from a fellow member here; and I have teamed it with the Hawk's adapter mounting the MS Perar 35/3.5, just to see how the EVF is, and how hard it is to focus, etc.

I have ordered a NEX 7 as a result—I think this adapter plus the Perar is the combo (on the 7) that I have been looking for as a go-anywhere one-lens kit.
 
Kit,

As many have already said, focus peaking is mostly a joy on the NEX. I just shot a concert at the SPIN Magazine party during sxsw (huge music event here in Austin, TX) with Monza's C/Y Zeiss 50mm 1.4 on my NEX 7 and the keeper rate was way up there. Basically shot at f/2.8 on moving subjects and nailed just as many as I would have with my 5D and several ran on their website (hopefully one in print as well).

Incredible detail and dynamic range, but that is another topic...don't fear the peaker. ;)
 

kit laughlin

Subscriber Member
Thanks, SP; I agree about peaking—I have used it on pro. video cameras for years. The EVF is very good on the 5N, but has (for me) better ergonomics on the 7.

Good to hear about your shoot with Monza's 50/1.4, too: that's a very nice EFOV on an APS-C sensor, isn't it?
 
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