pellicle
New member
Hi
while we're all killing time before the Olympus offering gets here I thought I'd ask if anyone else here thinks that having manual control of stop down to selected f-stop on the legacy lens adapters would be useful?
Cast your mind back to pre automated lenses (if you can) and you may recall that many old lenses had a ring on the front to allow full open focus then a quick rotate to "closed" to stop down for taking aperture.
While focusing on the G1 is not quite as dim as the older SLR's the viewfinder does indeed struggle with lower light. Combined with telephoto depth of field precise focus is sometimes a little cumbersome. Sure I use the zoom tool to confirm focus but it can get jittery (indoors available light) especially with anything longer on the camera (like even a 50mm [equating to a 100mm]).
I found myself focusing wide open, then stopping down and taking. Sometimes I disturbed the focus when I was doing this. I have some Olympus lenses which happen to have the DoF preview on the side of the lens, so I thought Hmm, why not stop down with that button?
I took out the screw which moves the stop down lever on the back of the camera and tried it. Works a treat!
Now I also have FD lenses which I'd like to operate this way. I was thinking that when mounting the adapter you have to carefully engage the stop down lever or it will stay open all the time. The lever is over on the right in the photo below.
I'd say that a nifty modification would be to place a small lever where the coupling pin is and be able to stop down prior to taking by hand. I find that critical focus of my longer lens (300mm) is tricky fully stopped down. Sure I can focus it, but placing the plane of focus just where I want it to be is harder, and the lens looks much nicer at f8 than f4 ...
Looking at my adapter there is a thread there which would make it easy for the maker to fit such a thing and make it operate smoothly.
I'm going to propose this to Ciecio7 who makes adapters and point him at this thread so he can get some idea if other users would find this hand
so, what ya reckon?
while we're all killing time before the Olympus offering gets here I thought I'd ask if anyone else here thinks that having manual control of stop down to selected f-stop on the legacy lens adapters would be useful?
Cast your mind back to pre automated lenses (if you can) and you may recall that many old lenses had a ring on the front to allow full open focus then a quick rotate to "closed" to stop down for taking aperture.
While focusing on the G1 is not quite as dim as the older SLR's the viewfinder does indeed struggle with lower light. Combined with telephoto depth of field precise focus is sometimes a little cumbersome. Sure I use the zoom tool to confirm focus but it can get jittery (indoors available light) especially with anything longer on the camera (like even a 50mm [equating to a 100mm]).
I found myself focusing wide open, then stopping down and taking. Sometimes I disturbed the focus when I was doing this. I have some Olympus lenses which happen to have the DoF preview on the side of the lens, so I thought Hmm, why not stop down with that button?
I took out the screw which moves the stop down lever on the back of the camera and tried it. Works a treat!
Now I also have FD lenses which I'd like to operate this way. I was thinking that when mounting the adapter you have to carefully engage the stop down lever or it will stay open all the time. The lever is over on the right in the photo below.
I'd say that a nifty modification would be to place a small lever where the coupling pin is and be able to stop down prior to taking by hand. I find that critical focus of my longer lens (300mm) is tricky fully stopped down. Sure I can focus it, but placing the plane of focus just where I want it to be is harder, and the lens looks much nicer at f8 than f4 ...
Looking at my adapter there is a thread there which would make it easy for the maker to fit such a thing and make it operate smoothly.
I'm going to propose this to Ciecio7 who makes adapters and point him at this thread so he can get some idea if other users would find this hand
so, what ya reckon?
