Leica M to EOS adapter?

[oyang]

Adding glass to an adapter will necessarily change those characteristics, almost always for the worse, defeating the purpose of adapting the lens.

More simply: once you put additional glass behind your adapted lens, it's not the same lens any more.

OK; that makes sense. I may try it anyway for fun.

Considering the cost of a Leica M9, it almost seems worth getting a reasonably good digital camera for a few hundred dollars and reconfiguring it mechanically to get full frame use of Leica M lenses. It looks like the Sony NEC has a 1.5 crop factor; with some tinkering, could that be made to take full advantage without cropping?

 

[oyang]

Interesting thanks. Do you know if such adapters are available on the market?

I've scoured the internet and called several places; to my knowledge no one has made one.

 

[Arjuna]

It looks like the Sony NEC has a 1.5 crop factor; with some tinkering, could that be made to take full advantage without cropping?

The Sony NEX cameras, which are not SLR's, have a shorter flange-to-sensor difference than Leica M, so there are already adaptors available. They have a 1.5 crop factor because their sensors are smaller than 35 mm film - I don't think that there is any way around that. I think that what you want is a full frame, i.e. full 35 mm frame (~24mm x 36mm), sensor in a camera with a flange to sensor distance that is shorter than the Leica M registration, e.g. a mirror less camera, like the Sony NEX, but with a bigger sensor. You are not alone in wanting such a camera.

My summary of the previous replies:
1. the absence of any such adaptors strongly suggests that they are not economically practical.
2. given the optical difficulties in building such an adaptor, it seems likely that you would get better results, cheaper, by just buying a lens of the same focal length that is native to the system, i.e. if you have a Canon SLR, a Canon 50 mm lens is likely to perform as well or better on it as an adapted Leica 50 mm lens, for less money than what a competent adaptor would cost, not to mention the original cost of the Leica lens.

 

[oyang]

given the optical difficulties in building such an adaptor, it seems likely that you would get better results, cheaper, by just buying a lens of the same focal length that is native to the system, i.e. if you have a Canon SLR, a Canon 50 mm lens is likely to perform as well or better on it as an adapted Leica 50 mm lens, for less money than what a competent adaptor would cost, not to mention the original cost of the Leica lens.

Makes sense if you are purely interested in using a camera to its full advantage (e.g. the Canon SLR), but if one has a full set of nice vintage Leica M lenses and wants to take advantage of the unique properties of those lenses in digital format, obviously you need a way to rig a camera to use those lenses to full effect. Of course the M9 does it, but what's the fun in that???

 

[LCT]

Yes aside from the M9, the only way to use M lenses digitally is to get crop bodies so far: R-D1, M8, M8.2 or mirrorless cameras like the Ricoh GXR M. For full frame, i use my R lenses on a 5D1 personally.

 

[mazor]

LCT don't forget the Sony Nex 5n, another crop mirrorless camera that works excellent with M glass and with a helicoid adapter, you can get focus down to less than 1 inch for some lens.