what needs to be done? zeiss hologon

[drevil]

Its still a bit off the horizon, but i am eying with getting a monochrom and i am interested to adapt a zeiss hologon 16mm to it.

on ebay one can find serveral lenses which are already "modded"? to fit to the m mount.
if i would be getting a native hologon, what is needed to make it fit to the M mount?

best regards

mirko

 

[drevil]

noone?

 

[Godfrey]

The Contax G mount has to be removed, the base of the lens has to be machined, and a Leica M-mounting flange fitted. It's a manual scale-focus lens with no aperture mechanism, so there are no complications with the rangefinder.

Because the focal length is so short, the machining must be done to extreme precision. MS Optical in Japan were known for doing a good job of converting them.

I had one when I had my Contax G2 an age ago. It's a difficult lens to use due to the extreme wide angle and the deep inset into the body, and you need the matched graduated ND filter to have even illumination corner to corner.

That was on film. Frankly, I don't think it will work all that well with a digital sensor. I think the Voigtländer Heliar 15/4.5 Mark III that's just come out is a better bet for an ultrawide in this focal length range that will work well with a digital sensor.

G

 

[drevil]

ok so no diy job, the samples which can be found on the internet looking very promising, especially on the monochrom which i am eyeing with

 

[henningw]

I have a Leica Hologon which I bought in the 70's. It's 15mm but otherwise very similar to the Contax one. I can take pictures with it on the Monochrom, but the steep incident angle in the corners means there is extremely strong vignetting.

As Godfrey said: get the VC 15mm/4.5 v.3. Optically better, much reduced vignetting, faster and with focus coupling. Almost certainly cheaper as well.

I got the Hologon for photographing inside architectural models, where size, or rather lack of it was paramount. It worked very well, whereas my other 15mm option at the time, the 15mm Nikon lens, would have crushed parts of the models.

Henning