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I am looking forward to the full frame 35mm DSLR.

Recently I heard that most high performance 35mm lenses did not keep
their reputation when used on digital body. How true is this? What is
"most"? > 50%? <50%? Is it true that the prime lenses are more so
(because they are digital ignorant "old" formula).

Could Zeiss's new RF be viewed as a way to admit this on their Contax-G
series?

Also, from the explanation I heard, the rangefinder would suffer more
of this type of problem. Anyone who has insight understnading on Leica
M care to comment?

35mm DSLR's momentum is based on the well established system of 35mm
lenses and accessories, or is based on the assumption of this. Does
this assumption still hold?

wrote:
>I am looking forward to the full frame 35mm DSLR.
>
> Recently I heard that most high performance 35mm lenses did not keep
> their reputation when used on digital body. How true is this? What is
> "most"? > 50%? <50%? Is it true that the prime lenses are more so
> (because they are digital ignorant "old" formula).
>
> Could Zeiss's new RF be viewed as a way to admit this on their
> Contax-G series?
>
> Also, from the explanation I heard, the rangefinder would suffer more
> of this type of problem. Anyone who has insight understnading on Leica
> M care to comment?
>
> 35mm DSLR's momentum is based on the well established system of 35mm
> lenses and accessories, or is based on the assumption of this. Does
> this assumption still hold?

You have a lot of possible issues.

First if you are looking at true full frame 35mm I assume you are
talking about a dSLR that has a full 35mm size sensor. If that is the case
then the lens must cover the exact same area as it would in a film SLR. The
potential differences include the issue of digital vs film and the angle of
the light reaching the sensor vs film. I don't know if either is a real
issue.

If you are talking about most dSLR's they use a reduced sensor size, so
a standard 35mm lens would be cropped. Only part of the possible image
would be recorded meaning less angle of view and less total information
recorded. The usual relationship is about 1:1.6

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

wrote:
> I am looking forward to the full frame 35mm DSLR.
>
> Recently I heard that most high performance 35mm lenses did not keep
> their reputation when used on digital body. How true is this? What is
> "most"? > 50%? <50%? Is it true that the prime lenses are more so
> (because they are digital ignorant "old" formula).

Not true at all for the lenses I have experience with.
I use Canon. When Canon went to the EOS lens mount, they
chose a very large mounting ring opening, and that reduces
possibility of vignetting or other restrictions on lens design.
If there is a camera with a small mounting ring (like the very
old exactas), the lens mount could cause limitations.
Performance has been excellent in my experience. I believe this is
true also of Nikon, as friends with Nikon equipment have never
indicated any such problem.

I have more than a dozen lenses personally, ranging from 24mm f/2.8
to 500 mm f/4 L IS and have never seen an issue with lens performance
between film and digital. The only lenses that will not field the full
field are the new digital specific lenses (generally very short
focal lengths), so if you purchase them, you may not be able to use
them in the future. In fact, the Canon EOS-S lenses do not work
on the 1D Mark II body (1.3 factor). EOS-S lenses only work on
1.6 factor bodies.

I've also used other lenses at work and from friends, and have never
seen one that had a performance problem with digital.

Roger Clark
Photos, digital info at: http://www.clarkvision.com

>EOS-S lenses only work on 1.6 factor bodies.

They don't work on my 10D, I believe they only work on the 300D, 20D and
350D.

> I am looking forward to the full frame 35mm DSLR.

You can buy one today from Canon, a new 16 Mpix 1Ds M II for $8,000 or
used 11 Mpix 1Ds for about half that. Or the recently discontinued
Kodak 14n/c models.

>Recently I heard that most high performance 35mm lenses did not
>keep their reputation when used on digital body. How true is this?

I have a 1Ds and several "high performance 35 mm lenses" in the L
series, including 70-200 f/2.8 and f/4 L's, 180 L macro, 300 f/4 L, 400
f/5.6 L and 500 f/4 L IS and can assure you that there are no problems
with digital with any of these lenses.

Bill

one of the unsung beauties of the Canon system is the tilt-shift lenses
(45mm, 90mm & 24mm)! I have perspective control while other
photographers using $30k Phase One and Leafs on, say, a Mamiya 645 or a
Hasselblad do not!

"jojo" <> wrote:

> one of the unsung beauties of the Canon system is the tilt-shift lenses
> (45mm, 90mm & 24mm)! I have perspective control while other
> photographers using $30k Phase One and Leafs on, say, a Mamiya 645 or a
> Hasselblad do not!

Mamiya makes a shift (but not tilt) lens for the 645 (in the useful 50mm
focal length), and the Hartblei shift/tilt lenses can be used on a lot of MF
cameras. For tilt in the studio, I'd think you could put a digital back on
the Hassy Arc body or any of a variety of 6x9 view cameras with any lens you
pleased. A tad inconvenient for location work, though.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

jojo wrote:

> one of the unsung beauties of the Canon system is the tilt-shift lenses
> (45mm, 90mm & 24mm)! I have perspective control while other
> photographers using $30k Phase One and Leafs on, say, a Mamiya 645 or a
> Hasselblad do not!

On a mamiya there are several shift and tilt shift lenses to choose from,
especially if you consider all the ones in p-6 mount.
--

Stacey

fyi, the Hasselblad Arcbody is long disconitinued, and now the Flexbody
is too. I almost bought a Flexbody a few years back and then borrowed
one and found it very tedious to use. Now that Canon is up to 16
megapixels, I find little draw in the more expensive systems (and this
is coming from a long-time Hasselblad and Sinar user...)

Regards-
jo