Add Your Canon EF and EF-S Lenses to M43

Interesting twist on adding lenses to your micro-4/3 system, active electronic lens adapters.

Having had Canon (D)SLRs for a long time, the lenses I own collected dust for the better part of the last years.
Lately, I learned that some manufacturers created active EF/EF-S to M4/2 adapters, allowing to control the aperture and the autofocus of Canon compatible lenses.
So, finally, I bought a second hand specimen of such an adapter. With the adapter in house, it was time to test it with various combinations of lenses and cameras.

Here are my first experiences:

1. Panasonic Lumix GF5
• Canon 50mm f/1.8 II - autofocus problematic
• Canon 18-55 EF-S kit lens - works perfectly
• Canon 35-80 EF (film) kit lens - works perfectly
• Sigma UC 70-210 EF (film) lens - total fail!
• Sigma 70-300 macro EF - works perfectly
2. Panasonic Lumix G3
• Canon 50mm f/1.8 II - OK
• Canon 18-55 EF-S kit lens - works perfectly
• Canon 35-80 EF (film) kit lens - works perfectly
• Sigma UC 70-210 EF (film) lens - sort of OK, focus might fail, but will grab in a second attempt
• Sigma 70-300 macro EF - works perfectly
3. Olympus OM-D EM5
• Canon 50mm f/1.8 II - good
• Canon 18-55 EF-S kit lens - works perfectly
• Canon 35-80 EF (film) kit lens - not great, but works, aperture displays weird behaviour
• Sigma UC 70-210 EF (film) lens - focuses only on the wide end, aperture weird
• Sigma 70-300 macro EF - works perfectly
4. Olympus E-PM2
• Canon 50mm f/1.8 II - good
• Canon 18-55 EF-S kit lens - works perfectly
• Canon 35-80 EF (film) kit lens - OK-ish
• Sigma UC 70-210 EF (film) lens - focuses on the wide end, aperture weird, shuts down during zooming
• Sigma 70-300 macro EF - works perfectly

Conclusions

The old film EOS (EF) lenses are essentially unusable. Maybe the Canon could be used on the E-PM2. IBIS wont work properly, since the old lenses don't communicate the focal length correctly.

The Nifty-Fifty struggles with the older camera, with the newer ones, it seems to be doing OK and is a usable portrait lens with great bokeh!

The cheap 18-55 seems to be making a great all purpose walk about zoom. The focal length is communicated correctly, so Olympus' IBIS will work fine.

Similar to the Canon 18-55, the Sigma 70-300 macro will communicate the focal length correctly. Autofocus could be better, but, this is a special purpose lens on MFT, reflecting an all purpose wildlife lens in an affordable and portable package.

Would it be worth to buy such an adapter and buy those lenses? I don't think so. Focusing is just too slow. However, if the lenses are already in your possession, such an adapter might be very useful to you.

Is MFT (m4/3) Dead?!

Lately, some folks posted videos declaring the death of the MFT (micro four thirds) system. Well, I do have a different opinion on that.

The usual arguments:

• MFT got a smaller sensor than other camera systems
• MFT has not developed any further
• neither Olympus nor Panasonic provided a break-through lately

Guess, what, I do agree with the above statements. However, I don't care about those either. To understand what I am coming from, I do shoot with APS-C systems too: Samsung NX and Fuji X. Followers of my blog might already know that...

Here are some of my reasons why I believe MFT is just at the beginning, rather the end:

• a smaller sensor means that lenses can be smaller too, not only in focal length, but also in dimensions
• shorter focal lengths allow for wider apertures at equivalent focal lengths
• focal length scales cubic for volume, i.e. bag space - MFT lenses are so much smaller, you average bag will hold a lot more fast primes that in any other system (despite the Pentax Q)
• if it ain't broke, don't fix it! ISO400 in 16Mpix MFT is just fine, use ISO400 135 film will get you a granularity of about 4Mpix
• does Mpix count really matter?
• Olympus offers in-body stabilisation on all bodies, Panasonic on some, maybe Panasonic can improve here (thinking old glass)

Surely, the 2 other systems I favour have an edge beyond the MFT system.

The Samsung NX1, which is the best mirror-less camera out there presently, is just as big as any Canikon Pro DSLRs. With an APS-C BSI 28Mpix sensor, it actually (b)eats any Canikon system in its price range. The lenses a superior too, however, the price, weight and size are premium too. My NX1 with the standard S-zoom rarely moves beyond the wall of my house, due to the bulk and weight.

The Fujifilm X system is somewhat lighter and smaller. The X-system competes in the market of fast primes. However, there are only a few interesting lenses available, and due to the larger sensor, the lenses are bigger too. So, less will make it into a bag, for a higher price however.

Consequently, I do believe that many hobbyists will appreciate the form factor of the MFT system. There is no other system out there to provide that many possibilities (options) in a portable setup whilst maintaining as much quality.

Lenses in MFT are small, lightweight and relatively cheap. And that is the success factor of the MFT system over any other system presently available.

Free Camera

Off I went, shopping, for 2nd hand gear again.

I am a wide-angle guy, at least this is what I love for use in street-photography. Having browsed the local stores for a while, I found a Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 (first generation) for just shy of 200 Euros. Actually, the lens was not listed individually; to be precise, the lens was not listed at all. What was listed was a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3, which the 14mm lens attached.
Interestingly enough, another store had the lens itself listed for 200 Euros, i.e. the same price.

You guessed it, I took the one that came with a free camera attached.

The use of the 14mm lens is rather obvious, it will go into my OM-D outfit; this is what I bought it for.

Now, what can be done with the Lumix GF3? The GF3 is a first generation MFT camera with a 12 Mpix sensor. The camera is trimmed to be as small as possible, minimal controls. It is not meant for the prosumer, that's for sure. At least is shoots in RAW, that's a plus.
At its time, the GF3 was the smallest interchangeable lens camera. That title was taken by Pentax with their Q-system not too long thereafter. However, that might actually set the theme of my use of the GF3.

Some of my favorite street-photos where taken with an Olympus PEN E-PM2 and an Olympus 15mm body cap lens (BLC-15). In comparison to the GF3, the E-PM2 is relatively big. Consequently, it might be actually a good idea to fit a BCL-15 to the GF3. After all, the 15mm BCL would be close to the 14mm lens I closed the deal for.
Of course, the GF3 needs to be set to shoot w/o lens, since the BCL-15 does not have electronics built in. Other settings might need revision as to get the best out of the combo.
First shots promise big time fun using the GF3 with a BCL-15.

C-Mount Lenses for MFT Cameras

This topic can be found online all over the place. Cheap and cheerful C-mount video lenses on micro-4/3 (MFT) systems. In particular BMPCC users seem t love those lenses.
Some months ago, I bought my first C-mount lens, a 25mm f/1.4, which was fun to play with for a day, but quickly found its way in the bag to stay there.

Recently, I came across 2 more lenses which caught my attention, ad 16mm f/1.6 and a 35mm f/1.7.

Here is a photo of my C-mount lenses, the MFT adapter and 2 macro-rings, which came with the 35mm lens.

16mm, 25mm and 35mm lenses, respective adapter and macro-rings

The 35mm Fujian immediately became my favorite. The 70mm equivalent fast glass makes a beautiful portrait lens! At f/1.7, the aperture is perfectly round, creating wonderful Bokeh-balls. Down to f/4, the aperture stay reasonably round. At f/5.6 a slight zig-zagy-ness crawls in, which stay down to f/16, which is the official end of the scale. However, the lens can be stopped down further, with the aperture getting more and more rectangular.
The adaptation of the Fujian, using the adapter ring shown above, was no problem at all. Actually, the moves beyond the infinity focus.

The 25mm I did discuss previously on this blog, so I will skip this particular lens here.

Finally, the 16mm Cosmicar... Honestly, I had my issues with this lens!
It is clearly visible from the image above, the Comsicar is the biggest of them all. Not sure why the lens was build that way, since the front-element is hidden deeply inside the huge lens-hood.
Using the shown adapter, the Cosmicar could be focused on extremely proximate objects only, meaning, it did not screw all the way into the adapter, I figure.
At this point in time, I thought I just wasted €20, made my peace with it a put the lens aside.
For an unapparent reason, I picked the thing up again and had a look if it could not be modified (to serve whatever purpose... e.g. put in front of a webcam, for long-exposure astro-stuff.
When looking at the back of the lens, it seems that the rear lens group can be unscrewed. There is not actual image of the unscrewed lens group, sorry! The process of unscrewing the group took a long way, which gave me the idea, that the group could be fixed at a place where the lens would focus on my MFT sensor. After some trial and error, I found the infinity focus position.
For the time being, said infinity focus position is fixed by small stripes of gaffer's tape stuffed in the threads.

Cosmicar 16mm f/1.6 with displaced rear lens group

Of course, I could have dropped in a bit of Loctite, to secure the position... however, I am not yet sure if I want things to be like this, hence, I decided for a temporary solution.
Optically, and in terms of handling, the lens is fine. The equivalent 32mm are too short for comfort, however. The lens shows black vignetting, indicating that the image is too small for the sensor.
Olympus added a "digital tele-converter" function to their E-PM2, which I used for the tests. Here, the lens displays a decently flat image over the entire frame. When shooting in RAW, this does not help at all, in contrast to shooting video.
The Cosmicar being a very smooth lens what controls are concerned, will probably be the best of the bunch for video work, provided Olympus' digital tele-converter is used.
For use with the BMPCC, which is provided with a smaller sensor, this lens my just be the hero... the 20 bucks hero that is.

Haul the World Through a Pin ...

... aaah, guess I got that all wrong.

Well, it is all about pinhole photography, seeing the word through a hole, a very very very tiny hole, aka a pinhole.

You have seen me experimenting with this before. Yet, I am still on the lower end of the learning curve.
BTW, picture shown here are taken with an Olympus PEN mini2 (E-PM2) using a Pinwide.

More of less the original shot (I increased the exposure digitally in UFRaw)

Yes, a pinhole is very very dark. Not only is it very dark, it challenges the photographer in 2 more ways:

1. Due to the heavy vignetting of the pinhole, the framing has to be spot on. Any attempt to crop will be clearly visible, in particular when using color.
2. There is a no Bokeh whatsoever, isolating the subject has to be done by framing.

Here, the highlights a dropped, the shadows brought up, whites a bit up and blacks a tad down

After bringing up the shadows, everything changes. Of course, we want to maintain contrast, hence, the blacks went down, etc. etc. ... you know all about this.
Now it is clear what kind of color vignetting we are dealing with. Some may like this effect, I am personally not so sure about it!
+

Strong color adjustments

What is really disturbing is the overruling purple fringing. In the image above, I desaturated purple entirely. To bring up the colors inside the flowers, I had to increase orange and yellow. I also lowered magenta a bit.

Well, I am still not convinced!
Therefore, it all had to go into black and white.

Converted the above to B&W

Although the last color image was sort of OK, I like the B&W much more.

And now to the strength on the pinhole. The general softness of such an objective set aside, everything in this photo is in focus. Even the branches of the trees in the far background are clearly visible, just like the details in the foreground.

There is a lot potential for artistic photography in pinholes. To get it out is just another story and hard work in post-processing.

The Perfect Portrait Lens for MFT?

About this lens, you have seen me writing previously, the Cosina COSINON f=55 F=1.4 M42 screw-mount lens. These lenses are presently on Ebay for really really cheap. I wonder if people actually know what they are selling. Actually I bought 2, just because... well, not really, one for photography, one for astro-photography (check out my bellow-cam, somewhere in this blog).

So, this is how the lens looks like:

Cosina COSINON 55/1.4

You're probably not so much interested in how the lens look , but rather what the importance of such a lens is in the digital motorized auto-focus zoom era.
Well, with some cameras, manual focus can actually be quicker than auto-focus. As to zoom, walking back and forth, given the environment allows for this, is of course slower. Additionally, to compress the background, a lens change has to happen.

On the positive, this lens set me back about €30,- only. For an f/1.4, that is nothing! Right, to make it work, e.g. on the Olympus E-PM2, I had to invest some more dough to get myself an adapter. However, those adapters can be found on Ebay too, where they are shipped from the Far East for free (provided one is patient enough).
The adapter M42-MFT (micro four-thirds) came by mail today. Hence, the possibility to mount the COSINON lens on the Olympus PEN mini2 for the first time.

Due to the lack of a model, I took a portrait of a brick in a wall of my house.

 

scaled brick portrait @ f/1.4

Nothing done to the image other than converting from RAW to PNG and scaling it down.
Have a look at the nice bokeh in both, the foreground and the background... and this very shallow island of sharpness cutting through the frame.

Speaking of, this is a crop of the center line, in original resolution.

center of the image, original resolution

Yes, there is some color fringing going on. As I said, there is no "correction" applied whatsoever.


Now to some technical details, some of my readers are potentially interested in.

The focal length of about 55mm would be referred to as a "normal" when used on a full frame camera (36mm x 24mm), since this is essentially how we see.
The MFT's (micro 4/3) sensor size has a crop factor of about 2. Meaning the field of view on such a sensor would be equivalent to a field of view of a 110mm lens on a full frame sensor.
110mm equivalent falls spot on the realm of portrait lenses, because such a focal length gives enough background compression and still allows to be relatively close to the "subject".

In terms of brightness, we loose two stops! Meaning, mounted in front of an MFT sensor, the lens is now acting as a 110/2.8, relative to full frame gear.

However, there still is a difference between a 110/2.8 used on full frame and a 55/1.4 used on MFT, and an important difference that is! The depth of field!
The depth of field is only dependent on the distance between the lens and the sensor, i.e. the focus distance. Although less of the light that went into the lens from the object side is actually falling onto the sensor (essentially a fourth only), the focal condition did not change at all! The ratio of the distances between the object and the sensor are identical, disrespectfully of how much light falls onto the sensor integrally.

It seems there is a disadvantage of loosing two stops of light.
I don't think so! In portrait photography, we have control over all our light(s). In a studio, we will just have our (three) speedlites at full power rather than quarter power. OK, some recycle time is lost here...
In bright sunlight, there is even an advantage. How often did you experience that you had to use a 3 stop neutral density filter to be able to shoot wide open (depth of field)?! You might have even missed the shot, due to a lack of a neutral density filter, when metering resulted in s/2000 @ f/11 when using ISO 50. There goes your Bokeh! OK, in this example, loosing 2 stops will get us to f/5.6 only, still a little on the deep side, in terms of depth of field. However, adding a 3 stops ND-filter here, will enable us to open to f/2.

Yep, that was a little technical... I admit!

Confused?!

Maybe mathematics will help. Photography has a lot to do with mathematics! I will backup the following statements by suggestions to experiment you can perform with your very own DSRL.

When the focal length of the objective is doubled, the subject's image will be twice as tall/wide on the sensing surface.
Experiment: Set the zoom of your camera to 25mm and place yourself such than an object fills the viewfinder left to right. Now change your zoom to 50mm. You will see that one half of the object now fills the viewfinder left to right. => a factor of 2 in zoom leads to a factor 1/2 in one dimension of the field of view.
That means that the same amount of light is now spread on twice the width.
That also means that the same amount of light is spread on twice the height!
Therefore, a single pixel of a sensor will only receive 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 the amount of light, i.e. 2 stops of light.

What the depth of field is concerned, this is a 1-demensional entity, since this is only determined by the ratios of lengths along the optical axis. This dimension, however, is perpendicular to the dimensions (width and height) of the sensor. Thereby, not being influenced by the crop size whatsoever.
You may want to perform a boring experiment with focal distances, object distances and f-numbers... I would not recommend this. It's linear, hence, the changes are less visible and the entire exercise seems a bit boring to be honest.


There you have it. A very cheap legacy lens, bough from the interwebs, can be very convenient when used with modern digital cameras.

The BCL Arrived!

Having the wallet already open, further desires resulted in ordering more fun stuff for EVIL MFT (MFT=micro four thirds) cameras.

To match my LoFi-photo needs, I could not resist to order

• a "Body Cap Lens" (15mm f/8) and 
• a Wanderlust Pinwide (MFT pine-hole).

The BCL (Body Cap Lens) was delivered today. Of course, first thing to do was put it on the camera!
The quality provided by the 15mm 1:8.0 is fair, even better than fair. Some call it the worst lens ever... I kinda disagree, respectfully.
First of all, you have to watch bang for bug.
Additionally, you need to understand what this lens is good for, in order to appreciate its existence.
This lens is essentially fixed focus. OK, one can tweak the focus from narrow to infinity a bit, however, the lens also is designed as a f/8.0, thereby resembling an "F eight an be there" lens!
This means, the is no time to wait for auto-focus at all! If, as a street-photographer, you want to be sure to have your frame sharp, just put the lever somewhere between close and infinity, and you will be fine.
Of course such a simple lens has got its shortcomings. There is some severe vignetting going on.
Have a look at a photo I shot with the BCL-1580:

Olympus BCL-1850 / Olympus E-PM2

Here comes the nice thing about this lens. It can be used as a very quick shooting street lens on cameras recording in RAW. Who cares about vignetting? In RAW, we can so easily get rid of it by applying lens corrections.

A very quick fix with RawTherapee can correct a lot... with some more care, one may get much further:

treated in RawTherapee as to remove vignetting

Actually, I am so excited about the Body Cap Lens 15mm that I ordered a Body Cap Lens 9mm fish-eye at the local photo-gear dealer.

The PINWIDE will certainly take a little longer to arrive at my place. I am really curious about using a pin-hole with a modern high-res image sensor. I can't wait to test the "live bulb" mode with said pin-hole!

I hope to receive the ordered stuff over the next 2 weeks (±).
Of course I will obtain an M42-adapter, for using my legacy glass with the MFT-system.

A new era started, the era of me using EVIL IBIS cameras!