Posts Tagged ‘cameras’
Photography Rangefinder
Suggestions on Cheap Rangefinder Lenses for Sony NEX 5?
I'm planning on purchasing a Sony NEX 5 in the near future, and I saw some people using rangefinder lenses on their NEX's, and I thought maybe that would be a good idea.
So my question would what are some of the best rangefinders lenses under, say 1,000 dollars for landscape, and possibly portrait and street photography for those situations when I have to take pictures of my family, friends, or people in cities. My main photographic focus are landscapes though.
I saw the Voigtlander series of lenses seem pretty aggressively priced but I have next to no knowledge of Voigtlander's quality. Also, are there any potential problems I should watch out for when considering my rangefinder lens choices?
Thanks in advance, and please forgive me newbness to the photographic world.
EDIT: are there any good zooms too? Ideally, since I plan on traveling on foot a lot when taking pictures, the less necessary equipment the better.
Hi Justin,
Why would you want to buy "rangefinder lenses" for a camera like the NEX series?
The only possible advantage I can see is that some of the available range finder lenses are very "fast" (bright/have large apertures). But this should be evaluated carefully because the smaller "image gate" of the digital sensor probably acts as an aperture mask for lenses designed to make a larger image circle. In my experience this type of lens will not perform well on digital cameras until closed down at least 2~3 f/stops.
These SONY and similar, so called, E.V.I.L. (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) cameras are designed to use some of the newest most sophisticated digital lenses and already have reasonably priced choices that take advantage of the properties that make rangefinder type lenses desirable. The primary advantage of such lenses had been that they do not require the the large and unwieldy "reversed telephoto" designs for wide angle lenses needed for cameras with the large mirror boxes of reflex viewing systems. A big advantage of the NEX models is that they can use Zoom lenses which have not, as a general rule, been very practical on rangefinder type cameras because of the problems with getting an acceptable viewfinder image.
There is little, if any, advantage to using rangefinder telephoto lenses on these cameras and much of the advantage of Wide Angle Rangefinder Lenses will be lost because of the "crop factor" when using lenses designed for 35mm format on the smaller sensor of the NEX camera. A very wide 24mm rangefinder lens will be equivalent to a 36mm lens and a super wide 16mm lens would be required to get the 24mm equivalent).
Furthermore, because the properties of Digital Sensors are significantly different from those of Film, it is preferable to use lenses designed for digital sensors to get better image quality on digital cameras. Digital sensors perform better when light rays strike them in parallel alignment like this |-|-|-|-| while film, especially color film, works better when some light rays strike at somewhat oblique angles like this --|-/-/ because different layers of the emulsion have microscopic "offsets" that create very fine lines of chemical activity between emulsion layers, these show up in the processed film image as fine edges that give the image an appearance of greater sharpness. On a digital sensor the oblique rays are undesirable because in the "sensor well" these oblique light rays are lost or may cause subtle diffusion that degrades sharpness and image contrast.
Sony says that a Model LA-EA1 adapter can be used to mount lenses from their "Alpha" series of cameras on the NEX which may be a good additional source of lenses, although I have had a very hard time getting information on the adapter (Sony's web site is, IMO, absolutely woeful for trying to find & evaluate product choices) they provide plenty of options to purchase the basic models but little help to create anything with your own preferences. If you are seriously considering getting the NEX camera but are dissatisfied with the lens selection I would suggest looking at the Micro Four Thirds choices available, they have a readily available adapter to use Four Thirds lens designs for the Olympus & Panasonic lenses.
Hope that helps.
PHOTOVLOG LESSON2 - Rangefinders