Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I was playing with my friend's GH1 who has variety of adapters. Two of which has caught my interest. They are the M-mount adapter for m4/3 and Cine-mount adapter for m4/3. It was so fun to play with those Cine lenses ... man oh man. Love the rendering, love the colours. Those old Cooke lenses are gorgeous.

I am now really interested in a m4/3 digicam with a built in EVF so I can focus the lenses without those stupid and ridiculously slow "peaking modes" offered by Sony and Ricoh. It seems like the GH series offered by Panasonic is a great deal. I can manually focus using the EVF as if it were an OVF. I would love to mount my M glass and Cine glass on my Nikon DSLR but I would need to get the KatzEye focusing screen which is about $150 dollars but the metering will be off by at least 1/3 of a stop. So it is a no no for me.

Having said all this. My question is, should I get a m4/3 with a built in EVF knowing it has a smaller sensor, or get a NEX-7/Fuji X-Pro 1 with a APS-C sensor or an old Leica M8.2 or wait and see what Leica comes out with later on the year. Yes, I can't afford an M9 and that's why I am considering other options. What is the best option in terms of a compact body witch maximizes my legacy lenses with the least amount of money? Mind you, just that little Novoflex adapter costs around $250

Thanks

There are cheaper Chinese adapter..much less than $250.

Thanks for the suggestion but I rather trust my lenses to a bona fide manufacturer. Made in China without German/Japanese/American/British/Korean quality control does not appeal to me ... LOL

I don't know about Panasonic (don't think they have it), by the Olympus u4/3 bodies will let you use the in-body image stabilization with legacy lenses. You just input the focal length.

Anyway, you want this then:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/6 ... ica_M.html

but maybe Made in China under Panasonic quality control.. lol...

Yes, get the Olympus OMD with 5-axis stabilization!

the NEX7 does have a built-in EVF and the reviews have been excellent so far

You are absolutely right Sir! I need to try it out with manual focus lenses. But, it will be hard to get one ...

The NEX-7's are trickling in... send me a PM if you want to fiddle with one and a few M-mount primes over a coffee.

I know that Aden and headshots had a few of them two weeks ago. check with them.

Also it is an amazing camera. I was interning at Sugino Studio and all the guys got some and we were playing around with them. Great IQ and surprisingly amazing high ISO performance

I've been a serious user of legacy glass for years. Based on my experience I would personally not use any camera body that does not have built in image stabilization.

Right now I've been using a Olympus E-P2 body with viewfinder VF-2. The new Olympus OM-D which has a built-in-viewfinder and newest generation sensor and sophisticated 5-axis image stabilization that is not offered by any other camera should start shipping in mid April.

Agree there..... Image stabilization helps a lot with these camera's / lenses.

Built-in IS is actually a lot less useful on the Mirrorless bodies, especially the newer NEX's with their electronic first curtain shutter. I've found I can handhold about a stop slower with the NEX-5N than I can with my A700 with built-in IS. Less in-camera vibration wins you a lot.

Also I wouldn't knock focus peaking, it makes manual focus with an EVF significantly more accurate without using magnification, there's a good reason why it was imported from the video world. And of course it can be disabled on both the Sony and Ricoh cameras if so desired. The Sony 2.4MP OLED EVF is significantly better than the Panasonic EVF's even without peaking enabled (the older Sony EVF in 1st-gen SLT's is comparable to the Panasonic). Ricoh uses the same display as Olympus IIRC, so performance is similar, it's smaller than the Sony or Panasonic's but crisper than all but the 2.4MP Sony.

If you're looking at M mount glass, the Ricoh GXR with an M module and the Sony NEX-5N are kings for performance, the NEX-7 is even better if you don't use anything wider than 35mm but it doesn't play well with many M mount lenses wider than 35mm. The GXR and 5N both have accessory EVF's, the 7 is built-in. The m43 bodies are better for adapting C mount lenses (as the sensor is smaller and thus more likely to get full coverage) or for using the excellent lineup of native lenses but less desirable for M lenses since you lose all the wide due to the crop factor. Overall Sony's E mount is the best for adaptation due to having the shortest register and thus the most leeway in building adapters. It also offers fully native coupling to A and EF mounts (via Sony and Conurus adapters), where m43 only has 4/3rds.

As a note I've owned the Panasonic G1, the NEX-5N and now shoot with the NEX-7. I adapt LTM/M, Contax/Yashica, M42 Takumar and Alpha lenses currently and have done Nikon, OM, and Pentax K in the past.

Less camera mass also results in greater hand induced vibration during an exposure when you are pressing the shutter button with your finger. I used to be able to handhold my Mamiya RZ67 at a lot slower shutter speeds than my Hasselblad 500CM due to its greater mass and hence the dampening effect it has on small vibrations.

Because mirrorless cameras are so small and light, egronomics, including grips for holding your camera steady and image stabilization whether in-camera or in-lens play a lot more important role in producing sharp images at slower shutter speeds. Thats what I've found based on my experience.

I find the VR lenses much better on the Nikon 1 system..... if there is no VR - then it gets shakey. That's been my experience, but then again, the 1 system isn't really true M4/3