Ricoh Forum

Blow-in wrote:...then acquire some cheapish lenses to give a wide to...

Richard

Richard I don't know how wide you want, but if it is anything like 24mm or 28mmm equivalent I want you to consider the following:
From my experience imo legacy SLR lenses don't offer good wide angle coverage on APS-C sensor cams. There is a well respected Vivitar 3.5/17mm ( which also comes as Tokina ), the 20mm Flektogon and 20mm Mirs, but all are quite big, heavy, not cheap and imo not all that great after all. Pentax M4/20 is small and so is the good Zuiko OM 3.5/21mm which already is real costly, as is Nikkor 20mm and even more so OM f2/21mm.

In short, they may cost a bit dearer again than most though not all mentioned above, but for the wide end consider the tiny and very well performing Voigtlaender Heliar f4/15mm and Skopar f4/21mm.

Right on Kuuan. Mirrorless APS-C were ment for compactness and using FF huge 17mm to get eq. 25mm or even more crazy FF15mm is contradictory midly said. Small cameras for small lenses. That`s why VC 15/4,5 is the best buy to get decent wide on APS-C. As an architect I wished that Cosina/Voightlander made a compact 10mm with f:5,6 in m-mount covering APS-C . They do have 12mm for FF a bit pricy though an much bigger in m-mount version then 15mm. As said Samyang makes a compact fish-eye 8/2.8 for mirrorless but they come in Nex and NX mounts. I bought one convinced that somehow I can converse it to m-mount, haven`t given it a real try yet. As to FF SLR to m adopters I think the best value stars with fast 50mm, most of them cheap and reasonably good quality. Still there`s nothing like RF 50mm lenses like Summicron 50/2 , Canon RF 50/1.8 or for real compact set-up a collapsible Elmar 50/3.5 or bit bigger Hexar 50/2.

Kuuan & Stanis,

Thanks for your advice. I totally agree about keeping it all compact but I think I'm going to have to wait a while before buying more camera gear. Food for thought though.

Richard

Blow-in wrote:Kuuan & Stanis,

Thanks for your advice. I totally agree about keeping it all compact but I think I'm going to have to wait a while before buying more camera gear. Food for thought though.

Richard

I should have added that at the wide end the A12 28 (18mm FF equivalent) is hard to beat for value for money if you can find one 2nd hand. I already have the A12 50 (33 mm FF) and if only Ricoh had made an A12 80 I'd have gone that route rather than consider the A12 M.

Richard

"if only Ricoh had made an A12 80 I'd have gone that route rather than consider the A12 M."

Well, the A16 gets that job done, even if a brighter aperture at the long end would be desirable. And at the short end, it gives an angle of view which as Stanis and Kuaan point out, you have to carry a big, heavy lens to match unless your pockets are deep. All in all, the A16 is a good unit whose weight and bulk make more sense when you also consider its flexibility.

Plus you get autofocus, in-camera distortion correction and a competent video mode.

I realise these bonus extras are somewhat irrelevant to the spirit of this thread though.

Unfortunately I have also just succumbed to a pristine Pentax M 75-150mm zoom for a very low price.

As discussed above, I "get" the whole small lens for small camera thing and I know that what with what I have spent already I could have almost bought the Voigtlander 21mm. And ultimately this may be where I end up after playing with all the lens combinations for a while and finding out what works best for me and what I want to shoot. I figure the good thing is that if that day arrives I can sell all the other stuff without a huge loss as they seem to hold their admittedly low prices fairly well.

Someone please tell me that the very cheap, near mint Tokina 500/8 mirror telephoto I've been offered is too stupid for words to use on the GXR and that without a tripod I will never shoot an in-foucus, non-blurred image with it - please!!!

Cheers

Rohan

OK. Here's a few of the first weekends shots from fooling around with my new GXR M Mount and my little collection of manual focus SLR lenses.

Manual focusing is something I assume I'll get better at over time.







Then on the weekend whilst visting my parents my mother pulls out my fathers old camera from the garage to see if it's of any interest to me.

Agfa Ambi Silette with 35mm, 50mm and 90mm lenses. The Focal Flange Distance of this camera at 43.5mm is great enough to accomodate a home made lens adapter for the GXR M Mount.

Something to do on a rainy day maybe - I'll have to look into this. Would these lenses be worth the trouble ? Internet searches seem to indicate that they have good (not great optics). Nicely made little things though.

this Agfa Optima Lenses are quite nice,for BW (made 1960 to go !)
it is an other suite of lenses Agfa,for Agfa ambiflex,& Agfa Selectaflex,BAI mount,Color_coated,very small,very heavy,quite nice !
it's a 3,4-35mm_2,8-50mm_2-50mm (6 elements)_3,4-90mm_4-135mm_4,5-180mm (i have this lenses)
BUT is'not adapter-ring ! nothing!

Hi autochrome.

The lenses are 35mm/f4 color-ambion, 50mm/f2.8 color-solinor and 90mm/f4 color-telinear.

I think I will try to build an adapter just to see anyway. I've ordered a cheap Leica M mount lens flange to try and build it on.

I'll post images if I can get it all together.

So I went looking for an inexpensive wide angle lens to use and have stumbled upon something that seems to do a pretty good job for the money.

It is currently cheap (under $40 generally for an excellent example), although was relatively expensive when new ($600-$700 in Australia at least).

It's not the smallest lens around , not a prime, requires a lens adapter with aperture control (around $30), but is very light due to its plastic construction and has reasonable optics. Focus feel isn't great and the focus throw is around 80 degrees.

It is a Nikkor IX 20-60mm f3.5-5.6 zoom designed for the Nikon APS SLR's (Pronea) and currently seems to be of no use to anyone else for anything in the world of photography.

It gives around a 60-62 degree horizontal angle of view which I think relates to it ultimately being around 30-32mm in focal length when used on the M mount. I certainly is wider than the 24mm Pentax M lens I have.

Cheers

Rohan