M lens with S1RII Lumix

[ALAIN]

Hello,
I just received a 500mm 5.6 Sigma Pro L and I'm about to buy a 1.4x extender and a Lumix S1RII.
I have a range of Leica lenses: 18, 35F2, 50F2.5, 135apo M, and 180apo R.
The S1RII has been out for a relatively short time, but perhaps some users can already share their impressions of using M lenses on this camera body, in photos, but why not also in videos?
Thanks in advance

 

[Babylonia]

In general, M lenses on a Panasonic camera, specially the short focal length lens models, are not suited for it.
As the micro lenses array above pixels of the Panasonic used sensors, is not optimum for using Leica M lenses.
Specially to borders and corners, they suffer by quality by the wrong optical characteristics.

Only real Leica camera's of the L-mount family (S2 - S3...) are optimised for using M-lenses
By having specialised micro lenses above the sensor. And combination of thickness of sensor cover glass.

Much can be found e.g. at testing of lenses at e.g. Fred Miranda community.

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/board/55/

Check results of lenses using Sony camera models. That suffer more or less from the same "bad" characteristic.
E.g. that is the reason a brand like "Voigtländer" offer lenses specially with extra correction for models used for Nikon Z, or Sony.
Different for M lenses used at (digital) Leica optimised camera's.

 

[ALAIN]

Thank you for that !
Indeed, I noticed these drifts with an A7R a while ago, but starting at 50mm and not too wide open, the results were interesting.
I recently used a 135mm apo M on an X2D (Mount Fuji showed up and I quickly took what I had with me and, aside from the vignetting, the result is excellent with Hasselblad's unique colorimetry.
I agree with you that the 18 is to be excluded on the Pana, but for longer focal lengths, I would have liked to find real tests on the internet...

 

[DonaldM]

I don’t buy the micro lens myth. That would mean that normal L lenses on an SL camera would have to count in the micro lenses used, which is certainly not the case. It is the thickness of the lens stack that makes the difference. Fred Miranda uses an Sony A7Cr modded by Kolari with a thinner lens stack and he says it is as good as an Leica M11.
I don’t know the thickness of the S1RII, maybe they made it thinner than the S1R?

 

[Andreas]

Bastian Kratzke on the phillipreeve.net site has experimented extensively with M-mount lenses on cameras with different filter stacks. Much of his analysis is summarized here:

Different Filter Stacks and what they mean for us: Sony E | Nikon Z | Leica M | Kolari UT

As you can see, he ignores Lumix and Leica mirrorless cameras, but the results for (newer) Sony E cameras should give you an idea of what to expect on our Lumix cameras. Tests elsewhere show that the Leica L-mount cameras perform much better due to a thinner filter stack. The very early Sony E cameras such as the A7R were worse than the more recent Sony cameras included in his tests, so I wouldn't draw any conclusion from your experiences with the A7R. The Kolari UT mod is interesting. Kolari will do sensor mods on some Lumix cameras. At one point I was thinking of having the Kolari thin-filter mod done on an S5, but in the end I decided against it, at least for now.

By the way, I did manage to find an M-mount wide angle lens that works extremely well on Lumix cameras, but that lens is a special case. 7Artisans released two M-mount versions of their 28mm f/1.4 lens, one designed for Leica rangefinder cameras and one designed for the thicker Sony-E sensor stack. The latter is NOT an E-mount lens. It is an M-mount lens re-formulated for adapting to Sony E and other cameras. This re-formulation works, as the lens has decent corners even wide open. Unfortunately they only did this once, I suspect because it caused a huge amount of confusion. Apparently some Sony owners thought that if they ordered the Sony-E formulation they would get an E-mount lens (as with Voigtlander), and were surprised when they received an M-mount lens. Retailers were also confused. I had a very difficult time getting Adorama to send me the correct version. This lens is now out of production. Right now the best bet for an M-mount wide angle lens (for adapting) may be the Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5. There is very little penalty when using that lens on cameras with thick filter stacks. Sergun80 just started a thread about this lens on the S9. Check out his sample photos--they look great!