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I only shoot manual-focus, premium, prime lenses. However, there are occasions when I find that it would be handy to be able to shoot an auto focus lens. Also, with my 65 year-old eyes getting worse by the year, I'm beginning to think auto focus lenses just might enable me to take photos further into my golden years.
That said, I sure don't want to have to give up the incredible image quality I'm getting with my adapted Zeiss and Leica R lenses just because of aging eyes. What am I to do?
Well, I just discovered how I can have my cake and eat it too. In other words, use my adapted Zeiss and Leica R lenses in the AF mode.
A few months ago I purchased a
Pentax SMC Pentax-F 1.7x AF adapter. Never shot it "until today".
Below is the first photo I took with it. I attached this little adapter to adapted Zeiss ZF 35mm f/1.4 lens, and attached this combination to my Pentax K-1 camera, and shot away at f/2. WOW, am I impressed! The auto-focusing was fairly fast and dead on accurate. As many of you know, the Zeiss "Classic" ZF 35mm f/1.4 lens (with heavy Leitax adapter) is a fairly large and heavy lens - but this little adapter had no trouble at all with it.
Just put your camera in the AF mode and fire away (well, it does help if you manually move your lenses' focus adjustment to somewhere close to your shooting distance before shooting). My favorite way to use it is in Live View with back button focusing. Another side benefit to using this AF adapter is that it will speed up the taking of photos a little bit (not as much as a fully auto-focus lens, but maybe half way between an AF lens and the MF lens without this adapter).
Some of you will ask, "does this adapter reduce the image quality of photos taken with it?". This AF adapter does have 6 optical elements in 4 groups inside of it. Being an expensive Pentax product, it is well made with premium optical glass inside. Having said that, if you are a pixel peeper, maybe you will be able to detect a tiny TINY drop in sharpness if you look really hard. So, if you are a photographer who demands as much sharpness out of their gear as is possible, then you may want to not use this AF adapter. However, the great majority of photographers will not be able to detect a reduction in an image's IQ by using this AF adapter.
While many of you are already familiar with this AF adapter, I guess that I thought it would not work on my "adapted" Zeiss and Leica R lenses. Well, I'm here to tell you it works just fine on adapted Zeiss and Leica lenses. So, if you love Zeiss and Leica R glass like I do, here's a little accessory that you just might want to consider trying out for yourself (especially if your eyes are not what they used to be)!
Last edited by Fenwoodian; 06-25-2018 at 10:46 AM.