[normhead]

One question, Norm. As a fellow Canadian, what has been your latest experience and what is your opinion.... with Ricoh-Pentax marketing in Canada and in your part of Canada ?. Do you thin they're here to stay ? Do you think they are regrouping ? What's your view of the future of Ricoh-Pentax in the Canadian market? Thank you in advance.

I'm on the fence right now. People I've dealt with for 25 years are gone, I'm not sure anyone I know is still there. I'll try and go to Henry's EXPOsure in the spring and get a handle on it.. and I'll be in a position to evaluate them from a dealer perspective. I know one of the dealers I talked to after the K-3 came out was extremely positive, K-3s sold like hot cakes, and he was selling some lenses and stuff too. Since then the repair depot has been closed. didn't see that coming. SO, I haven't got a good read on anything. Living in Whitney, that can happen.

[lesmore49]

I'm on the fence right now. People I've dealt with for 25 years are gone, I'm not sure anyone I know is still there. I'll try and go to Henry's EXPOsure in the spring and get a handle on it.. and I'll be in a position to evaluate them from a dealer perspective. I know one of the dealers I talked to after the K-3 came out was extremely positive, K-3s sold like hot cakes, and he was selling some lenses and stuff too. Since then the repair depot has been closed. didn't see that coming. SO, I haven't got a good read on anything. Living in Whitney, that can happen.

Thanks Norm. A wait and see deal, by the looks of it.

[osv]

I'd check this article by Roger Cicala, talking about image degradation when using adapters, just google it:
"There Is No Free Lunch, Episode 763: Lens Adapters"

Short story is that no adapter (and he tested branded, expensive ones) would be exempt from a massive degradation of image quality, mainly because of slight misalignments which are inevitable when using it.
.

there is zero degradation of image quality with adapters, because they don't change the lens itself at all.

adapters don't bend lenses, they don't change the alignment of the glass inside the lens barrel... they don't do anything to the lens at all.

think about it... roger was only shooting flat targets, where the focal plane was perfectly square to the target; the slightest tilt could show a resolution difference.

nobody in the real world shoots like that, which is why you won't find one single real-world example of adapters causing resolution loss.

---------- Post added 10-21-2014 at 09:03 PM ----------

I was using a 55mm pentax on my fuji recently and noticed that when i focus to infinity its much softer then it use to be. However subjects closer then infinity were tack sharp.

when you hit that "closer to infinity point", had the lens reached it's focus stop? if so, the adapter was the wrong length.

with adapters on the sonys, you want the lens focus ring to turn past infinity, because infinity varies with different lenses, temperature, etc.

in other words, the hard infinity focus stop on lenses is an obsolete concept, with adapters.

thank goodness, too... i remember having to adjust the hard infinity stop on my samyang 14mm/k10d combo, it sucked, lol, thanks to the horrible ovf that dslrs have.

if i had been adjusting it on my a7r, i could have got it perfect on the first try.

[philbaum]

there is zero degradation of image quality with adapters, because they don't change the lens itself at all.

adapters don't bend lenses, they don't change the alignment of the glass inside the lens barrel... they don't do anything to the lens at all.

think about it... roger was only shooting flat targets, where the focal plane was perfectly square to the target; the slightest tilt could show a resolution difference.

nobody in the real world shoots like that, which is why you won't find one single real-world example of adapters causing resolution loss.[COLOR="Silver"]

.

Thank you for that explanation; because i haven't seen any degradation myself - now owning 2 of the Nex. Even as far as thickness variations, it doesn't matter because one is adjusting focus to the plane of the sensor (for cases of thickness variations that are consistent across the face). Thickness variations that result in an adapter tilt are a different case. Unless the adapter is so far off that one can't reach infinity. I've bought 2 of the fotodiox and have zero problems with either.

---

Last edited by philbaum; 10-23-2014 at 11:58 AM.

[D1N0]

So their is such a thing as a free lunch after all

[philbaum]

So their is such a thing as a free lunch after all

Yep, thats the way i see it. Like Normhead, i have and still am considering a Sony FF. I went shooting with a friend yesterday who has both the A7R and the A7S. Does nothing but still shooting, but he says he doesn't pick up the A7R anymore. We were in an old historic hotel on special permission, and he was shooting at 80,000 ISO and i was trying to get by on 1600/3200 on my K3. I'm going to ask him to send me one of his files to see how it stands up to processing. He says that the build quality is much better on the A7S than prior models. I'm going to wait and see what additional FF lenses Sony comes out with. He had a grip attached to the A7S, but it was shocking to see how small the A7S itself is. Tempting, considering the -4ev focusing and the silent shutter.

[LensBeginner]

there is zero degradation of image quality with adapters, because they don't change the lens itself at all.

adapters don't bend lenses, they don't change the alignment of the glass inside the lens barrel... they don't do anything to the lens at all.

think about it... roger was only shooting flat targets, where the focal plane was perfectly square to the target; the slightest tilt could show a resolution difference.

nobody in the real world shoots like that, which is why you won't find one single real-world example of adapters causing resolution loss.

Well, I try to keep an open mind and explore all the possibilities...
Just for the sake of the argument, there's people interesting in shooting murals, and that's pretty parallel to the sensor...
Then you could shoot the occasional, who knows? theatrical poster, painting and whatnot.
Granted, you'll see more degradation in situations that are not common, but there it is.

[rawr]

Granted, you'll see more degradation in situations that are not common, but there it is.

Geometric distortion and other optical corrections - whether triggered by the shooting position, the lens, the mount or a tilted sensor - are why we have DxO Optics Pro/ DxO Viewpoint/ ptlens etc, and decent tools to do much the same built into every modern RAW processor.

[osv]

i tried to duplicate the so-called "massive degradation" adapter problem, in two different ways, and i couldn't do it.

in the second test, i used adaptall-2 adapters in combination with cheap nex adapters; basically seven different adapters on one lens, and one a7r camera.

i figured that if adapters were so horrible, then the entire adaptall-2 concept must be junk, and therefore the worst possible thing to do would be to mix adaptall-2 and nex together, lol

it turned out that the lens was complete junk, and i mis-focused slightly on one of the four pics, but other than that, nothing really changed with any adapter combination:

Sony NEX adapter comparison

[philbaum]

Well, I try to keep an open mind and explore all the possibilities...
Just for the sake of the argument, there's people interesting in shooting murals, and that's pretty parallel to the sensor...
Then you could shoot the occasional, who knows? theatrical poster, painting and whatnot.
Granted, you'll see more degradation in situations that are not common, but there it is.

If you're shooting a flat surface item like your mural or a painting, than you will be using a small aperture to increase the depth of focus field to include the entire document. Testing folks are usually using a large open aperture to make it as easy as possible to detect a decentered element or other issue that would cause side to side acuity differences. I don't think its a problem at all. Its really odd that with the thousands of shooters using mirrorless cameras with adapters, that the only person who has voiced this concern is a lab technician. If it is true, it just isn't a significant problem in real life. I show my pics in a gallery and occasionally clerk there also. I've yet to see any customer pull out a 10x loupe and examine photographs.

[rawr]

I've yet to see any customer pull out a 10x loupe and examine photographs.

That gives me an idea about what to bring along to my next visit to a photo gallery, just for fun.

[LensBeginner]

i tried to duplicate the so-called "massive degradation" adapter problem, in two different ways, and i couldn't do it.

in the second test, i used adaptall-2 adapters in combination with cheap nex adapters; basically seven different adapters on one lens, and one a7r camera.

i figured that if adapters were so horrible, then the entire adaptall-2 concept must be junk, and therefore the worst possible thing to do would be to mix adaptall-2 and nex together, lol

it turned out that the lens was complete junk, and i mis-focused slightly on one of the four pics, but other than that, nothing really changed with any adapter combination:

Sony NEX adapter comparison

Is that your blog? it's a very interesting comparison.

I don't know what's the cause, but I can see much more blur in the first of the four, the one with the Fotodiox OM adapter... second worst is the third picture (left-side wise), then the second and the best one looks like it's the one with four stacked adapters.
I'm only looking at the left side, here, so I guess that the decentering of the lens is partly compensated by the misalignment of the adapters (which happens to be the right way round )... it follows that the right side should be worse (and it seems to me than the right side in the picture with the four stacked adapters is the softest by a fair margin).

It surely makes for an interesting subject, and I wouldn't discard Cicala's lab tests as a purely academic exercise...

---------- Post added 10-24-14 at 09:58 AM ----------

If you're shooting a flat surface item like your mural or a painting, than you will be using a small aperture to increase the depth of focus field to include the entire document.
*snip*

Well, underpasses and museums are pretty dark places... and in museums you can't use a flash.
If I were to photograph murals near my home, I would go in a dark (and damp) underpass with a tripod, use a lens as wide as possible because the place is narrow, a tripod, ISO100 and f/5.6 or f/8 for maximum quality.
Without a tripod, I guess I'd be forced in the neighbourhood of f/2.8...

[philbaum]

I organized a workshop for our club members that involved visiting galleries, getting permission to shoot a piece of art that they liked, photo or painting, and then coming back to a meeting to discuss what they liked or didn't like about the composition. I emphasized that folks were not to take any special effort to get perfect shots, this was composition exercise, nothing else. And to be deleted after the meeting.

So i went out and used a Sony Nex6 to shoot an example of surreal art that i was really impressed with. (Nex6 is an APS sensor with 16mp). This was with the 16-50 kit lens. The clerk even encouraged me to post it online giving credit to the painter. I didn't take any special pains with the shot, but i was surprised how good it was. Today's digital cameras, even relatively inexpensive ones, are excellent with their resolution.

[hinman]

I organized a workshop for our club members that involved visiting galleries, getting permission to shoot a piece of art that they liked, photo or painting, and then coming back to a meeting to discuss what they liked or didn't like about the composition. I emphasized that folks were not to take any special effort to get perfect shots, this was composition exercise, nothing else. And to be deleted after the meeting.

So i went out and used a Sony Nex6 to shoot an example of surreal art that i was really impressed with. (Nex6 is an APS sensor with 16mp). This was with the 16-50 kit lens. The clerk even encouraged me to post it online giving credit to the painter. I didn't take any special pains with the shot, but i was surprised how good it was. Today's digital cameras, even relatively inexpensive ones, are excellent with their resolution.

+1 on the nex6, nex5n and the latest with A6000. They are inexpensive, small but quality cameras with features that can surprise you. I get great satisfaction in getting nex 5N to compliment my Pentax K-5 as a travel camera. The more I use the smaller mirror-less cameras, the less I take out the Pentax. I love Pentax but with the lack of new products and development, loyalty takes a step back replacing enthusiasm with boredom and concerns. There are things on Pentax that you will miss in Sony such as great ergonomics, built in SR, simplicity, workmanship, trusted weather proofing and great limited lens line just to name a few. But so far I have great admiration on Sony products and how the company has come through with exciting products with great features and versatility that are reasonable in cost for ownership.

I took this with Sony 5N and a $120 lens with the first version of Sigma 30mm f/2.8


5N, Sigma 30mm f/2.8


AF on 5N is a bit lacking but sufficient for most of my uses. If you go with A6000, the AF will be much improved. What I like about the Sony nex and A7 are the size. Size matters in traveling light with family where the emphasis is more on family and photos take 2nd place. There are times when I carry the Pentax gear, the weight of my bag out-do the purpose of the trip. My current bag for 3 small lenses set up is the Lowepro 100 Event bag. Very tiny setup in comparison to Pentax setup.








Sony 5N with Sigma 19mm f/2.8




Sony nex 5n, kit lens




Sony nex 5n, kit lens

I was so impressed with Sony Nex that when A7 comes out, I jumped on it with a higher price tag. Will chat more on the Sony A7 experience in another thread.




Sony A7 with FE 35mm f/2.8 Zeiss next to Pentax K-5 with FA 31mm f/1.8

[update]
For aps-c Sony, I like the current offering of A6000. I am not yet a fan of Gary Fong but some of his videos are full of valued information. This clip goes with a sales pitch but it is invaluable in this overview of A6000 features. It is long but it captures the essence of A6000 with versatility and packed with features that surprise Gary in awesomeness.

You Tube

You Tube

When time allows, I will add my words to my FF story with Sony A7. If I have to give a preview -- I wish I had not gone the FF path with Sony A7 so soon and stay with the aps-c path as long as I can until Sony FE is better developed as in 2015/2016 time-frame.



Sigma 30mm f/2.8 on A7 -- cheapest aps-c lens on A7 with AF and treatable vignette in post processing




Big fan of Takumar on A7 -- MF pentax gear works well on A7

The long version of my FF story with Sony goes later.

Cheers,
Hin

[pinholecam]

The thing about adapter planarity, so far I've not observed it to be any issue at all, and this is with 10mths of use of the A7 as a multi genre shooter.
And I basically have used usually cheap ebay adapters for FD, M, LTM, M42; Exakta, EOS, K mount.
Light leak on the cheap adapter is a bigger problem than the lab measured non-planar surface of the adapter, but we get what we pay for. (Kipon seems to work well from my use)



There will be many times when shooting between f2.8-f5.6 will be needed, not just murals.
But as said (to be fair to the Sony, though I am no Pentax hater nor Sony fan), so far, I've not seen any real world issues.