Leica M Lenses on Dragon

[Travis Kyler Hoyt]

Hey everyone,

Planning purchasing my first RED camera, an Epic Dragon, and was wondering if anyone knew about compatability of wider angle Leica M glass on the Dragon. I know that on the MX, lenses wider than 50mm had issues with flange/protruding rear elements, but i had seen a post by Red stating that a re-designed sensor window would allow for the use of wider angle Leica M lenses on Dragon and yet others have commented that this is inaccurate as Dragon is merely a sensor upgrade. Can anyone bring clarity yo this for me? The lenses i am interested in are:

Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 ZM
leica 16-18-21 tri-elmar-m
leica 21 summilux-m
leica 35 summilux-m

thank you in advance for sny help you can provide.

[Imran Farouk]

Well it says wider lenses for M are now possible on the Dragon page
http://www.red.com/products/epic-dragon#features

Whether that means up to Xmm or ALL Leica M lenses are now possible is still to be answered.

Though I think Jim's previous post (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...d-Leica-lenses) on the Leica lenses, I figured that was aimed at the M series...

I'd love to know a clear clean answer though for this too...

[Travis Kyler Hoyt]

I saw Jim's post as well, but i had thought he was referring to the Summilux-c cinema primes.

[Patrick Grossien]

I saw Jim's post as well, but i had thought he was referring to the Summilux-c cinema primes.

Yes, he was.

[Seth Emmons]

If anyone currently has a Dragon in Los Angeles I'd be happy to setup a test for this. I work out of the Leica Store in West Hollywood and have access to the entire range of M lenses. In fact, we had a couple of guys in last week testing M lenses on the Epic-X and shooting tests with a model around the store. If someone wants to bring in a Dragon we can knock through the whole batch in no time.

Travis, I was thinking about you during the test, but since it wasn't Dragon I didn't bother to call.

[Ketch Rossi]

I might come and visit you Seth before I go back to Italy... Even so I am not very happy at all with Band Pro at the moment...

[Seth Emmons]

Hi Ketch, good to hear from you. Drop me a note and let me know when you want to come by. Occasionally meetings and customer visits pull me out of the office and I'd like to make sure I'm there. My email address is seth <dot> emmons <at> cw-sonderoptic <dot> de.

[Ketch Rossi]

Cool Seth, email sent...

[Sanjin Jukic]

Quote: "A redesigned sensor window allows for the use of wider Leica-M and Angenieux lenses, while also providing a larger field of view when shooting."

Link: http://www.red.com/products/epic-dragon#features

It's good to know that RED was listening to me when I've been requested that sensor window redesign here at Reduser some years ago.

Also must say by the specification of RF (Range Finder) lenses with a short flange of 27.95mm that is actually very close to the sensor

that means optically every lens that goes below 50mm like a 35mm or any wider lens is going to give a slight or more vignetting.

This can occur especially at smaller stops, that means a larger f numbers more vignetting.

But fortunately with Dragon 6K you can crop and get a very usable size of image.

[Ketch Rossi]

After meeting with Seth at the Leica Store in LA today, we talked about things and we'll do a nice Leica M shoot with him on Dragon + Red M mount, and we'll post results.