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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Epic & old glass

Uli Plank said:
I'm on an other continent too, but I think the lenses I'd suggest for a test are abundant in the US as well: Minolta SR glass (aka MD/MC) !

Some people call them poor man's Leicas, and that's not far off, since they cooperated for quite a while and Minolta even made some lenses for Leica (their very first zoom, for example). Expect not only excellent optical and mechanical craftsmanship, but one thing that makes them stand out for film use: Minolta made their own glass and took great care to make colors look the same through all the range!

Apart from some very old versions with Thorium, which got yellow with age, it still holds true for all the rest. If everything else is the same, you don't need much of a color correction when changing lenses.

So, go for them! Most of these are still less popular than Nikon or Canon FD and can be found for attractive prices. I would challenge a manual Nikkor 50mm 1.4 any time with my Rokkor PG 50mm 1.4, for example, and it comes far cheaper.

Only a few gems, like the 58mm 1.2, the 85mm Varisoft or the 24mm Variable Field Curvature fetch high prices. Yes, I got them all before they went through the roof ;-)

How do you fix them to an Epic? Easy: get the Leica-M mount, there is an adapter from MD/MC to Leica-M.
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Very interesting. Those lenses are very cheap too... I think I might pick up a few and test them out. Thanks for the info!
 
We got our FD mount today...
Tested around with the 50mm f1.2 and some zooms. All I can say is that wide open the 50mm looks even more crisp than our K-35. Love those FD lenses and will collect a full set with all the fastest makes from 14mm-500mm. Ordered most of them on ebay and just wait for the arrival of the rest.
Here is a test shot of the 50mm wide open and then closed to about 5.6 in rain and dusk outside the office window here in Stockholm... the mixed lightning does not make it shine still I'm very impressed how this little lens preform.

https://vimeo.com/51452630

http://www.syndicate.se/Files/~usr/hawk/Canon FD 50mm on epic.JPG

This lens is so nice and smooth on the focus ring it feels like a lens costing 100 times as much...
 
Björn Benckert said:
We got our FD mount today...
Tested around with the 50mm f1.2 and some zooms. All I can say is that wide open the 50mm looks even more crisp than our K-35. Love those FD lenses and will collect a full set with all the fastest makes from 14mm-500mm. Ordered most of them on ebay and just wait for the arrival of the rest.
Here is a test shot of the 50mm wide open and then closed to about 5.6 in rain and dusk outside the office window here in Stockholm... the mixed lightning does not make it shine still I'm very impressed how this little lens preform.

https://vimeo.com/51452630

http://www.syndicate.se/Files/~usr/hawk/Canon FD 50mm on epic.JPG

This lens is so nice and smooth on the focus ring it feels like a lens costing 100 times as much...
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Looks very nice. So how close in character is the FD to a K35 ?

Mechanicaly I think they'd be fine if the lenses I have here are any thing to go by. I have a 50 300 f4.5 and 300mm f2.8 here, both which are excellent, we had both remounted to PL.
 
Dave Blackham said:
Looks very nice. So how close in character is the FD to a K35 ?

Mechanicaly I think they'd be fine if the lenses I have here are any thing to go by. I have a 50 300 f4.5 and 300mm f2.8 here, both which are excellent, we had both remounted to PL.
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I would say very close, the FD 50mm has a strange oval shape in the dow when wide open... do not know why the iris is perfectly round... but when closed down to 1.4 it looks very much like the canon k-35 55mm (or was it 50mm?)

Also the flare on the FD reminds me of the K-35 check the end of this little test ( sorry for juggling so much with the camera): https://vimeo.com/51458096
 
Michael Panfeld said:
Bjorn: Thanks. What is your opinion of cieclo's FD mount? Solid? accurate? Thanks
Click to expand...

Do not know? is that the one I got? I ordered from ebay 500USD as I remember. It's very nice made, the only thing missing is a mount cap. But I guess I can buy that from ebay also.
 
Yousuf Abbasi said:
I have rehoused FD 14mm. Flare profile is so radically different from the K35's that I'm convinced it's totally different engineering. I would need to test more FD lenses to confirm this. But as far as how the image resolves, the FD 14mm doesn't cut too bad with the K35's.
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this is fd 50mm1.2 flared , does it look like the k-35 ?

https://vimeo.com/51458096
 
Björn Benckert said:
this is fd 50mm1.2 flared , does it look like the k-35 ?

https://vimeo.com/51458096
Click to expand...

BJORN- Thanks for sharing!

In my experience, the K35 flare comprises of several quite noticeable circles within each other, purple/red/orange tinted, with nothing pointy shaped in the flare profile, and a huge blast from the corner as the light source leaves the lenses. Your FD flare test has a pointy curved diamond shape inside the circle, and the flaring is much more subtle, with no blast as light source leaves the glass. It is consistent with my experience with the 14mm FD, the flare was pointy/circular, no "blast" at the end, and quite subtle overall.
 
Did some more test with the FD 50mm in sunlight.. it amazing what resolution it holds for being such a small little thing. I know it's not a an ARRI MP or such but if price is a factor I think this lens is hard to beat... Master primes are hard to find for 150USD on ebay. :)

Me fooling around wiht 98 fps 5k down in the harbor: https://vimeo.com/51633424
 
Björn Benckert said:
Did some more test with the FD 50mm in sunlight.. it amazing what resolution it holds for being such a small little thing. I know it's not a an ARRI MP or such but if price is a factor I think this lens is hard to beat... Master primes are hard to find for 150USD on ebay. :)

Me fooling around wiht 98 fps 5k down in the harbor: https://vimeo.com/51633424
Click to expand...

Was this a 50mm f1.2 ? Im in a dilema if a 50mm f1.2 or 55mm f1.2 Aspheric is prefered but your footage looks goo of the harbour scene.
 
Some questions on Canon FD glass to any one who is expert on these lenses.

Im interested in the three fast lenses the 24 f1.4 50mm f1.2 or 55mm f1.2 and the 85 F1.2, I have some of the other non L branded glass which is also very good.

I see that some early lenses are marked Aspherical that is also marked S.S.C. So far as I knew are all of the L series lenses had the S.S.C coating but do the L lenses also have the Aspheric elements also or is there some optical benifit to the lenes marked Aspheric ?

The Aspheric lenses seem to attract a higher price over the later L lenses. I dont know if this is just a collelctors thing or if there is practical benifit to them.

Is the 55mm 1.2 Aspheric any better or improvement over the 50mm 1.2 L, folk lore seems to say it is but if the 50mm 1.2 L is Aspheric too my guess is they should be compatible.

Also there is one report I read suggesting the 24mm f2 (non L) is prefered over the 24mm f1.4 lens. No reasons given for this. Any one have any info on this ?

Im interested also in the glass similarity of the FD lenses to the K-35's which there are some post in this thread. It seem logical that the same or very similar glass has been used, the 24, 50 and 55mm and 85 focal lengths appear in both sets perhaps its just the mechanics of the K-35's that were new designed using Canon's best glass at the time of manufacture. Its odd that there doesnt appear to be a fast 18mm in the FD range that was introduced in the K-35 line though.
 
Found this site. May be of some help.

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/camera/lens/index.html

It looks to me, though this is completely unverified and not based on anything but scouring websites and reading between the lines is the later L lenses has the Aspheric elements from the previous SCC Aspheric lenses. No idea if the SCC Aspheric lenses perform better or not despite their higher used pricing.
 
Dave Blackham said:
Im interested also in the glass similarity of the FD lenses to the K-35's which there are some post in this thread. It seem logical that the same or very similar glass has been used, the 24, 50 and 55mm and 85 focal lengths appear in both sets perhaps its just the mechanics of the K-35's that were new designed using Canon's best glass at the time of manufacture. Its odd that there doesnt appear to be a fast 18mm in the FD range that was introduced in the K-35 line though.
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My FD 35mm f2 does look more like the k-35's than the 50mm f1.2... the flare is more like K-35mm on the 35mm.

Regarding the 18mm... yes it's odd that they did not make a fast one I have a rather slow 17mm on it's way from ebay... will post how that one works as soon as it arrives. Also ordered the 15mm...
 
The other issue is the K-35 have many more blades in the iris than the 8 or 9 blades in the FD lenses. I wonder if the Irises can be changed in the FD to have a round iris aperture and if theres a benefit to doing so.
 
Dave Blackham said:
Its odd that there doesnt appear to be a fast 18mm in the FD range that was introduced in the K-35 line though.
Click to expand...

I think this is because the K-35 18 doesn't cover FULL FRAME. I get the impression it was designed specifically for cinema use, and therefore has a smaller image circle than the rest of the K-35 lineup. But a K-35 expert should chime in here and corroborate. Thanks.
 
Here's about 30 seconds of Nikon 50 f2 with an added film effect and grain. 1080 playback available. Cheap lens, cool look. I should post a couple stills. The mp4 upload to youtube really destroys it. These were very quickly grabbed shots, no matte box, so light gets into the lens from florescents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHxs9hTjMCo
 
Here are some examples with the FD 20mm f/2.8.

I love this lens! has some really crazy flare and very interesting blurred bokeh especially wide open.


2012-09-14 by tehbendean, on Flickr


2012-10-06 by tehbendean, on Flickr


Here is a film I shot for a 48h challenge earlier this month. (came in first place;)

Shot entirely on the FD 20mm f/2.8.


 
Nice Theben,
I just ordered the same 20mm a few hours ago. :)
Question what FD mount do you have? I got the one from ebay and Im and one thing concerns me, I think they have made a mistake when they did not make it so that the focus mark of the lenses is not straight up. As if I put on my 15mm fisheye the shade is not straight, it shifted about 40 degrees. Alos now Im thinking of getting the tilt shift but I guess it then will sit a bit rotated,or am I wrong here?
 
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