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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 :)

SLR Magic APO HyperPrime mini review

My 50 is also a touch stiffer in the focus ring, and aperture ring as well actually (compared to my 85). I've a 25 incoming, and a 32 pre-ordered, and will compare once I receive them and post back here. I'm curious where everyone ordered there 32mm and when? They seem to be trickling in now, but I still haven't heard word about mine.... I ordered from Adorama end of August...

Thanks Rand for that test... can I ask what serial/model the leica 50/1.4 is? Looks pretty nice to me, albeit with some unique bokeh characteristics. The zeiss seems to have the wildest CA wide open.
 
Ericsson,

That video was made by and originally posted by Reduser member Marcus Gelhard on the previous page. I'm sure he can answer your questions for you.
 
Ericsson San Pablo Chu said:
My 50 is also a touch stiffer in the focus ring, and aperture ring as well actually (compared to my 85). I've a 25 incoming, and a 32 pre-ordered, and will compare once I receive them and post back here. I'm curious where everyone ordered there 32mm and when? They seem to be trickling in now, but I still haven't heard word about mine.... I ordered from Adorama end of August...

Thanks Rand for that test... can I ask what serial/model the leica 50/1.4 is? Looks pretty nice to me, albeit with some unique bokeh characteristics. The zeiss seems to have the wildest CA wide open.
Click to expand...

Hi Ericsson,

the Serial Number of the Leica is: 3633480

hope that helps.

Marcus
 
Marcus Gelhard said:
Hi Ericsson,

the Serial Number of the Leica is: 3633480

hope that helps.

Marcus
Click to expand...

That's cool. It highlights how different different serials are. I had a late leica 393x and a late contax and the contax was a lot better than the leica. But i had 3 other contaxs before to get that one. So it's difficult to judge based on just model, you have to have several versions to find the best when dealing with SLR lenses and age.

T2.1 is probably not far off f1.8, so that would be a fair comparison.

How do you find the lens, how do you feel about the image?

cheers
Paul
 
paulcurtis said:
That's cool. It highlights how different different serials are. I had a late leica 393x and a late contax and the contax was a lot better than the leica. But i had 3 other contaxs before to get that one. So it's difficult to judge based on just model, you have to have several versions to find the best when dealing with SLR lenses and age.

T2.1 is probably not far off f1.8, so that would be a fair comparison.

How do you find the lens, how do you feel about the image?

cheers
Paul
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

yeah looks like there are so many different contax and leicas it's hard to compare.

For the SLR Magic, i really like them. I think they are perfect allround lenses.
Smooth bokeh, sharp wideopen. light and small for cinelneses.

cheers
Marcus
 
Hi Darren, I just received my 25mm and it appears to be the stiffest of the set so far for me. In my case, the 85 is the loosest, followed by the 50, followed by the 25. I also noticed the focus marks on the 25mm are a bit off... has anyone used the included shims to adjust?
 
How different/stiff are we really talking? All mine are fairly similar, the aperture is stiffer than focus (to be expected). All mine run using wireless FF and i've not had any issues at all. Where are all these lenses coming from? Is temperature a factor?

I've not noticed any issues with focus marks but to be honest i'm not pulling off marks so it's not something i'd really look into. You can hit infinity right? Are you using a PL to EF adaptor?

Happy New Year everyone... Hopefully get some more samples up this year, been bogged down in post for a while!

cheers
Paul
 
The 25 is noticeably stiffer when pulling... I wouldn't know how to quantify it, just to say that it is pretty obvious. The difference between the 50 & 85 is less noticeable. Temperature may be a factor on the 25; I just received the lens, and it is cold here, so I will try again over the weekend & report back.

I purchased the lenses from B&H. I'm currently using the C7 steel PL-EF adapter on a C200, but will test focus marks again with the SLR magic aluminum adapter (once received), and on an Alexa Mini when I've time at the studio.

Also, just confirming on this second copy of the 25mm I've tried, that it definitely is not color matched to the others. The 50 and 85 seem to match well... they looked good in a controlled test with camera set at 5600k. In order to get the 25mm to match the 50 and 85 approximately, I set the raw settings to 5150k & 31 tint in Davinci (the other cameras were at 5600K 0 tint). Does that sound similar to other's experiences?
 
Hi Guys,

new Commercial i shot with the SLR Magic APO Hyperprimes. Just the 50 and 85mm. mostly wideopen.
Camera was a RED Gemini. And i used a Black Promist 1/8


Cheers
Marcus
 
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Here's a real quick color comparison between my 25, 50, and 85. Is this green shift variation normal for the 25? https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sntbqzo6gks49hv/AAB3c4gOmBdz09Fm8shD-F2Qa?dl=0

46758532851_23f5bafb2e_b.jpg
 
This is great! Definitely pushing me towards these lenses!
 
Marcus Gelhard said:
Hi Guys,

new Commercial i shot with the SLR Magic APO Hyperprimes. Just the 50 and 85mm. mostly wideopen.
Camera was a RED Gemini. And i used a Black Promist 1/8


Cheers
Marcus
Click to expand...

This is great! Definitely pushing me towards these lenses!
 
Ericsson San Pablo Chu said:
Here's a real quick color comparison between my 25, 50, and 85. Is this green shift variation normal for the 25? https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sntbqzo6gks49hv/AAB3c4gOmBdz09Fm8shD-F2Qa?dl=0
Click to expand...

I can't say that i've noticed such a great difference but i will take a look later.

One observation is that the 25mm is exposed quite a bit less which is making it look worse, if you equalise the exposure it's not quite so different. But it is skewing green for sure.

Did you have ND on these tests?

cheers
Paul
 
Yeh my 25 is greener than the rest. Focus marks was off with my 32mm (good deal off) and a bit off with my 85mm. Contacted SLR magic and they asked me to send pics of the lenses focused on a flat object facing camera at certain distances. Sent them the photos and they did some testing and narrowed it down to my camera mount being off not so much the lenses (since they test them). They said this would most likely be the case with any PL lens i put on the camera since the mount itself was off. So they asked me to shim the camera mount which I did on my Ursa mini pro (the PL mount comes with shims). I haven't fully tested them but I tested about 3 different distances on all 4 lenses so far and the focus is now hitting where it is supposed to. I will finish testing them today.
 
paulcurtis said:
How different/stiff are we really talking? All mine are fairly similar, the aperture is stiffer than focus (to be expected). All mine run using wireless FF and i've not had any issues at all. Where are all these lenses coming from? Is temperature a factor?
Click to expand...

Pretty noticeable difference with my 50 and the rest of the lenses. I'm in a hot tropical country so that's not a factor.
 
Marcus Gelhard said:
Hi Guys,

new Commercial i shot with the SLR Magic APO Hyperprimes. Just the 50 and 85mm. mostly wideopen.
Camera was a RED Gemini. And i used a Black Promist 1/8


Cheers
Marcus
Click to expand...

Looks great Marcus


Some interesting news. So I picked up this for my pocket 4k camera https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...es_mbsppl_m43_bt1_pl_to_micro_fourthirds.html

It was really made for CP2 and CP3 lenses which have a short rear element. In this case from the PL "ears" on the mount to the rear of the lens need to be shorter than 15.7mm so as to not hit the glass in the speedbooster. So I measured all the SLR magic lenses and all fit within spec so I pulled the trigger. And it works great....so now I'm shooting 35mm with PL lenses on my pocket 4k. Its actually a tad wider than my Ursa mini pro which is a super 35mm sensor. So if ya'll are thinking about picking up a pocket 4k or any other m43 camera and want to use your SLR magic lenses without having that crop(and one more stop of light) then you are good to go. I had to adjust my speedbooster because the lenses could not focus to infinity. Easy (but possibly time consuming) process of releasing a screw and turning/screwing/unscrewing the optics in the speedbooster , and testing the lenses after adjustment till you are hitting infinity on all lenses. Then re-tighten the screw.
 
Hey Paul - did you have a chance to look at my test earlier in the thread? All 4 shots were taken under controlled lighting with no ND.
 
Thanks for posting your color test Ericsson. The green tint on the 25 looks similar to mine. The 85 and 50 seem to match better than my test - makes me wonder if my copy of the 85 is off...
 
Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Paul - Nope no ND filter, and lighting was controlled at night with one 5600k light just quickly bounced off the ceiling. Also fairly certain that all lenses were set to t/2.8, and I didn't touch any other setting between shots.... I think it is perceived exposure variation due to the color shift and seeing the walls on the side which are darker (that said I will test again this weekend with my coming 32mm, and triple check t-stop, etc. is the same and post back). This is my 2nd copy of the 25mm, and both exhibited around the same amount of green shift. I've emailed SLR Magic too, but I just wanted to hear back from others here if they're experiencing the same amount of shift. My 25mm flares quite a bit wide open too, but I think that is by design... kind of interesting flares too.

Yeah Joe, my 50 and 85 look fairly close. I will test them against my coming 32, and post back here for you to compare yours.

Darren - my 25mm is also not hitting its marks (the 50 and 85 are though). SLR Magic replied to me too with the same picture requests, so I'll wait to hear back from them, and post here what happened in case it might help others in the future.

Really love the lenses though, its just a shame the 25mm is causing me such trouble... if it matched the 50 and 85 (and 32), I would be more than 100% content with the set (I do love how they look otherwise!).
 
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