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al green - Light Through Glass's picture

Rangefinder lenses renaissance

Rangefinder lenses in the main are tiny and well suited to mirrorless bodies - after 70 years who would have thought. Interested in hearing about your experiences adapting these lenses.

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While I don't have a mirrorless body on which I could use rangefinder lenses specifically, I am a fan of using vintage lenses on digital. I appreciate a razor sharp lens with autofocus and stabilization, but I love the look that many vintage lenses give.

If there's an adapter for the lens mount to your camera, then any one lens should work roughly the same as any other adapted. focus peaking and magnification will be your focus aids, and I recommend opening up the aperture to focus then stop down to where you need. If your camera has high resolution, particularly if full frame, you may find the images don't resolve well when cropped in, depending on the specific lens. Also, if you like putting your subject along the edges or corners, be sure to read up on the specific lens. Many older lenses may be sharp in the middle but soft around the edges, sometimes even when stopped down to the focal sweet spot.

Actually most wide angle(Below 35) M lenses from Leica will not work well with a sony FF. The edges smear and some exhibit some color shift.
That's why I got the R (Leica) lenses instead. Not as small but still smaller than most lenses from Nikon, Canon or even Sony.
I have to say that I rarely use my Zeiss AF lenses anymore.
If it's personal I love my Leica lenses, if it's work and I need the speed then I go back to AF.
With Sony's magnification and peaking lines, manual focusing becomes second nature.
And the IQ is just totally different. It's not the sharpness.
My SIgma art and Zeiss lenses are ultra sharp.
There's something cinematic with these old lenses with no modern coating. It's really sharp at it's widest but more than sharp it's the focus fall-off that somehow makes it three dimensional.