Soundimagesplus: “Will the L-mount Rule?”

Soundimagesplus shared his interesting thoughts about the L-mount. I am only sharing the final conclusion here:

It’s impossible to know whether Panasonic can penetrate the Canon / Nikon professional market. They will certainly have to prove themselves to working photographers, whose concerns are about reliability and the overall robustness of the system. I’m certainly thinking that we may well be talking about 5 years down the line. However if Panasonic can get a working 8K hybrid camera out for the Tokyo Olympics, then that may speed things up. Lets not forget that 8K provides for 36MP stills, via video ‘grabs’, which may mean that when that emerges we will all be shooting on video and sorting out the stills later.
The said S1R does seem to be what I hoped. A ‘Full Frame’ G9. So will the L Mount rule? Well for me the answer is yes it will and I suspect that if Panasonic get it right, it will for lot’s of other people too.

You can join the new L Full Frame Facebook group if you plan to buy this camera. There you can discuss all features and tests once it’s released!

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Don Ravine on adapting MFT lenses on L-mount cameras

Don ravine posted this interesing report on our L-mount facebook group:

There have been people asking if they could adapt a micro four thirds lens to the L mount. Personally, I can’t think why you’d want to as the two systems have nothing in common but, hey, people love to experiment!

So … I grabbed a m4/3 lens and simply held it flush against my only L-mount body. This lens is a prototype Noktor 12mm (which later was sold under the SLR Magic name). It has manual focus and aperture, which bypasses all the electronic issues you’d face with most m4/3 lenses.

With focus set on infinity and lens held tight against the body, focus was achieved at only 9 inches. That effect would be less with longer focal lengths but nothing would achieve even close to infinity focus.

Even on APSC, there is significant vignetting, as you’d expect. However, the image circle on that particular lens is tighter than most so other lenses may be better in that regard. Good news is that the lens misses the electronic contacts and there is no mechanical interference. Bad news is that any adaptor has to lift the lens even further from the mount. On a positive note, colour, contrast and sharpness near the centre were stellar on my test pic!

In conclusion, it can be done but it’s only ever going to work for macro. Further, only the mechanical lenses (Voigtlander and the like) will have any real chance of controlling aperture or focus.

New Leica interview by Lensvid

Lensvid posted this video interview with Stephan Daniel from Leica:

Stephan Daniel confirmed that they started talking with Panasonic about 2.5 years ago before Sigma joined the partnership (called the L-mount alliance – a name which we are hoping will change in the future), from our
talk with Mr. Kazuto Yamaki, the CEO of Sigma it seems that Panasonic was in contact with both Leica and Sigma separately before the actual alliance was formed and each company didn’t know about the other until a later stage.