Sony Sony A7/7r - Ultimate Thread on Adapted Lenses

First one from me.

CV12/5.6 Heliar on the A7.

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DSC0474320140223ILCE-7-1-1 by jenkwang, on Flickr

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DSC0446420140218ILCE-7-BW-1 by jenkwang, on Flickr

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DSC0477520140223ILCE-7 by jenkwang, on Flickr

I'd admit that I'm no Sony lover, but this time round, I do think they have a 'game changer' of a camera for manual lenses.
Mix and match the best lenses for size/performance/budget. (with some exceptions for RF lenses as we already know)

The CV12 is impressive on A7, being so small, but 12mm FF coverage and sharp most of the way till the extreme corners and edges.
I have not observed a color cast, but there is vignetting which is easily cleaned up with a +40 vignette correction in LR4.
 
Beautiful images. I like 12mm due to its size and low distortion for such a wide lens but it comes w/ heavy vignetting esp on FF. There is some color shift w/ A7R, but correctable w. LR plug-in. Here is one shot from me on A7R (cropped at the bottom):

original.jpg
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DO NOT USE LEICA. USE ZEISS ONLY.
I own the A7R. Surprisingly, the Sony 28-70 kit lens is very good. For legacy lenses, I have used the Zeiss ContaxG/45 lens and the Leica Summicron/50 with the A7R (using the Shogun adapter, and manual everything). The Zeiss produces far superior images with the A7R. No colour shifts whatsoever; excellent colour, contrast, sharpness, dynamic range. The Leica produces weird colours, degraded images, and requires a great amount of postpro to correct. Ken Rockwell documents this on his site. KR blames the A7 for the weird colours, but in fact the problem is the Leica lens. Thus, I would avoid Leica lenses with the A7R and USE ZEISS ONLY.
 
DO NOT USE LEICA. USE ZEISS ONLY.
I own the A7R. Surprisingly, the Sony 28-70 kit lens is very good. For legacy lenses, I have used the Zeiss ContaxG/45 lens and the Leica Summicron/50 with the A7R (using the Shogun adapter, and manual everything). The Zeiss produces far superior images with the A7R. No colour shifts whatsoever; excellent colour, contrast, sharpness, dynamic range. The Leica produces weird colours, degraded images, and requires a great amount of postpro to correct. Ken Rockwell documents this on his site. KR blames the A7 for the weird colours, but in fact the problem is the Leica lens. Thus, I would avoid Leica lenses with the A7R and USE ZEISS ONLY.
 
robgrune said:
DO NOT USE LEICA. USE ZEISS ONLY.
I own the A7R. Surprisingly, the Sony 28-70 kit lens is very good. For legacy lenses, I have used the Zeiss ContaxG/45 lens and the Leica Summicron/50 with the A7R (using the Shogun adapter, and manual everything). The Zeiss produces far superior images with the A7R. No colour shifts whatsoever; excellent colour, contrast, sharpness, dynamic range. The Leica produces weird colours, degraded images, and requires a great amount of postpro to correct. Ken Rockwell documents this on his site. KR blames the A7 for the weird colours, but in fact the problem is the Leica lens. Thus, I would avoid Leica lenses with the A7R and USE ZEISS ONLY.
Click to expand...

I still have my Contax G2.. How are the other Contax G lenses on the a7r?

Thanks
Gary
 
The 45 is apparently great, the 35 at least good to great, and the 28 and 21 not very usable at all due to edge performance (though reports on the 28 on the A7 indicate it may be fine). The 90 is also fine, by all accounts I've seen.

Plus there's an adapter that will autofocus them.
 
From the first outing with the A7 and Voigtlander SW Heliar 15/4.5 (in M bayonet mount). Yes, it smears and there is colour shift but I think it is well worth working with these problems (which mostly be eliminated in post) in order to have such a dramatically wide angled lens for the A7.

DSC01379-Edit-2.jpg
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Bumping an old thread - does anyone have both the CV 12mm and CV 15mm lenses that they can compare on the A7 for performance? I know there's heavy vignetting with both lenses that I'll have to correct in post, but I'm interested in center and edge sharpness, as well as distortion (beyond the obvious you'd expect with a 12-15mm lens).

What about size/ergonomics when shooting? Obviously the 12mm is larger, but I am having a hard time estimating size in hand on the Internet :)
 
I only have 12mm ltm and use it A7R and used on nex cameras. The lens is very small, more like a pancake lens. It has high vignetting and color shift in the corners with FF, but hardly any smearing. Latest Adobe update has a profile to correct these for both lenses now and CV12mm is much better w/ the profile. 15mm is getting a new design update next year. You can check this post for some CV 12mm photos as Mike uses on his A7:
Upgrade system login | XenForo

Photozone had a review of 12mm on old nex-5 and showed 1.8% distortion on apsc sensors, which is amazing for 12mm lens:
Voigtlander Ultra-Wide Heliar 12mm f/5.6 Aspherical II on Sony NEX - Review / Lens Test Report

You can also check Ron Scheller's post at FM:
Voigtländer 12mm f/5.6 LTM
"I recently shot a bunch of M and LTM lenses on the a7S at infinity to check for edge smearing. IMO, CV12 is slightly better than the current CV15, in this respect. Will be interesting to see how the soon to come CV15 will compare. In case anyone is interested, here are full-rez files from wide open through f/16 on the 12mm and up to f/11 on the 15mm. It's a zipped folder on Google Drive. CV 12mm seems pretty well corrected for distortion."

So it might be better to wait for the new CV 15mm to see how much improvement it will have as it is a new design for digital sensors. However there is no samples, availability date or price on it:
https://shop.cameraquest.com/voigtl...l-super-wide-heliar-w/next-day-usa-delivery-b

Here is old 15mm 4.5 in comparison to the new Sony 16-35mm f4 in Steve Huff's first look video:

jloden said:
Bumping an old thread - does anyone have both the CV 12mm and CV 15mm lenses that they can compare on the A7 for performance? I know there's heavy vignetting with both lenses that I'll have to correct in post, but I'm interested in center and edge sharpness, as well as distortion (beyond the obvious you'd expect with a 12-15mm lens).

What about size/ergonomics when shooting? Obviously the 12mm is larger, but I am having a hard time estimating size in hand on the Internet :)
Click to expand...
 
Thanks serhan, that's awesome information, very helpful. I didn't find some of that even after a lot of google searching and reading.

If that's the case sounds like the 12mm would be the way to go first, and wait and see what happens with a new version of the 15mm :)
 

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