I’m planning on getting the Mavo Edge 8K along with the Red Komodo 6K later this year. I currently own and have purchased the following Leica-M and Leica-R lenses to use on both: Voigtlander 35mm F2 APO Lanthar VM Voigtlander 50mm F2 APO Lanthar VM Leica-M 75mm F2.5 Summarit Leica-M 90mm F2.5 Summarit Leica-Elmarit-R 100mm f2.8 APO Macro (canceled, decided to wait on a 38xxxxx or 39xxxxx serial # version instead) Leica-Vario-Elmar-R 80-200mm F4 ( Still waiting to receive from Ebay) What lenses are others users using with good results and what lenses have given poor results currently on the Mavo Edge and in the past with the Mavo LF?

Hey Rand, as you might know leica m are designed for their mirrorless cameras and thus sport a very short flange distance, c7 adapters makes a leica m native mount for the Kinefinity KInemount with positive lock. Leica r lenses, are in my opinion a bit overrated and a bit of a mixed bag. Leica is good with marketing but the only lenses that got to my attention as interesting are the m lenses, and the leica summilux-cine. As you might know the cine devision leitz made a 0.8 version of the leica m line (not all the models), inmy opinion overpriced, for a simple cinemod and added front OD. But i refer to these lenses because to my humble opinion these curated lenses are the nicest among the leica m lenses. Have a look here https://www.leitz-cine.com/product/m-08 The voightlander apo lanthers are really great lenses and most come also in e mount (kinefinity makes a e-mount), I own the 65mm myslef (macro) and it breaths heavily but both mechanics and optical design are lovely. If your into small cameras, your probably also into small lenses, and the leica m lenses and voightlander tick a lot of boxes. But as you might know these lenses were designed to be still lenses, this means that they are both optically and mechanically compromised, mechanically in terms of focus throw (even though some have quite a throw, they are macro lenses, and largest part of the scale is just focus throw, and they are not basec on cam systems with a more even spread on the scale), also they al breath to quite a large degree, and the wider angles will smear on digital cameras, due to inclining rays through the olpf, so they look better on film, thats due to their somewhat non-telecentric design, that causes the outer ray to project under quite a steep angle, and thus refract more inside the olpf. this causes blur (smear). This happens ofc more on LF than s35 with the komodo, because this happen mostly on the edges of the image circle the lens is able to throw, the edge has quite a thun olpf, due to the high pixel pitch so you get away with it quite well, a 21mm will have lots more of this edge smear, than a 35mm, for lf i would say that from 35mm and up your fine, and for the wider angles stopping down a bit willhelp. BUt generally I am always looking for small lenses with decent f stop, and I dont need beyond f1.8 t2.2 or something, most cine lenses are big and chunky , and even thats nice on a film set, you might not able to get away with it if you are a improviced shooter like me, who likes to carry along small camera backs, and small camera builds, for handheld style of shooting. The leica lenses have the leica name, and voightlander has made some truly amazing lenses and bad lenses, so dont always just throw your money at voightlander, the lenses you are referring to are fun, and good, check philpreeves his reviews on it, he’s a trustworthy reviewer, but ofc isnt reviewing them in a context of videoshooting, but from a stills photographer point of view. I myself rarely use wide angles, 50mm and 65mm and sometimes 35mm are my lenses to go on lf. They will all work fine, and I love the vcoightlander apo lantern 65mm, even though it breaths heavily, mechanics are good enough and with a added gearring, you can quite okayish pull focus with it. I myself dont focus pul by hand I use a PD movie remote liveair, and use a thumbwheel controller from the same brand to control focus, like that i can hold two hands to the rig, and i will have a much more stable image, and also focus pulling on short throw stils lenses is a bit smoother as well, due to high resolution of these motors, ofc you will suffer a bit of backlash on these still lenses, but leica m lenses and voightlanders are well made, and mostly all steel build , with low backlash, Hope this helps, if you have any more questions please ask.

Thanks alot Jerome for your very detailed, well informed reply. Yeah, on both the Komodo and Mavo Edge I didn’t want to use heavy lenses that would over stress the lens mount. I previously owned the leica-R 80-200mm F4 that I used with a Panasonic GH5 and loved the look it gave me. I also used the Voigtlander 40mm f2 Ultron on my Canon 7D back in the day. I owned a few of the micro4/3 Voigtlander 0.95 lenses.(17.5, 25, 42.5). I’ve used Zeiss ZF , Contax Zeiss, Olympus OM, Nikon Ai/Ai-s lenses also. The Zeiss ZFs had Chromatic Aberration I didn’t like. The Contax Zeiss lenses had a beautiful image rendition but I feel it won’t be able to resolve both the 6k and 8K image of the Komodo and the Mavo Edge the way I would want them to. The Nikons were kind of Neutral looking and I thought they were kinda bland. I’ve seen alot of really beautiful images captured with the specific M- mount lenses I listed above and with the Komodo RF mount and the Mavo Edges 15/16mm flanges distance, I thought M-mount lenses would be a perfect choice. I also looked at both the Voigtlander 65 and 110mm E- mount lenses but I felt since I could only use the E-mount lenses on the Mavo Edge, it wouldn’t be a wise investment I was worried about the Optical Smear implications with the Voigtlander 35mm f2 lanthar, from what you mentioned above, I feel a little bit better about that now. I also never liked the ultra wide angle lenses. I never really like the distortion they bring that most other individuals seem to love. I feel that I would only use the Voigt. 35mm for only tight situations and the 50mm and up the most.

RandThompson BY asking the question you also possible answer a question. In that regard, yes m mount lenses seem to tick a lot of boxes, small, optically quite good, but they add a bit of character on top of quite a clean image, so not too flawed, they are relative affordable (compared to cinema lenses). Contax zeiss, I would say, they are a bit overrated, I know some people believe they are comparable to superspeeds zeiss (b speeds), I love the old Zeiss standard speeds, lovely glass, still quite uncorrected, so quite some abbertions, but uncorrected glass, seem to have quite good color response (this is not always true of course, but modern low distortion and apo lenses tend to cut some wavelengths, only the more expensive ones, like signature primes, zeiss otus tend to keep the colors in a nicer manner, ) . The ultron lens you mention has the conthat it has quite some iris blades, features quite a low contrast, while having still reasonable micro contrast and mtf (details), Its also a favourite of anamorphic shooters, who look for a wide angle, with enough detail, and character but also enough translation of micro contrast and sharpness. The issue is ofc if your looking for a full batch of lenses, in all of your focal lengths, you might not get a matching set, there wil always be differences, in bokeh, flares, color rendition contrast, etc etc, my suggestion is to look at filmmakers like Robert Bresson, who shoot everythig on one lens. When you do so, you can probably free up much more money than when buying a full set of lenses, if your a dop you can always rent glass, but its good to focus on a gfocal length and try to understand what your doing by limiting you by the same AOV (angle of view ) of your lens, maybe later down the road yousee yourself shooting on a different focal length and become religious about that, but thats no problem, its a great thing to do. MOst beginning dops, think they need 8 lenses, etc. It’s bullshit, it will diffuse and make the beginning of learning the craft much harder. I could go in depth about that for ours, the one lens for all thing is deeply philosophic. Let me know if you want to know more, and if tnhis answered most of your questions.

What Leica-M lenses are being used for the Mavo Edge and Mavo LF?

RandThompson

Jerome, you’ve done a fine job of answering my questions. When I was using the 1.6x crop factor Canon 7D, I really only used the Voigtlander 40, the Contax- Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ,50mm f1.8 and the Contax-Zeiss 85mm f1.4 and 85mm f2.8. I thought the 100mm f2 Makro- Planar I owned for a very brief time was too long for the things and the way I shoot.

I have always found it easy to get images from the Voigtlanders, Leica and Contax- Zeiss lens families to look very similar so color matching wasn’t really going to be too much of an issue for me. This was one of the reasons I selected these specific lenses as part of my lens set. I believe the Voigtlanders and Contax-Zeiss lenses were both made by Cosina in Japan.

I am unfamiliar with the full frame aesthetic so I wanted to acquire a decent focal range to use . I always realized that I needed a wider lense than the 40mm Ultron even when I was using it on the 1.6x crop factor of the Canon 7D. I sometimes shoot in alot of tight spaces so I believed that I should try a 35mm for a full frame sensor. I was also concerned about the shipping issues in Asia right now due to the new Covid cases and I wanted to get both the 35mm and 50mm APO lanthars while they were still in stock. I went ahead and purchased the Leica 75mm and 90mm F2.5 Summirats because I was able to get Mint copies of both. It has also been hard to find quality Summirat 2.5s and the replacement Summirats 2.4s versions will cost you about an extra $ 1000 dollars of more on Ebay.

I had to return the Leica 80- 200mm F4 for focus ring issues. I wanted a complete range like I have had with all of my other different crop factor sensored cameras. So I’m still trying to decide to get another Leica 80- 200mm F4 or just the Leica-R 100mm f2.8 APO Macro for both general use and Close focus/ Macro images but will cost an additional $1200 over my initial investment.Since I believe the M- mount lenses are not really known for their Close Focusing abilities.

RandThompson

With the Leica-M APO lenses, I thought they were a little overpriced just to get that extra 5 to 7 percent image quality over some of their other lenses like the Summirats. If I do get Leica lenses, I always try to get the “ second best” lens in their range for a specific focal length. Like the 80- 200mm f4 instead of the 70-180mm f2.8. And the 75 and 90 Summirats instead of the 75 and 90 APO Summicrons.

Jerome

generally what i like about that 0.8 lens line, is that they all match pretty well, in terms of f stop, and look, (contrast coating, etc etc). But yes you need deep pockets, and the 2nd best is always a lot cheaper and almost as good. Voightlanders have great build quality, and some lenses are technically better than Leica m’s.

RandThompson

Yeah, I have found personally that I preferred the more than 400 or so Voigtlander APO Lens Images I ve gone through on Flickr more than the images of the Leica- M APO atleast in the 35mm to 50mm range. I have always believed in getting the fastest ( F1.4, F1.8, F2) and best lenses that you can afford in the 35mm to 50mm range and around ( F2, F2.4/ 2.5, F2.8) in the more telephoto range. I usually prefer a F2 in a 35mm or 50mm because I think that gives you a decent amount Out-of- focus bokeh with usually not having to stop down much for sharp edges. I also think that F2.5/ F2.8 In a lens above 50mm also gives you a decent amount Out-of- focus bokeh with also not having to stop down much for sharp edges. I think your 3200 Iso test with the 55mm f2.8 reaffirmed that for me.

iiiNelson

I don’t have a Mavo yet of any sort but I’ve owned quite a collection of Leica M and Contax Zeiss lenses in the past (along with a lot of other vintage lenses). In short my recommendation would be to try the lens/camera combination for yourself.

Generally speaking there are a few things of concern when using Leica M lenses to avoid smearing. Above all is a consideration of the sensor stack thickness. Traditionally a sensor stack of 1.2mm or less was optimal for using Leica M lenses to minimize smearing on the edges. Second, you likely would one to avoid aspherical Leica M lenses on the wider end. These lenses tended to be much more susceptible to color casts. Mandler designed Leica M lenses generally worked better than the more modern Karbe designs. These generally are the lenses that were designed from the mid to late 70’s until the late 90’s/early 2000’s. I concur that Voigtlander has some good options but I would look at their designs starting with the 35/1.2 Nokton II or newer… I believe this lens was released in 2010 AMD it was a huge improvement in the lenses Voigtlander began to release. It was followed by the 21/1.8 Ultron, and then the other Nokton/APO-Lanthar lenses.

Regarding Contax Zeiss… there’s a marked difference optically in the MMJ (better) and the AEJ (older) designs. Some of them will still look great on a 8K sensor I believe in the newer line. Some of the optical designs and all of the aperture configurations were changed with the MMJ upgrades. One other thing to note is that you may have better luck with older SLR lenses at they’re telecentric and comparable in size to Leica M lenses. None seem to be ideal as the focus throws will be all over the place given the nature of their photography usage.

Jerome

iiiNelson
Some solid in depth point there! Thanx for your contribution, learned a few things here!
About 8k coverage in terms of mtf. I always find this to be a cumbersome topic, in the following topic I already went a bit in depth with the issues of resolution, and why resolution doesnt seem like it is.
https://gafpaforum.com/d/3-kinefinity-mavo-edge-8k-footage-vs-4k-over-sampled-footage/2

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But lens wise, i think it’s interesting to state, that you can already see a huge difference in optical resolution on a Arri Alexa classic, even though this camera has quite a thick olpf and is 2k after its sublime oversample algorithm, you can still see which lenses are somewhat sharp and which ones are not. To me sharpness is a join definition for contrast and resolving power, and contrast can be divided in macro and micro. For instance a Signature prime has great macro contrast, low micro contrast (gentle on the skintones), but yet high resolving power, quite a unique combination. What i explained in the other topic is that 8k is more or less a capturing resolution which is preferably much higher than master resolution (nyquist), due to sampling at high resolution we can leave very high frequencies of the lens more untouched but with the same aliasing breaking point as on a 4k capture camera. We can do this by inserting a lighter less dense olpf in the 8k camera, and a stronger one on the 4k camera. the aliasing will happen on the same level, yet the 8k capture camera will be able to resolve more lines before it will aliase as the 4k camera with the denser olpf. Yet 8k is just sampling and in order to display this 8k in its honest resolution we have to diminish it with the Nyquist theorem and also bayer theorem. We will then perceive it at the perfect resolution with no digital artefacts like spatial issues or color issues. 8k is not sharper like some people believe, 8k is smoother. Because when you use a camera pixel to pixel at tits sample capturing resolution, you will get lots of edge issues and enhancement issues due to extrapolating debayer algorithms and sample resolutions past its nyquist limits. capturing at 4X the intended master resolution will by far lead to a cleaner and better presentation of the lens capabilities, and in this case 8k to 4k is still way past what our retinas can see at a normal viewing distance. To me vintage lenses look better on a 8k sampling camera because its harder for a camera to display smoothness (OOF out of focus), and other subtile lens effects, than plain crisp contrast sharpness (mtf). In that light leica lenses designed for mirrorless film cameras without digital sensors , will look better on a 8k camera with light olpf, than on a 4k camera with dense camera, due to the inclining rays which are projected under a steep angle, and will be less refracted in the 8k sample camera, due to lighter olpf. So long story short 8k sampling doesn’t lead to sharper images, but better images, more smoother images. a 1k camera can look very sharp, and can be perceived enormously sharp. And some people think about resolutions as details, but its instead all about smoothness. A sharp lens like a master prime will look sharp on a standard definition camera and on a 8k camera. a 9600 0 audio recording mastered at 441100 will sound better than a 44100 audio recording mastered at 44100. etc. Our eyes are much more reactive to smoothness than details, I have a nice library about how our eyes and brain transform visual data, and what stands out, is that once you start to ramp up resolution is that the first thing that bottlenecks is detail perceiving, the last thing that bottlenecks is perceiving smoothness, like bokeh, and fall off curves from sharp to OOF.
SO to state that a carl zeiss contax lens is less ideal for a 8k camera, and to get to its potential is not a good way of looking at it (in my humble opinion). If you don’t like contax zeiss, you probably dont like it on 1k, not on 2k not on 3k etc. you just don’t like the characteristics of the lens, but if you DO like the characteristics of the lens you probably love to see the lens digitally sampled at the highest resolution possible, and oversampled according to the oversample rules. (nyquist and bayer).

RandThompson

iiiNelson

Thanks for your knowledge of the Leica- M lenses. With the Contax-Zeiss lenses, I had all MMG ( Made in Germany) lenses. It took me awhile to acquire them since they were much more sought out on Ebay than the MMJs. All of my MMGs had medium to high 8xxxxxx serial numbers. I sold them all and replaced them with the Voigtlander (17.5mm V2, 25mm V2, 42.5mm) 0.95 lenses as well as the 42.5mm f1.2 Panasonic lenses for my GH5.

I read that M-mount lenses wider than 50mm could be problematic with optical smear. Jerome and now you have given me reason to believe that the Voigtlander 35mm F2 would be okay to use. Since both the Mavo Edge and Red Komodo are small I didn’t want to have to deal much with trying to counterbalance larger lenses with it. I also didn’t want to stress the Camera mount that much either. So being able to use M-mount lenses on both was great to know

iiiNelson

Jerome

I largely agree with you and the underlying ideas about whether or not a lens has enough resolving power for a particular resolution really derived from the photography side of things. Specifically once DSLR’s started to get into the pixel realm of above 30 megapixel sensors as it specifically applied to maximum sharpness. I do believe that this spurred a new design goal for many optics manufacturers of achieving the highest levels of sharpness which ironically many people are looking for ways to tone down 10 years later. IMO some optics makers were more successful (Zeiss Otus and Leica modern designs) in achieving sharpness but retaining some character compared to some that went full on clinical like Sigma Art series. I feel like Zeiss leaned more heavily into essentially making a set of medium format photography lenses for FF sensors that have both sharpness and character. So your analogy towards the Contax Zeiss is in fact correct in that if you don’t like them at 2K then you won’t like them at 8K.

In regards to your statements about contrast and sharpness I rather agree with you. On the photography side the prices of vintage Leica lenses skyrocketed after the first Monochrom camera was introduced. In effect, true Monochrom cameras only capture light intensity within the grayscale (to be more accurate) space. A side effect is the acuity is generally increased by a factor of approximately 2x so in effect it would take about a 36-50 megapixel Bayer sensor to match the acuity and detail represented in a 18-24 megapixel Monochrom sensor. Due to this, people were rushing to buy vintage lenses in addition to having to rely on external color filters to create effects .

There’s room for both and it makes for interesting topics. More important IMO is that the user should concentrate on the total image pathway. Sticking a Sigma 18-35 on a Blackmagic 6k yields a different look than sticking it on say a Canon 80D. One will have a softer look (though still too clinical for my tastes personally) and the other will have a lot of sharpness.

I like that the video side of the industry is moving towards supersampling/oversampling in hardware. The photo side has been doing this largely for the last 15-20 years if you look at some of the Fuji Super Resolution (EXR) tech or the Phase One IQ+ tech (which was much better implemented). I shoot on high resolution Mirrorless cameras for that reason of having more data to begin with even if I deliver to a lower resolution. It’s the same as if someone captures in 4K with the intention to deliver in 1080p. You’re just going to get a much nicer 1080p and that’s the appeal (for me) in a 8K camera.

I’d probably never shoot in anything but a ProRes 422 variant for most things but having options is nice. Even if there’s no internal RAW I’d like to see Kinefinity work with a company to offer an external solution - if nothing else for PR. People can be so spec driven and I get it. The GAS factor combined with FOMO is a real thing (internally no one really wants to feel like the equipment is the potential limiting factor of creativity). That being said to avoid continued questions of “is RAW coming” even though the people asking likely will rarely if ever utilize a RAW workflow due to costs and time I think it’s worth the company considering partnering with a company like Atomos to offer it as an option for those that insist on it being there.

RandThompson

Jerome

I think after buying and reselling and buying so many Contax Zeiss lenses, that I just probably just got tired of the “look” of them. I also loved the Zeiss ZF2 lenses as well but the Chromatic Aberration that they exhibited a certain apertures kind of made me stop using them.

You told me something I didn’t know about the 8K to 4K down sampled image I wasn’t really aware of, thanks again for your knowledge.

Jerome

iiiNelson I’d probably never shoot in anything but a ProRes 422 variant for most things but having options is nice. Even if there’s no internal RAW I’d like to see Kinefinity work with a company to offer an external solution - if nothing else for PR. People can be so spec driven and I get it. The GAS factor combined with FOMO is a real thing (internally no one really wants to feel like the equipment is the potential limiting factor of creativity). That being said to avoid continued questions of “is RAW coming” even though the people asking likely will rarely if ever utilize a RAW workflow due to costs and time I think it’s worth the company considering partnering with a company like Atomos to offer it as an option for those that insist on it being there.

Yes if Kinefinity wants to be a main player there need to be some sort of external raw, and that’s also happening down the road.
If we want to talk about RAW I suggest to make a topic for that, because otherwise we kill the nice Leica discussion we had here, which gathers so much good information for newbees, who are i their beginning of research! iiiNelson will you make a raw topic, and I will share with you in detail my thoughts and some political insides as well, which could be valuable for others.

iiiNelson

RandThompson

Yeah the “wider than 50 is a problem” has become popular opinion but it’s incorrect. For instance the widest Leica lens known as the “16-18-21 WATE” (wide angle Tri-Elmar is a very telecentric rangefinder design actually and works wonderfully with just about any Mirrorless or other camera out there. While many Leica lenses (especially the aspherical ones) had a lot of issues with smearing and color cast it was the newer Leica branded aspherical that sometimes had the worse performance. Many of the Cosina made Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses were perfectly fine. Same can be said for the Zeiss (Germany made) 35/1.4 Distagon that was released around 2012 or so. It worked fine. So I’d always tell people to try their lenses on a case by case basis with a reliable and in spec adapter. Unfortunately a lot of people didn’t want to pay $100-250 for a adapter made with tighter tolerances and so sometimes performance reflected that as well when adapting lenses. I can say that I had good luck with a few wide angle lenses from Voigtlander and Zeiss but there are also a limited number of rangefinder options too. The best wide angle is probably the WATE but it costs a lot for many people to try out on a whim as well.

RandThompson

iiiNelson

Thanks again for all your knowledge about the M- lenses. Like you stated, I had always heard about the below 50mm M- Lenses causing optical problems especially along the edges of the images with Non- M- bodies. I always heard this about Leica lenses 50mm and below but just wanted to take a chance on the Voigtlander VMs not being the same. I was pretty sure the the 75mm and 90mm Summirats f2.5 wouldn’t be a problem, but I wasn’t absolutely sure.

For the Mavo Edge, I would be using the Adapter Jerome suggested.

https://c7adapters.com/en/product/leica_m_-_kinemount/242?fbclid=IwAR1SWFgNX1WvhiE2GLy7S0SjhHV-xd6qvGf2oso-mcZ6-aUJiyqaBX0m5SU

I also would be using a c7adapter for the RF mount of the Komodo.

https://c7adapters.com/en/product/leica_m_-_rf_mount/265

Rofocale

There and a half years late to the party, but would love to know how the experiment went. Considering something very similar with the C7 Adapter and my Komodo X. There’s a number of M-mount lenses I have my eye on, but would be grateful for info on specific lenses that are known to work, and those that don’t. I’ve heard of Nikon users having waver thin sensor stacks installed and wondering if that’s a thing for KX users.

Doubt anyone will see this, but thanks for reading!