[Leica] RE; Autofocusing M lenses

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

Both a Digital Split Image overlay and Focus Peaking as manual focus aids
are available on my Fuji XT-1, which accepts M lenses quite effortlessly
with an adapter. In fact Fuji themselves make an adapter.
Cheers
Jayanand

On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 8:42 AM, Peter Klein <boulanger.croissant at 
gmail.com>
wrote:

> In theory it should work just fine. You leave the lens on infinity, and the
> adapter does the rest.  The adapter must:
>
> -Interface to the camera's AF electronics such that the camera can tell it
> "forward, back, stop").
> -Be thin enough to allow infinity focus.
> -Contain motors and a mechanism that will rack the lens out sufficiently to
> focus the lens to a reasonable close distance. The mechanism must fit in
> the adapter. This is easier to do with SLR lens adapters. M lenses have a
> shorter back focus distance, and M to mirrorless adapters are quiet short
> compared to SLR adapters. Perhaps some of the mechanism could be below the
> adapter, or concentric to it.)
>
> The major problems with M lenses on other cameras would still be corner
> smearing and color shifts, unless the sensor's Bayer array was designed for
> M lenses. And would the autofocus be fast and accurate enough, and would
> using the adapter be convenient enough that you wouldn't get fed up with it
> quickly?
>
> Personally, I'd love to have an autofocus M that also did RF focusing.  But
> as Larry mentions, it would have to be worth someone's while to
> manufacture. Most manufacturers have already passed on making their own
> rangefinder mechanism. Leica seems to be willing to make RF cameras along
> traditional M lines, but not to do anything radical with them.  But what
> about something entirely new by a third party--an AF camera that also did
> some sort of visual rangefinder simulation in an EVF, and was designed to
> take M lenses. Ideally, the version for M lenses would have a Bayer array
> with microlens offsets licensed from Leica.  The SLR lens version would
> have a more conventional sensor.
>
> All technically possible. The big question is whether there are enough
> legacy(*) lens fans, and in particular M lens fans, to make such a camera
> commercially viable.
>
> --Peter, who actually dislikes the word "legacy."
>
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Larry Zeitlin via LUG <
> lug at leica-users.org>
> wrote:
>
> > About 40 years ago, give or take a decade, a precision camera make,
> > probably Zeiss. marketed a camera in which the focus was adjusted by
> moving
> > the film plane. This simplified lenses but had the downsides of increased
> > expense for the camera body and the difficulty of providing enough motion
> > for long focus lenses. The idea was abandoned after a few years but I
> > believe that with modern electronics it could provide automatic focus
> for M
> > lenses. But, of course, there would be little incentive for Leica to
> adopt
> > such a system. Maybe a third party could sell a universal camera which
> > would autofocus with all makers lenses.
> > Larry Z
> >
> > + + +
> > LUG:
> >
> > Any idea whether this would actually work or not?
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.thephoblographer.com/2016/02/11/the-techart-pro-lens-adapter-promises-autofocus-for-leica-m-mount-glass/#.VrywD_krJaQ
> >
> > Tina
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Leica Users Group.
> > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> >
>
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