Old an New; 20d and Zeiss Biometar

Justiceiro · January 26, 2006

I just got my Pentacon 6 lens => Canon EOS body adaptor, about 3 hours before I left on a business trip. So I mounted my 80mm Zeiss Jena Biometar on the 20d, and did a quick and dirty, very unscientific test. Over the weekend I plan to take this to Chinatown for the new years celebration, and do some other outside shots with more prep and more natural light. In the meantime, I think it looks pretty decent for a quick test.

20d with biometar mounted:

Lens adaptor needed for Pentacon 6 lenses

Here is the lens, on its own. I don't know how the adaptor affects the "real" focal length.

I've used this lens before, with the MF Pentacon body, and had much better results. I don't know if this is due to the higher resolution of the MF film, or better exposure (I tried to use the "on board" exposure meter, rather than the Luna Pro, as the LP wasn't handling the available light well). So I am waiting for some better shooting conditions before saying anything "definitive."

here are some shots.

f2.8

Cropped:

f 16:

cropped:

Not bad, considering the cost (95 euros for Pentacon Body and Lens).

Does anyone else have any experience with shooting like this? Right now I am shooting on manual, with only shutter speed control. Is it possible to set it on aperture priority, and "dial in" the aperture the lens is set at? Any advice?

DoctorIt · January 26, 2006

The D2h has a "non-CPU lenses" option where you can essentially tell the camera what MF lens you have mounted - you select focal and aperture range. Never having owned a 20D, perhaps it has something like this?

Mokambo, eh?

Justiceiro · January 31, 2006

DoctorIt wrote:

The D2h has a "non-CPU lenses" option where you can essentially tell the camera what MF lens you have mounted - you select focal and aperture range. Never having owned a 20D, perhaps it has something like this?

Mokambo, eh?

Mokambo is good!

After a day of playing around with it, I figured out two ways to do it; easy and hard.

Easy- set the mode to Av, and the camera meters automatically. It has a difficult time with perfect exposure, but nothing that can't be fixed in post processing.

Hard- whip out the old gossen Luna Pro, set the mode to M, and adjust the shuter speed manually.

here are a few more shots that I took with it:

Pencil Test

f 2.8

f8

And here are some real world shots:

Not bad bokeh, really. both of these were metered with the Luna Pro, rather than the internal metering system.

All in all, a rather nice lens, the only problem being that 80mm goes from being quite wide in medium format to quite long on an APS sensor. I tried "walking around with it" today, and I think I will have to look at a 50 mm Flektogon. Then again, I could just stick with my canon 50mm 1.8. I would actually be interested in comparing these two 50mm lenses. Does anyone out there shoot old CZ Jena glass?

DoctorIt · January 31, 2006

Bokeh looks very nice. that's the first thing that struck with in this series of shots.

Justiceiro · January 31, 2006

DoctorIt wrote:

Bokeh looks very nice. that's the first thing that struck with in this series of shots.

Thanks Dr. It, the other shots were just to test tech aspects of the lens, like sharpness. I have heard that some of the CZ Jena lenses have quality control problems, but the ones I have used are OK. When I actually took this lens into the field, I got some great results. If only it were a bit shorter.

Bob Bell · January 31, 2006

I have a couple Carl Zeiss for Contax that work on Canon DSLR's. the CZ are the highest quality of the zeiss lines with T* coatings AE and MM seem to be similar to me but some have noticed differences. I havent had any issues with the body metering correctly.

I read somewhere that the 50mm flektogon can be mated with a shift adapter and makes a very good and inexpensive shift lens. I think it was on FM.

Also on FM is a forum dedicated to 3rd party lenses on Canon DSLR's so you can learn about zeiss, leitz/leica, zuiko, etc... how to mount and so forth.

Manual lenses are fun.

Old an New; 20d and Zeiss Biometar

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