1887 - Ain't No Mountain High Enough

2011-12-20

Well, and this is the accessory that I bought: a Novoflex Adapter MFT/NIK.

I have quite a number of Nikon lenses and I really can imagine good use for some of them on a Micro Four Thirds camera. A 50/1.2 suddenly becomes a portrait lens, an 85/1.4 becomes an ideal concert lens, or just take the image of the Day: I took it from our roof terrace in Villach.

The lens? Sigma 150/2.8, and on the PEN this lens becomes a very fast 300 mm lens!

Of course all Nikon lenses become manual focus lenses, but that’s not really a problem. Focusing on a PEN is extremely convenient and accurate, in fact more so than on the D300.

You just switch the display into a mode where the focus area is displayed, and then you use OK to toggle between a magnified view and the normal view. Focusing in the magnified view is much easier than in a DSLR’s viewfinder.

The Novoflex adapter is expensive, no doubt about that. It solves a problem though. Modern Nikon lenses don’t have an aperture ring any more. Aperture is controlled with a wheel on the camera, but when you don’t have a Nikon camera, the lens is always fully stopped down. In order to fix that, the Novoflex adapter has an aperture ring that allows aperture control on all Nikon lenses.

For modern G lenses you can use the ring to control the whole aperture range, and for old lenses with aperture ring, the ring controls aperture between wide open and the aperture set on the lens. Thus if I set the 50/1.2 AI-S to f8, then I can control the aperture between f1.2 and f8 via the adapter.

The other two images were taken with the Olympus 17/2.8.

The Song of the Day is “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” from the sound track of “Sister Act 2”. Hear it on YouTube.

There are 4 comments

Juha Haataja   (2011-12-21)

I look forward to seeing the results from the PEN. Occasionally I have pondered the micro 4/3 system, but somehow it has always seemed to be just a bit short of what would be needed to switch from the LX5. But the small pancake lenses, they certainly have promise of pocketability and great image quality.

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andreas   (2011-12-21)

Basically what I wanted was a camera with a better viewfinder (the Olympus VF-2 is great!) and better low-light characteristics. ISO 800 on the PEN is great, ISO 1600 is acceptable, probably comparable to the LX5's ISO 400. This makes for two stops, but wide open we lose a stop, because the Oly lens is only f2.8 vs f2.0. Both are stabilized, so that's more or less a draw. I wanted the camera to be sensor-stabilized, in order to be able to use my fast Nikon lenses. That requirement alone eliminated all other EVIL cameras. MFT has no fast standard zoom though. The best option would be the Olympus FT Zuiko digital ED 14-35mm 2.0 SWD. It only goes from 28-70 (equivalent), but constant f2.0 is cool. All Olympus MFT cameras can autofocus with all FT lenses (not so Panasonic cameras), but this given lens is not on the (short) list of lenses optimized for contrast AF (whatever this means), so it may autofocus slowly. The downside is the price. The lowest price that I can find is from a shop in Poland, and it is still 1853.78 €. Plus an adapter. No option for me 🙂 I may try the Tokina 11-16/2.8 for Nikon though. It works with my adapter and I already have it. Expect me to use this combo next week 😄

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Juha Haataja   (2011-12-21)

A fast standard zoom, that is indeed something to have (with a reasonable price, but that may be too much to ask). Have you thought about macro lenses?

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andreas   (2011-12-22)

Macro is covered. I have the Sigma 70/2.8 (eq. 140mm, which is traditional for a macro), the Sigma 150/2.8 (eq. 300mm, which is extraordinary for a macro), and if I really focus near on something with a shorter lens, then I have always the Sigma 20/1.8 and the Sigma 28/1.8. Both focus down to 2 cm from the front element 😄

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