good prime lenses for a Leicina Special

[andres victorero]

Hi, I recently bought a leicina special and I´m looking for a good prime lenses for this camera. I know that it has a bayonet M mount. Can I attach 35 mm. prime lenses of still cameras? I guess that if i attach a 50 mm. prime lensen in the leicina will be a 200 mm. prime lense, am I right?

any suggestion with prime lenses in the leicina special?

 

lastly which is the best way to focus with a super 8 cam? measure with tape measure or simply get focus in cam eyepiece?

 

thanks alot

[sparky]

Leica made several adapters for different lenses- I have one for M42 lenses. Thing is you'll be hard pressed to get anything better than the lenses made for the camera. For instance I tried a Summicron 40mm (a highly respected lens) and noticed no serious improvement over the optivaron at 40mm. I only use the adapter for REALLY long lenses- a 300mm Takumar to film the moon etc.

 

The best way to focus is by measurement and the lens markings with the special. If the eypiece dioptre setting is even slightly off, the VF focussing will be too- particularly with Macro and tele focussing. For macro, get the wonderful macro Cinegon which has focus marks down to 12cm from the film plane.

 

Mark

 

Hi, I recently bought a leicina special and I´m looking for a good prime lenses for this camera. I know that it has a bayonet M mount. Can I attach 35 mm. prime lenses of still cameras? I guess that if i attach a 50 mm. prime lensen in the leicina will be a 200 mm. prime lense, am I right?

any suggestion with prime lenses in the leicina special?

 

lastly which is the best way to focus with a super 8 cam? measure with tape measure or simply get focus in cam eyepiece?

 

thanks alot

[Guest santo]

And what lenses you have for the two stock choices! The best! The Optivaron 6-66 is tremendous -- a refined version of this already terrific Schneider found on the Beaulieus, re-engineered by the Leica and Schneider teams, with a couple of extra corrective elements and what appears to be a different coating to bring it up to the Leica standard. ie: The Best There Is Regardless of Cost or Development Time. Here's my Optivaron on my Special:

 

 

The other lens is the Cinegon 10mm Macro. It is terrific. Again, a joint effort between Schneider and Leitz, based on Schneider's proven Cinegon which looks much different in various forms. Naturally the Leicina version looks like a Leitz lens. It is fantastic for fast-paced, tiny crew filming, as it is focus free beyond 90cm in front of the camera -- I've noticed you can get closer. Here's one I used to own (i bought others):

 

 

I've found, doing quite a bit of shooting with my Special now, including two shorts this year, that I really needed only these two lenses plus a supplimental wide angle I came up with. All it is is a Century Precision Optics wide angle adapter lens for camcorders. It's a perfect single piece of the best optical glass with a 37mm thread mount for camcorders that has a .55x power, so it turns the Cinegon into a 5.5mm. All I did was take one of the step rings that comes with it and cemented it into a lens hood for the Cinegon. You can screw it on or off and just set the macro Cinegon to the .14 focus point and you've got a focus-free lens form about 30cm in front of the camera to infinity. Here's a "prototype" I did. The final version used the rubber lens hood and the Centrury lens fits right inside it perfectly! So no other lens hood was required!

 

 

It functions basically just like a mini version of the Zeiss Aspheron for their Ultra Primes: http://www.visualproducts.com/storeProduct...5&Cat=3&Cat2=43

 

The only thing is, the Century lens cost a $100 US or so. The cheapest lens you're ever going to get out of Century! :) Surprisingly little distortion in this application -- virtually none compared to when I tried it on a couple of miniDV cams.

 

That's one thing I noticed after a lot of use in some demanding situations, in super 8 what I need most for damatic filmmaking is something in the 10mm and the 5 or 6mm range more than anything. And it makes sense as 10mm is close to a super 8 normal, while a 6mm is a wide. I'd estimate about 80 % of my shots were using the Cinegon with and without the 5.5mm adapter -- probably split 50/50 between those two. The rest were close-ups and other shots needing a shifting focal length or more selective focus, and the Optivaron did that great!

 

I also noticed over the past couple of months I'd been working on this stuff, that I hadn't even tried the 28mm Super-Takumar. I didn't need 28mm much as it was too long, except for a couple of shots (it's telephoto in Super 8), and when I did, there ain't nothing wrong with the Optivaron! But I felt guilty so I did one test shot of the Takumar on the last roll. B) From what I saw, it looks really sharp. I'll see when my telecine comes back. Which is 10 bit uncompressed SDI Plus-X direct to harddrive! Haha! I can hardly wait.

 

BTW, I saw a photo from a guy who followed my Cinegon wide angle idea to extremes and rigged up a 3.5 mm version or something like that. I don't have the photo handy.

Edited October 30, 2005 by santo

[Guest santo]

I see my edit time is up on that post, but I forgot to mention that I bought the Super-Takumar as an experiment, thinking I might need a super 8 long, but it proved a telephoto in super 8, and redundant with the Optivaron around. And who wouldn't want to use the Optivaron? It's beautiful. I use a tape measure with that one except in telephoto lengths, of course. The viewfinder is very accurate as a method, but I like to be 100% sure when I'm filmmaking and spending a bunch of money and other people are trying their best.

 

Perhaps if I were out filming wildlife or something, I'd look at long prime lenses for the Special, but for dramatic filmmaking, the combination I describe has proven perfect.

 

The Century lens is this one:

 

http://www.centuryoptics.com/products/dv/5..._37mm_specs.htm

 

Man, I start writing about The Legend of Super 8 and I can't stop. It's ridiculous. I've got to buy me some more film today! :lol:

Edited October 30, 2005 by santo

[andres victorero]

thanks a lot, santo. Impressive answer :D