Godfrey
somewhat colored
I thought Stephen had acquired a Pixii 1 for his own use...? Regardless, testing all the lenses, etc, is quite a lot of effort.
Ah yes: the lens might not work with the rangefinder on the Pixii. Something to think about ... What I'm looking for is a reasonably fast while reasonably compact lens in the 17 to 21mm range for APS-C. Perhaps I'll be happy enough with the Color-Skopar 21mm f/4 (or f/3.5?), which is a much much more compact piece of kit. I use the Color-Skopar 28/3.5 quite a lot on the CL.
I see Voigtländer also has a nice new Nokton 21mm f/1.4 available, but it's a 69.5mm barrel and would have the same issues with the RF as the 21/1.8.
Fun stuff. I do wish the TT Artisans 17mm f/1.4 had been something other than a piece of junk. But the fact that it was L-mount also makes it unusable on the Pixii (or Ms) anyway. Choices...
G
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Well, I decided to buy one of the newer Voigtlânder Color-Skopar 21mm f/3.5 type 1 (I prefer that design of focus mount over the type 2). This will work nicely on both the digital CL and the Pixii.
I had one of the Voigtländer Color-Skopar 21/4 P lenses in LTM mount in the past. It was a very nice lens on film but suffered a lot of color artifact issues on a digital sensor, which is why I sold it. The new 21/3.5 model supposedly corrects that issue and remains very small and handy.
It's fair tempting to press the button and order a Pixii now... But I'll wait a little bit yet, since I still have some upcoming expenses to deal with in the car restoration project.
G
I had one of the Voigtländer Color-Skopar 21/4 P lenses in LTM mount in the past. It was a very nice lens on film but suffered a lot of color artifact issues on a digital sensor, which is why I sold it. The new 21/3.5 model supposedly corrects that issue and remains very small and handy.
It's fair tempting to press the button and order a Pixii now... But I'll wait a little bit yet, since I still have some upcoming expenses to deal with in the car restoration project.
G
ranger9
Well-known
I hope it's true that the Head Bartender has one! Re testing, yes, testing the whole back catalog would be a lot of effort. On the other hand, when a new Voigtlander lens is being written up for the CQ website, popping it onto the Pixii, racking it out to minimum focusing distance, and then noting whether it obscures the rangefinder patch or not (and whether there's enough clearance to reach the release catch to get it off the camera again!) seems manageable. Then again, it's easy to say that when I'm not the person who would have to do it!
Of course, another angle is that it seems at least possible that nobody in the United States actually owns a Pixii except me (at least until I psych Godfrey or some other RFFer into taking the plunge) in which case it's hardly worth the bother for a seller to test lens compatibility, since I'm the stingy type and don't buy new stuff very often...
Incidentally, a quick interim report from Pixii land: For the past seven weeks I've been taking the Pixii to work every day and have been shooting with it almost every day, often for several hours at a stretch, and most of the issues I originally thought would be deal-breakers have pretty much faded away.
For example, I don't worry about battery life any more, now that I've realized I can usually keep WiFi turned off (a huge power saving) and now that I have three batteries so I can have one in the camera, one on a charger, and one in reserve (I'm not a prolific shooter, so this arrangement lets me keep going as long as I want.) And I signed up to help test a new pre-release software update that speeds up image processing -- it's still not a Nikon Z9, you understand, but I can shoot two or three shots in quick succession when the situation calls for it, without worrying about bogging down the camera.
My biggest Pixii pet peeve now is simply that there's no right-hand gripping surface on the front of the camera, so my third and fourth fingers get pretty tired after holding it up to my eye during most of a two-hour shooting session. I'm almost tempted to order this pricey handmade Arte de Mano half case to add some grip area, although the whole dead-cow aesthetic seems at odds with the sleek contemporary industrial design of the camera.
A few February pics: https://ranger9.net/pixiifun/202202/
Godfrey
somewhat colored
LOL! You don't have to psyche me up: I've been sold on the concept since the first time I saw it, and with the new sensor, yeah, I'm on my way there. Just hanging out while I pay off some of my resto project bills.
G
Emile de Leon
Well-known
There will soon be a Pixii in every household in America..
ranger9
Well-known
"A Pixii in every pot and two Sonnars in every garage..."
ptpdprinter
Mentor
Please clarify the rangefinder framelines for me. The specs say that the Pixii II has framelines for 28mm, 35mm, 40mm, and 50mm. Do those represent the view when using 28mm, 35mm, 40mm, and 50mm M-mount lens, or when using the APS-C equivalents (18mm=27mm, 24mm=36mm, 28mm=42mm, 35mm=52.5mm)?
Emile de Leon
Well-known
Have you tried a super wide on it yet? Maybe a 16 or 18 mm?
Godfrey
somewhat colored
As far as my reading of the instruction manual, you set the frame lines to match the actual focal length of the lens you are fitting. That means the frame lines are defined to represent the appropriate approximation of the APS-C FoV for that focal length... Any other way of doing it would be pretty silly, IMO, since lenses are never marked in "equivalent focal length".
G
Godfrey
somewhat colored
I used the WATE on the CL for a bit. It performs very well, as you might imagine, but of course it becomes a "24-28-32" mm lens in equivalent FoV terms, which is fine if that's what you're looking for. I sold the WATE because I wanted something wider, and bought the Voigtländer HyperWide 10mm f/5.6, which nets an equivalent 15mm lens of stunning quality on the APS-C format. I've used it on the CL for some time ... and other cameras. Here's a gallery of 10mm photos, made with several different cameras including the CL (APS-C): Posted 10mm photos
Note that the 10mm does not have a rangefinder cam. The DoF is so great that at f/5.6, the DoF (FF markings) with infinity set at the hyperfocal point, the near point of acceptable focus is closer than the closest distance marking on the lens. You just set it by scale at f/5.6-f/8 and everything is in focus.
G
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Ranger9 (and anyone else): What brand batteries are you using in the Pixii? Their documentation says
G
- Sony NP-FW50
- Duracell NP-FW50
- Patona NP-FW50 Premium
G
ptpdprinter
Mentor
As far as my reading of the instruction manual, you set the frame lines to match the actual focal length of the lens you are fitting. That means the frame lines are defined to represent the appropriate approximation of the APS-C FoV for that focal length... Any other way of doing it would be pretty silly, IMO, since lenses are never marked in "equivalent focal length".
So the Pixii II framelines marked 28mm, 35mm, 40mm and 50mm are just approximations for when using 18mm, 24mm, 28mm and 35mm M-mount lenses?
Emile de Leon
Well-known
Thx Godfrey for that info!
Godfrey
somewhat colored
No.
The frame lines in the Pixii viewfinder show you what you will get when you use 28, 35, 40, and 50mm lenses. In equivalent FOV terms, this would be like using 42, 50, 60, and 75mm lenses on a FF camera. As example: If I put my 10mm lens on the Pixii and need a viewfinder to give me the Pixii's APS-C FoV, I need an accessory viewfinder with framing for a 15mm FoV in FF terms.
In yet other words ... The smaller format reduces the Field of View by 1.5x, and the Pixii frame lines are named to give you the Pixii's view with those lenses' focal lengths.
Do you understand?
G
ptpdprinter
Mentor
So the widest framelines on the Pixii II are for a 42mm equivalent FOV?
ranger9
Well-known
I just went to my local camera store and bought two "Promaster" brand NP-FW50s. (PRO is a buying group operated by an association of individual photo retailers; they probably have the batteries OEMed by one of the major manufacturers, but of course won't say which.) I haven't had any trouble with them, and the store knows that if I do, I'll come back and raise hell!
They were priced at US$ 49.95 each, so not much less expensive than the Sony battery, but easier for me to get locally. So far, capacity seems identical to the Duracell battery that came avec the camera from the manufacturer. The Pixii has a fun feature whereby if you turn it off and then double-push the power/menu button, it displays a detailed battery menu including percent capacity, average current, and per-cell voltage; these readings seem roughly identical among the three batteries I own.
ranger9
Well-known
Godfrey already has ably covered the basic answer (i.e. "no") but I'm going to deliver myself of a more detailed explanation because I've been trying to straighten this out for people ever since I got my Epson R-D1 in 2004!
Concept 1: The focal length of a lens is a simple physical property that can be measured exactly on an optical bench (or approximately with a ruler): It's the distance from the optical center of the lens to the focal plan when the lens is focused on an object at a distance of "infinity" (the sun works well as long as you're careful to avoid burning anything important!)
Concept 2: You can see from this that focal length alone doesn't tell you anything about the lens' angle of view or area of coverage; that depends on both the image size (the specific lens needs to be designed to cover that image size, of course) and also on the focal length itself.
Back before photography was ruined by the Internet, everybody understood that, for example, a lens with a focal length of 50mm was a telephoto on your Bolex, a "normal" on your Contax, a wide angle on your Hasselblad, and an ultra-wide-angle on your Linhof (no, there wasn't a 50mm lens that covered 4x5-inch film, but there WAS a 47mm Schneider Super-Angulon that did.) Nobody confused themselves with irrelevant notions of "equivalents" or "crop factors."
What really counted was how wide a subject area you wanted to cover in your photo. Mostly for reasons having to do with geometric perspective, the convention was to say that a "normal" lens is one that covers an angle of about 40 degrees along the long side of the picture. (Spread out your index, bird, and ring fingers as wide as you can, and the angle they cover is about 40 degrees; use this trick to amaze your friends on photo walks.)
Since what's in front of the lens and what's behind the lens always form similar triangles (everything in the same proportion) you can do simple trig to find out what focal length you need to achieve this "normal" coverage angle on any image size you like. Got your spreadsheet handy? Then type in this:
([long side of frame]÷2)÷TAN(RADIANS([angle of view]÷2)) gives you the focal length of lens you need.
For example, on the Pixii the long side of the imager measures 25mm, more or less, and the formula tells you that a lens with a measured focal length of 34mm will give you a 40-degree angle of view. For a Moses-format camera with an imager that measures 36mm along the long side, you'll need a lens with a focal length of 49mm. If you have one of those Fujifilm or Hasselblad cameras with an imager that's 44mm along the long side, you'll need a 60mm focal length to cover 40 degrees, and at the other end of the scale a Micro Four Thirds camera with a 17.3mm image width will need a 24mm focal length to cover 40 degrees. (And yes, let's round up 24 to 25, 34 to 35, and 49 to 50 for the sake of neatness.)
The same simple calculation works with any other angle of view you might want to cover, so you can easily work out for yourself that if you want to cover a 75-degree angle (for example) you'll need a focal length of 12mm on your Micro Four Thirds camera, 16mm on your Pixii or R-D1, 24mm on your Moses-format camera, and 30mm on your 44x33mm camera (all rounded for neatness.)
Yes, you can look at those numbers and say "this is equivalent to two times that" and "this is equivalent to one-and-a-half times that", but that makes just as much sense as telling people your new Tesla's range in terms of horse-equivalent furlongs per peck of feed. (In the days of horse-drawn streetcars, the streetcar companies worked this out in fine detail so they'd know what to budget for feed, so if you want to web-search old documents you can work out "horse-equivalent range" fairly easily... it's just kind of a loopy exercise because no one will know what you're talking about.)
To recap: If you've got an M-mount lens with a marked focal length of, say, 28mm and you put it on your Pixii, you set the Pixii's finder to its 28mm setting, and the viewfinder frames will show you the approximate area that will be in your picture -- in this particular case, an angle of 48 degrees along the long side of the frame. Same for a lens with a marked focal length of 35mm, 40mm, or 50mm -- set your Pixii's finder to the marked focal length and it will show you the framelines that indicate the correct area of view.
That sounds about right...
ptpdprinter
Mentor
Thank you for the detailed explanation. Perhaps it is just me, but it seems like the widest view available in the viewfinder being the equivalent of a 42mm lens is a significant limitation.
Coldkennels
Barnack-toting Brit.
...and yet the M3 is widely considered one of the best M-mount cameras of all time and doesn't even go that wide.