Do you use your favorite medium format lens to shoot digital?

[Alexander6x6]

Then it seems the best medium format lenses to adapt to a different system are the Pentax lenses. I don't know the 645, but the 67 has a slide on all the lenses to stop down and it will stay in either position.

Hasselblad lenses as well. But if you are looking for the top performers on the digital sensor, then the Mamiya RZ67 or K/L together with the latest generation of Hasselblad Carl Zeiss lenses is the best option.

 

[reddesert]

Then it seems the best medium format lenses to adapt to a different system are the Pentax lenses. I don't know the 645, but the 67 has a slide on all the lenses to stop down and it will stay in either position.

The Mamiya M645 lenses' M-A switch stays in either position. It's like the M-A switch on many lenses for the 35mm M42 mount. IMO, the focal lengths of 645 lenses (any system) would be slightly better matched than a 6x7 lens to the MF digital sensor size.

One may wish that there were more digital sensors/systems of true 645 size (like 44x55mm), but they would probably be horrendously expensive. Large CCDs or CMOS are difficult because the yield of good detectors goes down a lot as the size increases. I work with people who work with large detectors professionally, and for every "science grade" device there are a lot of "engineering grade" devices with too many bad columns or unacceptable numbers of bad pixels, etc. It's also possible that the color fringing out in the corners would be worse on the larger sensors (I have no experience with that, as the science devices don't use Bayer filters).

 

[Rockaway Studios]

i shoot medium format digital…so Yes, I do. Favorites are the Hasselblad 100mm f3.5 Planar CF and the Phase One 110mm f2.8 (a spectacularply underated lens if my sample is representative)

I also use medium format backs with large format lenses from the film era. Schneider Super Angulon 75mm and Apo-Super-Symmar 150mm are favorites there. i recently went nuts and got a 38mm Super Angulon XL and adapted it into a custom lens board with a helicoid. Awesome lens!

personally- I wouldn’t bother with trying to adapt MF lenses to small sensors, though, unless it was just for a science fair project. Call me spoiled but I like things like auto aperture, working leaf shutters and Infinity focus. Depending on the platform you may be able to get one of those things to work…

 

[bags27]

I've shot my Blad 250mm SA on my CFV 50II both with and without a 2x mutar and gotten pretty spectacular results. The 250 and 350 SAs and the 40 IF are supposed to be the best for digital, followed closely by the 100 f/3.5.

I also get great results putting the CFV on the back of my SWC, but somehow that seems sacrilegious.

 

[Rockaway Studios]

Less sacrilegious than the IQ1-60 I occasionally will mount to mine

 

[benveniste]

You would immediately see the great advantage of the MF macro lens as soon you would be able to tilt it.

Since I already have an 85mm tilt/shift macro in Nikon F mount, I'm not sure what I'd gain.

 

[Alexander6x6]

Since I already have an 85mm tilt/shift macro in Nikon F mount, I'm not sure what I'd gain.

Aside from the fact that it may not fully cover the medium format sensor and could be susceptible to chromatic aberrations, this lens is not a macro lens. According to the official Nikon website, this is a NIKKOR telephoto lens with perspective control (PC-E) and high-quality optics, which is ideal for portrait and product photography. It means that the field curvature of this lens may not be corrected for its maximum reproduction ratio of 1:2.

 

[Alexander6x6]

I've shot my Blad 250mm SA on my CFV 50II both with and without a 2x mutar and gotten pretty spectacular results. The 250 and 350 SAs and the 40 IF are supposed to be the best for digital, followed closely by the 100 f/3.5.

I totally agree with you, the Superachromats are perfect on digital sensor. My 250 SA produced in 1972 as well.

The only lenses, which did not pass my digital tests, were Distagon 40 FLE (from the 1980s), Tele-Tessar 120/4 and Tele-Tessar 350/4. With the serial number around 89xxxxx the Planar 80 and Makro Planar 120 are just fine.

The latest generation of the F-Distagon 30 has a distinctive purple fringing that can be nearly completely eliminated using Phocus.