Will any film cameras work with my micro four third lenses?

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soulslinga

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Hello
I have a collection of micro four third lenses (nokton voigtlander, panasonic, rokinon). I shoot with a Panasonic GH3. I'm all digital at this point. I shoot video for a living and stills as a hobby usually.
I'd love to shoot with a film camera just for fun. But outside of when I was a kid, I don't have a lot of experience with film cameras.
Are there any film cameras that will accept micro four third lenses?
Perhaps with an adapter of some kind?
Looking for help as to what film camera might work with all these lenses, if any.
thanks in advance.
 

Light Guru

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There are adapters that go from canon, nikon, Sony etc to micro 4/3s but I've never seen an adapter that does the other way.

The problem is a micro 4/3s lens won't produce an image circle big enough to cover a full frame sensor/35mm film frame. So you would end up with heavy heavy vignette on every single image. This is why your probably not going to find a adapter.

If you want to shoot film then just buy an old film camera with lens, they are cheep these days.
 

ME Super

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The Micro 4/3 sensors are 18mm by 13.5mm. A frame of 35mm film is 36mm by 24mm. Film lenses will likely have a larger coverage area than most Micro 4/3 lenses, because they have to cover a bigger frame. My Scientific Wild Guess is that film lenses would work on your Micro 4/3 camera, but probably not the other way around, at least not without vignetting.

My recommendation would be to see which kinds of adapters are out there for Micro 4/3 lenses, and then buy a film camera and lens in one of the compatible systems, and pick up an adapter, knowing that you'll be able to use your film camera lens on your Micro 4/3 camera. FWIW, I did a quick Google search, and came up with bunches of hits for adapting Pentax K-mount glass to Micro 4/3.
 

StevenJohn

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MFT lenses image circle likely won't cover the area of a 35mm. Perhaps they would cover a half frame like an Olympus Pen F, but I'm not sure. Film bodies and lenses are quite cheap now and it would likely cost you more to convert a MFT lens than just getting a proper one.
 
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I found that,

The Olympus 75-300mm f4.8-6.7 II M.ZUIKO ED Micro Four Thirds Lens Black is a telephoto lens designed to bring you closer to the action. Extremely compact and lightweight it offers an equivalent range of 150-600mm on a 35mm film camera. It comes with a unique screw drive mechanism, which is especially quiet for shooting films and has a very fast auto-focus function (MSC) for taking rapid-fire still shots. This lens features Nikon's ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass which is designed to minimise colour aberration and to ensure superior sharpness and colour correction. This portable 4x telephoto lens is ideal for portraiture, sports and wildlife photography
 

Dr Croubie

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In short, no.

In long, maybe, with a few caveats.
The distance between the mount of the lens and the sensor is very short with these lenses, there is no way to get an SLR-style mirror in there to focus it.
The other way to focus accurately with short-mount lenses is with a rangefinder, like a Leica / Bessa / etc. But then the lenses and camera both need a 'rangefinder coupling' cam, and those lenses do not have one.
The only way to shoot these on film would be by 'scale focussing', ie looking at the distance markings and stopping-down to cover any errors, best used on wide-angles only.

Then there's the fact that those lenses only have 19mm sensor-to-flange distance, to use them on any existing camera via adapter the distance would have to be less than this: no such film cameras exist with as short a flange distance.
Or you'd need to get an adapter with glass in it. But they don't exist so you'd have to design and build one yourself.

Also, these lenses only cover a small Image Circle, ~22mm, which will cover a 110-frame, but not a 135 full frame or even 135 half-frame (~30mm).
And as far as I know, those lenses have electronic-apertures so they will remain wide-open until the camera stops them down to take the photo, and may even have electronic focus on some of them.

Finally, I've read reviews that said some of those lenses have very bad and uncorrected barrel-distortion and/or CA in the glass, this is auto-corrected and baked-in the RAW file so most users wouldn't even know (except for the mushy corners from the correcting).
And micro 4/3rd sensors also have 4mm of glass stack on top of them, most digital sensors have 2mm, Leica have >1mm, film has 0mm. Changing this glass thickness will change the performance of the lens (especially wide-angles), they've all been tuned to their specific thicknesses.
So some of them might be rather sharp in the centre, but they probably wouldn't look too good on film.

So, you'll have to build your own camera that takes 110 (or minox) film, including all the electronics to stop down the aperture, and scale-focus at small apertures because there's no RF cam OR build a lens adapter to a bigger film camera like a Leica, with glass in it so that it can focus to infinity, plus aforementioned electronics, and put up with the tiny image circle on 135 film.

Or you can take $20 to ebay and get some very nice second-hand cameras and lenses that were designed and made for film...
 

ME Super

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Two years ago, I picked up a very nice Pentax auto-focus film SLR with 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens for $65, including shipping, from KEH. Can't say enough about these guys. Anything from bargain-grade up to like new will work, and if it doesn't, they'll happily exchange it. Dead Link Removed. No relationship with these guys except as a satisfied customer.
 

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Dan Fromm

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I found that,

The Olympus 75-300mm f4.8-6.7 II M.ZUIKO ED Micro Four Thirds Lens Black is a telephoto lens designed to bring you closer to the action. Extremely compact and lightweight it offers an equivalent range of 150-600mm on a 35mm film camera. It comes with a unique screw drive mechanism, which is especially quiet for shooting films and has a very fast auto-focus function (MSC) for taking rapid-fire still shots. This lens features Nikon's ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass which is designed to minimise colour aberration and to ensure superior sharpness and colour correction. This portable 4x telephoto lens is ideal for portraiture, sports and wildlife photography

Interesting if true.

Soulslinga, do you have one?

Mustafa, Olympus USA's account of the lens (see http://www.getolympus.com/us/en/m-zuiko-digital-ed-75-300mm-f4-8-6-7-ii.html?source=igodigital) doesn't mention Nikon glass. Where did you find the information you pasted here?
 

Sirius Glass

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I found that,

The Olympus 75-300mm f4.8-6.7 II M.ZUIKO ED Micro Four Thirds Lens Black is a telephoto lens designed to bring you closer to the action. Extremely compact and lightweight it offers an equivalent range of 150-600mm on a 35mm film camera. It comes with a unique screw drive mechanism, which is especially quiet for shooting films and has a very fast auto-focus function (MSC) for taking rapid-fire still shots. This lens features Nikon's ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass which is designed to minimise colour aberration and to ensure superior sharpness and colour correction. This portable 4x telephoto lens is ideal for portraiture, sports and wildlife photography

But I do not believe it will provide a large enough image circle to be useful on a 35mm camera. "equivalent range" has nothing to do with image circle diameter. Please do not confuse the new member with unrelated information.
 
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Simple and short answer is no. They are perfectly adaptable the other way around and I use an f mount adapter for my nikon glass to my Olympus EM-5 .
 

benjiboy

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I'm so analogue I don't know what "micro four thirds lenses" are.
 

miha

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I'm so analogue I don't know what "micro four thirds lenses" are.

Someone said that m43 is the Third Millennium Leica. As a user I somehow agree - small, unobstructive, well build, and sharp enough for big prints.
 

benjiboy

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From one luddite old fart to another, careful use of Google will reduce your ignorance.
To quote an old saying Dan "when ignorance is bliss it's folly to be wise", the reason I don't do digital is after more than sixty years of shooting film I'm still exploring the wonders of film photography and although I have nothing personal against digital imaging, I don't personally have the patience to have to learn photography all over again. :smile:
 
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Dan Fromm

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Ben, from one luddite old fart who doesn't know enough to another, pride in ignorance goeth before an enormous fall.
 

Sirius Glass

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To quote an old saying Dan "when ignorance is bliss it's folly to be wise", the reason I don't do digital is after more than sixty years of shooting film I'm still exploring the wonders of film photography and although I have nothing personal against digital imaging, I don't personally have the patience to have to learn photography all over again. :smile:

The reason that I do not do digital is on the third line of my signature. :sick:
 
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soulslinga

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Interesting if true.

Soulslinga, do you have one?

Mustafa, Olympus USA's account of the lens (see http://www.getolympus.com/us/en/m-zuiko-digital-ed-75-300mm-f4-8-6-7-ii.html?source=igodigital) doesn't mention Nikon glass. Where did you find the information you pasted here?


Thanks for all the feedback everyone.
As far as the 'equivalent focal distance on 35mm' - I believe this is just a reference, not a statement of compatibility. Because the crop factor of Micro Four thirds is half of 35mm, when you buy a say, 10mm micro four thirds lens, the '35mm equivalent' is 20mm, because of the 2x crop factor. So when shopping for Micro Four Third lenses, they tell you what the 35mm equivalent is (its x2) - just so people will understand what sort of focal length they are getting. 35mm users then understand that a 10mm micro four third lens will have the same focal length as a 20mm on their 35mm camera. But I don't believe this means that if you put a 10mm micro four third lens on a 35mm camera, you will get a 20mm lens. I wish:smile:
 

ic-racer

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Hello
I have a collection of micro four third lenses (nokton voigtlander, panasonic, rokinon). I shoot with a Panasonic GH3. I'm all digital at this point. I shoot video for a living and stills as a hobby usually.
I'd love to shoot with a film camera just for fun. But outside of when I was a kid, I don't have a lot of experience with film cameras.
Are there any film cameras that will accept micro four third lenses?
Perhaps with an adapter of some kind?
Looking for help as to what film camera might work with all these lenses, if any.
thanks in advance.

Steky is probably your best bet. But not without a lot of work. In general those lenses are pretty useless for purposes here.
 

Chan Tran

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Someone said that m43 is the Third Millennium Leica. As a user I somehow agree - small, unobstructive, well build, and sharp enough for big prints.

They are no Leica as they don't have the rangefinder.
 

ME Super

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Who remembers excite - the search engine? Turns out it's still around at www.excite.com. Can't imagine too many people use it though, they've all graduated to Google and Bing. But this is way off-topic.

OP, glad we were able to answer your question. Oh, and welcome to APUG.
 

Dr Croubie

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Who remembers Dead Link Removed the search engine? :tongue:
 
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