After purchasing my Panasonic GF1, I thought it’d be fun to exploit the small form-factor and smaller sensor and try some of the c-mount lenses that are out there on the micro 4/3rds camera. I purchased an adapter off of ebay that had both c-mount and M42 threads. I tried it with a TV lens that I bought off of ebay, and then an 8mm lens that I already had for my canon.
computar 8mm f/1.6:
I tried the 8mm computar first:
It’s a fixed-aperture lens that only cost about $5 or $10 from ebay. I didn’t have high hopes – just wanted something to play with.
Here’s a sample image taken with that lens:
The image circle isn’t very large, and it’s not very sharp. oh well. The lens could still be useful for video – the GF1 gives a 2x or 4x digital zoom option, and with 2x digital zoom there’s no vignette. the 2x digital zoom results in an 32mm 35mm-equivalent focal length though, which isn’t much wider than the standard 20mm f/1.7 kit lens.
peleng 8mm f/3.5 fisheye:
The Peleng is a little larger than the computar. I had to buy some cheapo M42 extension tubes to get the flange/sensor distance within a correct range. I used the wikipedia table to guesstimate how much more distance I needed, and the 9mm + 16mm extension tubes did the trick just fine.
It’s a bulky lens, and turning the aperture and focusing rings isn’t so easy on such a small-bodied camera. You have to grip the body really tightly in order to turn the damped focusing ring and the detented aperture ring. Luckily, at 8mm and f/3.5, everything’s basically in focus.
Photos with the fisheye are still fun in a fisheye sort of way:
and it’s still plenty-wide. The grill belongs to the Primo’s Parilla truck in Emeryville.
I think I took this photo near f/3.5, but I don’t remember. Sharpness is pretty much the same across the entire image, since the sensor is already only capturing part of the image circle. I’ll post 100% crops anyways:
There’s some standard sharpening and so on in lightroom.
here’s a corner crop:
and I’ll throw in a shot with the peleng on a 5D Mark I for crop-factor comparison:
conclusion:
The 8mm computar lens isn’t very useful at all, but it was fun to play with. The peleng on the GF1 is a pretty interesting combination with fisheye distortion, a wide field of view and sort of cumbersome handling. The image quality looks fine to me.
Just so you’re aware, the photos from this article are being used by an ebay seller to sell the peleng lens.
http://cgi.ebay.com/FISHEYE-Peleng-8mm-Panasonic-Lumix-DMC-G2-Micro-4-3-/170482460106?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item27b18be5ca#ht_2514wt_914
Thanks for letting me know!