This is an exciting new development from Leica, today they announced the Leica S-Adapter-H which allows Hasselblad H mount lenses to be attached to the S2. Not only does the adapter provide full auto focus and aperture control, but you can also use the Hasselblad lens’ built in leaf shutter to sync with strobes up to 1/750th of a second! What lenses are you excited about most? For me, the fact that I can now use a 50mm lens on the S2 with full auto focus is great! Quality wise we’ll see how they look, David and I will certainly be testing a variety of the lenses as soon as we can get the adapters.
What lens are you most looking forward to to use with this new adapter?
This is indeed really cool stuff and good news. Expanding the bandwith of available lenses massivly.
I am wondering how this come together. There has to be some collaboration between Leica and Hasselblad to make this happen. Would be interesting to get some intel. 😉
thats really a good news, as it seams that the CS-lenses will never come (I don’t believe they will come in october)
the question is, what lenses can be recommended in the 60- 100 mm range. As far as i heard those lenses are not made by Zeiss anymore, so I’m a bit doubtful
any suggestions?
As I understand the H literature, the H digital lenses are purposely designed NOT to
be optically correct, but require correction in software. It would seem that this limits
the true usability and desirability of these lenses on the S system (unless of course
you just happen to already have the lenses). Why would I want a lens that is not
optically correct? I am not convinced that software correction of an incorrectly captured
image will equate to an image captured “correctly” in the first place.I recognize that this expands the available focal lengths for the S system, and this is
obviously desirable. But, does this also alleviate the “pressure” on Leica to develop and
release a wider range of focal lengths of S-lenses? That would not be good.Even given my reservations as noted in the reply above, I can see one potential benefit of
the adapter —IF the adapter will allow the use of the H tilt-shift adapter, then S owners would finally have
a Tilt-Shift lens capability.Do you know if the leica H adapter will accommodate the H tilt-shift mechanism?
rudlinfineart;2262 wrote: Even given my reservations as noted in the reply above, I can see one potential benefit of
the adapter —IF the adapter will allow the use of the H tilt-shift adapter, then S owners would finally have
a Tilt-Shift lens capability.Do you know if the leica H adapter will accommodate the H tilt-shift mechanism?
The Tilt/shift adapter will not be able to be used on the S as there are functions that the H body needs to communicate to the adapter.
rudlinfineart;2261 wrote: As I understand the H literature, the H digital lenses are purposely designed NOT to
be optically correct, but require correction in software. It would seem that this limits
the true usability and desirability of these lenses on the S system (unless of course
you just happen to already have the lenses). Why would I want a lens that is not
optically correct? I am not convinced that software correction of an incorrectly captured
image will equate to an image captured “correctly” in the first place.I recognize that this expands the available focal lengths for the S system, and this is
obviously desirable. But, does this also alleviate the “pressure” on Leica to develop and
release a wider range of focal lengths of S-lenses? That would not be good.Yes, some Hasselblad lenses have to be corrected in particular the 28. The distortion and the drop off is corrected via Phocus and now in Lightroom 4. Even with the superb optics in the S line up, there are distortion corrections being made on the 30 using LR4.
The new lens options opens up a new set of “brushes” to paint the image onto the S2 sensor. Lenses have unique finger prints and looks that are hard to duplicate without tons of time in post processing. I for one enjoy using older lenses that have spherical faults that enhance the mood of the image. There is more to an image than the pixel peeping sharpness that many associate with a great image.
-Al
rudlinfineart;2262 wrote: Even given my reservations as noted in the reply above, I can see one potential benefit of
the adapter —IF the adapter will allow the use of the H tilt-shift adapter, then S owners would finally have
a Tilt-Shift lens capability.Do you know if the leica H adapter will accommodate the H tilt-shift mechanism?
Craig,
The HTS and TCs will not work on the new adapter. All HC and HCD lenses will, though.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiPete Walentin;2252 wrote:
I am wondering how this come together. There has to be some collaboration between Leica and Hasselblad to make this happen. Would be interesting to get some intel. 😉
Thanks to Kurt: Here is the answer!
David,
Any explanation on why the extender and extension tubes will not work? I can understand the TS adapter due to the extra software commands but the extender and extension tubes should just pass right through. Thoughts?Al
Atanabe;2607 wrote: David,
Any explanation on why the extender and extension tubes will not work? I can understand the TS adapter due to the extra software commands but the extender and extension tubes should just pass right through. Thoughts?Al
Al,
I’m not entirely sure, but my guess is that the extra layer of communication with the additional piece added too much complexity. For example, with an extender, aperture and focal length both change, but will depend given the lens being extended. This information needs to be communicated to the camera.
Maybe this is something that Leica can add via firmware at a later point.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miami*finally* got mine, but didn’t had much time to test it. Looks quite nicely built.
But there is a BIG fail: I mean this part isn’t cheap, but why did nobody at LEICA had the idea to join A REAR LENS CAP? Or how do they think we will use this part?
So I have to order a rear lens cap separately from my dealer 😡
btw it’s the same for the Hasselbald V-Adapter. That’s really NOT a good service for the customer
I have another question:
I bought a Hasselblad 150 for testing this adapter. It works well, but in the EXIFS the lens is shown as a 150N, with has another lensdesign.
I tried to find some informations on the net about the differences of the 150 vs. 150N, but there is not much to read ot to see about it. Can anyone give some input?
Never worked with the Hasselblad-Lenses before, I find the focus-ring misplaced. Its very much there where you would expect it for a manual fokussing lens, but misplaced for an AF-lens. The solution Leica has on the S2 lenses works much better to me.
Well, for me the reasons to buy the Hasselblad-Lenses (I consider buying a 100/2.2 as well) was the misleaded upgrade-policy from Leica (to the CS-Lenses).
rudlinfineart;2261 wrote: As I understand the H literature, the H digital lenses are purposely designed NOT to
be optically correct, but require correction in software. It would seem that this limits
the true usability and desirability of these lenses on the S system (unless of course
you just happen to already have the lenses). Why would I want a lens that is not
optically correct? I am not convinced that software correction of an incorrectly captured
image will equate to an image captured “correctly” in the first place.I recognize that this expands the available focal lengths for the S system, and this is
obviously desirable. But, does this also alleviate the “pressure” on Leica to develop and
release a wider range of focal lengths of S-lenses? That would not be good.FYI, all of the H lenses are NOT purposely designed to require software corrections. The use of software corrections was initially employed on HCD (digital) lenses like the 28/4 and 35-90 to keep costs down on very difficult W/A or zoom designs. It was expanded to other lenses because it worked so well. Some of the corrections on some H lenses are barely noticeable if at all, when used.
The corrections are called DAC … and deals with: Distortion, Chromatic Aberration/fringing, and Vignetting by means of feedback information of focal length, distance and aperture setting. BTW, DAC is also available for classic Zeiss V lenses which have to be set manually in the software, because there is no e-data as to distance, etc..
Initially, these H software corrections were only available to Hasselblad H users through their Phocus software. Then Hasselblad provided the lens profiles to Adobe, and are now available for use in Lightroom and Photoshop … making them available when H lenses are used on the S2.
Likewise, Leica has provided lens correction profiles to Adobe, and the same type of software corrections are available in Lightroom … and like with the Hasselblad lenses, some Leica-S lenses show very little correction if any (S-180mm), and some show more (S-35mm).
There are no perfect lens designs, some compromises are inherent in each lens somewhere and show up more and more as the resolution of digital sensors increase … these Digital Automatic Corrections help, and are no more artificial looking than if laboriously done manually in the post processing stage … except they are faster and more accurate because they are based on each individual lenses’ exact electronic feed-back.
The most important aspect of the H to S adapter is not just the expansion of focal lengths , but the use of select lenses with excellent character … like the HC100/2.2, the new 50mm-II, 210/4 with near perfect bokeh, and the very sharp HC120-II Macro that focuses 1:1 which the S120/2.5 cannot do.
Nice AF, leaf-shutter lens expansion of the S system IMO, and helps lessen a chief criticism of the S system from professional photographers that see the system as too limiting.
-Marc
Hi Marc
So, if I understand you right, the HC 100/2.2 is a nice lens on the S2? 🙂
I just wanted to add that Leica added specific Lens-Profiles for the Hasselblad-Lenses in their download area. This makes sense, as the sensore-size is different from the Hasselblads and so must the correction be different as well.
I wouldn’t know how the HC-100/2.2 will look on the S2 yet Stephan … I’m still waiting for my H to S adapter … (Grrrr ; -( Missed a BIG opportunity last week and had to use the H4D/60 for a big paid shoot because I needed high-speed sync for the entire day. The S2’s 1/125th top sync speed wasn’t an option. I really wanted to use the S2 for this job.
I sort of know what the images will look like because I previously used the HC lenses on a H4D/40 with a 1/3.3X crop factor. What will be new is using the HC-100/2.2 wide open in bright available light conditions because of the S2’s 1/4000 focal plane speed, where the H4D is limited to 1/800 top shutter unless using NDs.
Thanks, for the correction on the Leica provided H lens profiles … I had forgotten about that … I loaded them when first available, and they are waiting to be used … hopefully soon.
-Marc
In case you guys haven’t checked the front page today….
Leica S-Adapter H Begins Shipping in the United States
We received our first delivery of the S-H adapters. Now just need some lenses to test…. 😉
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiJust got word that mine should be here next week.
I DO have the H lens system … most interested in how the HC50-II and 100 do.
Still want the S/CS versions also … 1/1000 with he S-120/2.5 … yummy.
-Marc
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