[davidmanze]

     I can't think of a more convoluted and IQ degrading way of taking an image...... you start with a perfectly good film camera and lens, then you replace the film with a ground screen (or whatever)....and then pass the result through a who knows what sort of optic and catch it on a very small sensor....

 

     and all of that with a huge encumbrance of a box behind and a huge grip..........

 

     all in all I'm pinching myself.......is this really happening?

 

     ...... 

[Brightcolours]

Luckily, like the majority of kickstarted projects, it might not really happen.

[Arthur Macmillan]

In case my meaning did not come across, what I meant was that the manual focusing system seems really good on the manual focus bodies that I have from my legacy glass buying days.  It seems really easy to get sharp focus with the view finders and  MF lenses that were made for each other.  It also doesn't hurt that the cameras and lenses were often very compact.  MF with modern cameras is much more difficult.  Anyways, I never have used any of the old cameras that simply were the cap on the back of the lens that I wanted, but I have looked through the viewfinder and got a feel of what is was like.  It will probably never be practical to make a digital camera this way, but it might be fun if some camera maker decided to make a low end MF DSLR camera for legacy lenses.  It would have a low cost 35mm sensor and depend on the long throw, parfocal, and one touch lenses of the old days.  The camera would probably cost the same as an entry level dslr, but the lenses would be practically free.  And it might be fun to use such a camera.

 

I have many old bodies that should probably be thrown away, but I just throw them in a storage bin.  I have Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Minolta, Pentax, Ricoh, Mamiya, Konica, and more.  The Canon and Nikon seem like focusing them is simple.  Of course, not having taken photos with them it is only an impression that the focusing is very easy.  It sure seems like it is, though.

[Brightcolours]

Arthur, I use a DSLR (Canon EOS 6D) with quite a few of my lenses being manual focus (Voigtlander 20mm f3.5, Micro-Nikkor 55mm f3.5, Canon FL 55mm f1.2, Nikkor-S 55mm f1.2, Nikkor-H 85mm f1.8, Nikkor-Q 135mm f3.5, Nikkor "K" 135mm f2.8, to name a few). Because of the larger aperture MF lenses, I put a Canon Eg-S focus screen in it, which shows the DOF more accurately, especially for manual focus. I find it practical enough, it seems like what you want already exists, especially since the price of the 6D has come down a lot.

 

Manual focus lenses you can put on the 6D: EOS EF mount, Nikon F-mount, Olympus OM mount, Pentax PK mount (after some slight modification), Contax/Yashica C/Y mount, Leica R-mount, M42 mount, Tamron Adaptal mount. You can convert the mount of many Canon FL/FD mount lenses to EF mount, and some Minolta lenses.

 



 

[toni-a]

 



 


 

This one seems to suffer from front focus

[toni-a]

 

 




 

 

Excellent work