BIG shift lens release delayed. Complete new design to make.
via Personal View.
PenAndTell and ThePhoBlographer confirmed that the BIG Shift 15mm f/4.5 MFT lens will not be released. As you know the lens is (now was) based on the Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f/4.5 (here on eBay) design. But the manufacturer claimed that “the 15mm Voigtländer didn’t work as expected“. They are now “currently looking for other solutions to make the lens work“.
Let’s see if they will fix it any time soon…
uberzone
7 months ago |Make it tilt and shift then I will be interested.
JFo
7 months ago |Didn’t work as expected? Ha. Such professional engineers.
TheEye
7 months ago |Foto Brenner (BIG) is a photo store in Weiden, Bavaria. They sell photo gear and supplies from many manufacturers, but they are not a manufacturer. They also sell a line of photo bags under the Kalahari brand name, which they have manufactured. I have no idea who they hired to design for them a shift lens based on that Voigtländer lens.
To me a shift or tilt lens fora small format is pretty much a gadget. If I want to shift, tilt and swing, I get my 4×5 view camera out of the closet.
aeacos
7 months ago |What, was the image circle too small?
Ad
7 months ago |I’m guessing the colour shift is the problem, caused by oblique rays hitting the sensor, especially when shift is applied.
AMVR
7 months ago |I welcome ANY effort to bring specialist lenses such as T/S to M4/3s, so I applaud these guys just for trying, even if it was a rather mediocre attempt. They should team up with SLRmagic and turn that 12mm into a T/S 12mm. If they keep trying to glue a legacy lens to an adapter they better remember to keep the price to a maximum of $599 tops.
JUST MAKE IT A 12MM & ADD TILT !!!
Ad
7 months ago |Kudos to B.I.G. indeed. I’d be happy with a 14mm shift-only so I look forward to an alternative.
rrr_hhh
7 months ago |Plus one !
No need for tilt on a wide angle lens for the mft format : there is enough DOF already.
14mm is a little to long, 12mm would be better, but I’d take a 14mm too if that is what is available. Only not a 15mm, that becomes way too long and cross a line.
Martin Liebermann
7 months ago |No surprise to me.
I loved the 15 mm CV Heliar on my analog cameras, and was eager to use it on my PEN. The quality was disappointing at all f-stops, even compared with the 14-42 mm kit lens. The design of these lenses was just not made for sensors.
Flaws were most prominent visible in the corners, so, with shifting I expected this to even become worse.
rrr_hhh
7 months ago |Hopefully, they will make it wider !
May be that they have heard all the complaints of the architecture shooters after all ? And thus realized that there is no real market for an equivalent 30 mm ? Then good news.
Or there are real difficulties to get sharp corners with a shift lens for the mft format ? Then bad news.
rrr_hhh
7 months ago |May be they realized that there is no real market share for a 15mm (30mm equivalent) shift lens ? Architecture shooters need wider lenses in the 10-12mm range and apart of them I see no other needs for a shift lens. If they heard our complaints, then that is good news.
Or may be that they stumbled upon difficulties to keep sharp corners on the mft format.. Then that is bad news : less chances to get a wide angle shift in the future..
rrr_hhh
7 months ago |May be they realized that there is no real market share for a 15mm (30mm equivalent) shift lens ? Architecture shooters need wider lenses in the 10-12mm range and apart of them I see no other needs for a shift lens. If they heard our complaints, then that is good news.
Or may be that they stumbled upon difficulties to keep sharp corners on the mft format.. Then that is bad news : less chances to get a wide angle shift in the future..
PS : why are my comments constantly disappearing now ! This is the third time that I’m trying to post that comment.
TheEye
7 months ago |Actually, you are making double posts. You also have been posting while logged in and while logged out. You may be caught in a rift in the time-space continuum.
Llamaman
7 months ago |Did they not assemble and test a prototype before announcing the product?
Epic fail.
MP Burke
7 months ago |I would imagine that this lens exhibits colour shifts, vignetting and low MTF performance towards the edges, once a significant amount of shift has been applied. It was after all designed as a low priced ultra wide lens in the film era, not for use on smaller formats where any aberrations are magnified.
In reality a high performance wide angle shift lens is not going to be cheap, for any format, as it needs a combination of short focal length and large image circle.I would imagine the 14mm f2.8 Samyang lens would be a better option as a base lens than then Voigtlander. It would be much bigger than the Voigtlander lens when adapted for mft and given the shifting capability, but I think it would be well worth having large size in order to get better quality.
Ad
7 months ago |The Samyang 14mm lens has massive distortion, not easy to handle in post when shift was applied.