I'm about to pull the trigger in the Panasonic S1R because of its focus bracketing and pixel shifting. I'd like to use Sigma Art EF (Canon) mount lenses on it, via the Sigma MC-21 mount converter. Supposedly this allows some kinds of autofocus on these lenses. But no mention is made of focus bracketing. Does anyone know if the Canon versions of compatible Sigma Art lenses will do automatic focus bracketing (as native L mount Sigma lenses would do)?
I prefer Canon to L mount because, when reversed, lenses with the Canon mount have 20mm more working distance. L mount lenses will be difficult to use in reverse.
Panasonic S1R mount converter question
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
I have a SR1 body. Just got the Sigma MC-21 converter a few days ago. Today I received several sigma art sigma Canon EF mount from Lensrentals including the 70mm art sigma macro. AF works with the converter. I can not as of now get focus bracketing to work. If I understand the manual correctly at best you can do only 7 shots in a bracket sequence. Not good. But again I just got all the parts together and will spend more time tomorrow seeing if I can get focus bracketing to work.
Pixel shift does work and is the best implementation I have seen. Very easy to use. Much superior implementation compared to Pentax and Sony.
Will report back in a few days as to the status of focus bracketing.
Lyle
Pixel shift does work and is the best implementation I have seen. Very easy to use. Much superior implementation compared to Pentax and Sony.
Will report back in a few days as to the status of focus bracketing.
Lyle
I've been searching the internet every day now to find the answer to this question. A couple of days ago a very disturbing report emerged about the issue:
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/ ... t-62685395
The original poster had the problem I was worried about:
"I have the S1R camera, and the MC-21 adapter. I rented several art sigma lenses all of which are listed as compatible with the MC-21. I can not get the camera to do focus bracketing. In fact the S1R has a whole bracketing menu. You can do bracketing of exposure compensation, apeture, focus, white balance and white balance via color temp. When I have an art sigma on the MC-21 and mounted on the S1R and I go to the bracket menu the only one that works is the exposure compensation. All others including focus bracketing are grayed out and not active. I have called Sigma and the claim if the lens is on the MC-21 compatibility list then ALL functions of the camera will work with the lens. They were of no help. Panasonic was of no help and suggested I contact Sigma."
You can read the original thread for more info (plus the usual gratuitous forum sniping). The bottom line is that the Sigma-made Canon-mount Art lenses that are listed to be compatible with the MC-21 and S1R might not do focus bracketing. This changes everything for me....
I hope someone can figure out a way to make it work, but I am not hopeful. One solution would be to wait for the Sigma L mount lenses to come out, but what if those don't work either?
And apparently both Panasonic and Sigma tech support people are completely useless, as is their published information about this feature.
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/ ... t-62685395
The original poster had the problem I was worried about:
"I have the S1R camera, and the MC-21 adapter. I rented several art sigma lenses all of which are listed as compatible with the MC-21. I can not get the camera to do focus bracketing. In fact the S1R has a whole bracketing menu. You can do bracketing of exposure compensation, apeture, focus, white balance and white balance via color temp. When I have an art sigma on the MC-21 and mounted on the S1R and I go to the bracket menu the only one that works is the exposure compensation. All others including focus bracketing are grayed out and not active. I have called Sigma and the claim if the lens is on the MC-21 compatibility list then ALL functions of the camera will work with the lens. They were of no help. Panasonic was of no help and suggested I contact Sigma."
You can read the original thread for more info (plus the usual gratuitous forum sniping). The bottom line is that the Sigma-made Canon-mount Art lenses that are listed to be compatible with the MC-21 and S1R might not do focus bracketing. This changes everything for me....
I hope someone can figure out a way to make it work, but I am not hopeful. One solution would be to wait for the Sigma L mount lenses to come out, but what if those don't work either?
And apparently both Panasonic and Sigma tech support people are completely useless, as is their published information about this feature.
Lou,
While I understand your disappointment the fact is that even if the focus bracketing works it was never going to be useful for anything other than landscape and the most modest macro stacks since one aspect of the feature is clear----- and that is that at most you can bracket is 7 frames. That much is clear from the manual. That and the fact that none of the bracketing features will work in conjunction with the high res mode. This is all laid out in pages 162-164 in the paper manual. I forget if those pages correspond to the online manual.
I have now done all I can with the information available I can not get the focus bracketing feature to work. At some point I am sure it will get worked out but I suspect it is a firmware issue with either the converter which is not upgradeable or the lenses which are upgradeable.
Having the focus bracketing for other work like landscape would have been a nice bonus. The fact remains that the pixel shift mode produces files that have to be seen on a large screen to be believed. I rent, use and am familiar with Phase One 100mp and 150mp backs having rented those cameras for jobs. I won't have any phase one backs in hand until towards the end of this year but you can be sure I will run a comparison. At ISO 50 I would expect the S1R high res files to easily have better IQ than the 100mp back and compared with the 150mp back the S1R might lose but it will be very close.
If anyone wants or needs larger files than can be currently had through Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax and Fuji I would suggest you rent a S1R body and give it a try. Cheap adapters allowing you to attach the camera to M42 thread are available and inexpensive. So you can easily get the camera onto your setups with printing nikkors, macro varon, etc. The high res mode is very easy to use.
While I understand your disappointment the fact is that even if the focus bracketing works it was never going to be useful for anything other than landscape and the most modest macro stacks since one aspect of the feature is clear----- and that is that at most you can bracket is 7 frames. That much is clear from the manual. That and the fact that none of the bracketing features will work in conjunction with the high res mode. This is all laid out in pages 162-164 in the paper manual. I forget if those pages correspond to the online manual.
I have now done all I can with the information available I can not get the focus bracketing feature to work. At some point I am sure it will get worked out but I suspect it is a firmware issue with either the converter which is not upgradeable or the lenses which are upgradeable.
Having the focus bracketing for other work like landscape would have been a nice bonus. The fact remains that the pixel shift mode produces files that have to be seen on a large screen to be believed. I rent, use and am familiar with Phase One 100mp and 150mp backs having rented those cameras for jobs. I won't have any phase one backs in hand until towards the end of this year but you can be sure I will run a comparison. At ISO 50 I would expect the S1R high res files to easily have better IQ than the 100mp back and compared with the 150mp back the S1R might lose but it will be very close.
If anyone wants or needs larger files than can be currently had through Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax and Fuji I would suggest you rent a S1R body and give it a try. Cheap adapters allowing you to attach the camera to M42 thread are available and inexpensive. So you can easily get the camera onto your setups with printing nikkors, macro varon, etc. The high res mode is very easy to use.
Thanks for this info. It is very helpful. I didn't see the manual, only the preliminary press reports, so I never imagined that Panasonoic would cripple the focus bracketing feature in that way. Micro four thirds cameras do focus bracketing of up to 999 shots, and Nikon's Z cameras do 300.
I do remember that some cameras which did in-camera stacking had limitations very similar to this 7-shot limit. But there is no reason to limit focus bracketing as opposed to focus stacking. It doesn't use more memory or computing resources than ordinary rapid-fire photography.
Added later: I suppose if there is tethering software that can control the focus, one could write an autohotkeys robot to do focus bracketing, and that would be able to do high res mode just as easily as regular mode.
I do remember that some cameras which did in-camera stacking had limitations very similar to this 7-shot limit. But there is no reason to limit focus bracketing as opposed to focus stacking. It doesn't use more memory or computing resources than ordinary rapid-fire photography.
Added later: I suppose if there is tethering software that can control the focus, one could write an autohotkeys robot to do focus bracketing, and that would be able to do high res mode just as easily as regular mode.
JLyle, that part of the manual is not talking about the kind of focus shifting that we would use. Like you said, maybe those pages don't correspond with the page numbers of the online manual, but still, in the section on focus bracketing (as opposed to post focus etc), I can't find a reference to a limit of seven shots. There is a menu item that lets the user select the number of shots, but no limit is mentioned.This is all laid out in pages 162-164 in the paper manual.
In the worst case, there may be a workaround for the 7-shot limitation. YOu can choose the order of the shots, from front to back. If the lens sits still after the last shot rather than returning automatically to the original point, then we could just keep pressing the shutter and generate an limited deep stack. Semi-automatic rather than automatic.
a bit of a different mount problem but I thought I'd post it here to keep things together:
Since I already had a Thorlabs Nikon F to SM2 adapter I've got an Novoflex L-mount to Nikon F adapter for my S1R and stacked it with my Thorlabs adapter. The Novoflex is quite expensive, but nicely built and I didn't want to introduce other possible variables by using a cheaper adapter which micht be out of tolerance.
The bad news is that Novoflex tried to be really clever and made a baffle inside the adapter so that the throat diameter is smaller then the Nikon lens mount at the front.
I guess they did this to reduce possible reflection problems inside the adapter, but the side effect is that on long extensions the edged will show significant pretty hard vignetting (well, actually not that big of an extension, happened clearly at 1:1 with a 105mm lens for me).
so I switched over to a L-mount->M65 adapter plus an M65->M52 from Rafcamera plus a M52->SM2 from Thorlabs and that works perfectly now.
I guess the short story is if anybody plans buying a Novoflex adapter better check if it has any reduced throat diameter because it might interfere with macro mode.
chris
Since I already had a Thorlabs Nikon F to SM2 adapter I've got an Novoflex L-mount to Nikon F adapter for my S1R and stacked it with my Thorlabs adapter. The Novoflex is quite expensive, but nicely built and I didn't want to introduce other possible variables by using a cheaper adapter which micht be out of tolerance.
The bad news is that Novoflex tried to be really clever and made a baffle inside the adapter so that the throat diameter is smaller then the Nikon lens mount at the front.
I guess they did this to reduce possible reflection problems inside the adapter, but the side effect is that on long extensions the edged will show significant pretty hard vignetting (well, actually not that big of an extension, happened clearly at 1:1 with a 105mm lens for me).
so I switched over to a L-mount->M65 adapter plus an M65->M52 from Rafcamera plus a M52->SM2 from Thorlabs and that works perfectly now.
I guess the short story is if anybody plans buying a Novoflex adapter better check if it has any reduced throat diameter because it might interfere with macro mode.
chris
Yes, I had the dsame problem with the Novoflex Nikon adapter. It is an incredibly dumb error on their part, hard to understand how they could make such a major design mistake. I had thought their adapters were the best available; they are certainly the most expensive too.
The inexpensive Kipon version, which I bought as a spare, worked perfectly and has a much wider throat.
The inexpensive Kipon version, which I bought as a spare, worked perfectly and has a much wider throat.