13 Jun
2010
13 Jun
'10
11:43 a.m.
The problem is
that you genrally loose all automatic coupling to the
lens, which means it's not a lot of use with modern
electronically-controlled cmaeras. The Praktica PLC/VLC series had a
special pair of afapater rings to maintain full aperture metering even
when the lens was fitted backwards, but I've not seen this for anything
remotely modern.
My micro-four-thirds is the first camera that I have ever seriously owned
where the camera attempted to communicate anything to the lens, (I haven't unwrapped the Exakta that I was given months ago, andI
haven't used the
I don't know which model of Exakta you've obtained, but most of them have
no internal lens couplings at all. Even the auto stop-down is done by a
button on the lens that first closes the diaphragm and then hits the
shutter release. If you use that sort of lens on extension tubes,
bellows, or back-to-front, you just use a double cable release.
other SLRs in ~40 years), and shooting in "no
lens" mode lets me use my
lenses (manual focus, manual aperture). If the only prioblem is an "auto"
aperture, there are a few adapters available that let you connect a dual
Indeed...
cable release (similar to that supplied with Visoflex)
in order to
"simultaneously" stop down the lens and trigger the camera, or just
duct-tape the stop-down linkage and do it manually. The lenses for the
4x5 and 8x10 cameras are all manual.
Large format cameras (at least the older ones I can afford) tend to be
very 'manual' They do take a lony time to set up correctly to get the
result I want, and the extra time in having to stop the lens down by hand
is hardly an issue. And rembering to do that is no harder than
rememberign to close the shutter before pulling the dark slide.
But, I may soon try to disassemble the camera firmware.
I am not sure whether Panasonic's code to refuse to operate with generic
batteries! is really a "safety issue" as they claim, or just greed.
My guess is msotly the latter :-). I suppose there may be a safety issue
if you tried to cheage them in the camera (if it has a built-in charger),
but I can't think of any issue in discharging them.
-tony