Peter,
Thank you very much for you sharing your experience. I have difficulty focussing my M lenses on my SL and wondered if the ergonomics of R lenses made that a simpler task.
I am particularly interested in R focal lengths over 100mm on the SL because I find the 90-280mm SL too large and heavy to carry around.
I had the same experience with the Vario 28-90 R. As a big fan of the Vario 35-70 R, I imagined that the 28-90 would be a blessing but I was wrong. It's size and weight ruined the joy of the 35-70 and I returned that triumph of the optical engineering. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should.
I'm considering a 180 and/or a 70-200 and Extenders to cut off some weight for SL needs greater than the 24-90 can handle.
I assume (and what is always dangerous!) that the R received aperture and shutter information through the ROM contacts and I do not see why an "intelligent" R-Adapter-L could not do that to meet SL computational and display needs, but I leave that to those more knowledgeable than me. Just saying.
I had an almost twenty year love affair with the R System, R4 to R7 (the favorite and last film R) and R9-DMR, the ergonomics of which I took great pleasure. Sadly, the SL did not follow in those R9 ergonomic footsteps, which the S did, to its benefit, IMHO.
Thank you for sharing your heartening experience.
Best regards,
Bill
Hello Bill,
Sorry for my lateness in returning your email I’ve just had a day with the external hard drive WD struggling to get it to work as easy as they promised but it’s not.
So I moved away from the M class lens to the R lens simply because I did find that they are much easier to focus even though looking through a mirror or the new screen on the SL. The same with the M as with the R you can press the rubber toggle switch, the switch to maximise your focus, this is Available with the manual focusing then return back to the standard screen knowing that the focus is much sharper.
With the SL 24 to 90 lens I know it is much heavier but it makes a great travel companion instead of carrying a lot of equipment. I have the apo extender which I use on the 100mm R lens, this makes a wonderful combination to make it possible to have a very crisp images compare to using the zoom lens and much less weight. The extender gives me obviously 200 MM with 5.6 F stop, but I do have to manually tell the camera what I have done because it does not come up on the menu which I would love for the IT department to do an update on their lens information for the R.
Now using the R lens on the SL with the adapter unfortunately it does not give you a true aperture priority, they have removed the F number information from the screen so now I have to look over the top of the camera every time to see where my f-stop is that. Even when you have set your F stop to what you prefer the camera again unfortunately averages out the information and adjust the aperture to what it prefers, So that means we don’t have a true aperture priority which is unfortunate.
We only have manual after this aperture priority type setting no shutter priority,
Again even in manual we don’t see where the F stop on your lens, and again it averages it out so you really don’t get a true manual facility as well. So come on IT department please give the lens software that is needed to free it’s great potential.
Even with this inhibiting setback I still struggle and use it happily because I still am able to achieve the level of photos that I am trying to create, with regards to this again I would love IT department to hear what I’m saying by reading this email and do an update for the R lens considering that the SL has 10 contacts for the lens coupling where as the R lens has nine so we are not short of any contacts.
If they were to write a software to enable the R lens to be free from its inhibiting factors it would make the R lens reach the level of quality that it was intended with the our system, I cannot see why the ROM lenses are not updated with the software considering with the adapter the camera knows exactly what R lens has been fitted so with the contacts all the information from the ROM lens should be available to the SL. This then would make a stunning complete outfit.
Sorry Bill for my ranting about the software issues of the SL equipment, I still find the R lens much lighter than the SL native lens. I hope I have covered all your questions clearly and if there’s any more please send me another email.
Kind regards Peter.