Bamboopictures
Senior Member
Its funny how times have changed. When mirrorless camera fist came into the scene, native lenses were slow, expensive and, honestly, could not autofocus in video mode at all.
For the video shooter, system lenses offered very little value but plenty of fustration for the money. inaccurate, fly-by-wire focusing, short throw, no AF, plasticky built, slow aperture.
The smart thing to do was to adapt old manual focus film lenses for F-mount, FD, SR. These offered hard stop focusing, a manual aperture ring and worked with speedboosters.
Often, you can get pretty fast ones under f2 at prices lower than system lenses. I got great results adapting them to cameras like the Lumix GH2 and the Sony VG20. The low light performance of sensors then weren't great and having fast lenses was a big help.
Fast forward a few years, and who knew Chinese lensmakers would be offering fast glass at very reasonable prices. Not only that, they mate natively to E-mount, MFT, and EF-M. Not only do these new glass do away with the need for adapters but they are also sized smaller than old full frame lenses.
With cheap glass from OEMs like Meike, Neewer, KamLan, Fujian, Viltrox, Zhongyi etc. It's certainly interesting to revisit old cameras with cropped sensors. AF100, GH3 and VG30 were among the best full-featured cameras of their time and I'm sure the current crop of cheap chinese lenses can give these classics a new lease of life.
For example, Mitakon makes a tiny 25mm f0.95 for MFT and Meike offers the same specs for E-mount.
Meike also makes a 12mm f2.8 for both e-mount and MFT.
E mount shooters can assemble an entire kit of mini FE cine primes from SLR Magic for under $3000.
As for zoom lenses, things couldn't be rosier!
Cinezooms from Fujimon ,Sony and Canon will still mate to old e-mount cameras like the VG20, VG30 and VG900.
Smart adapters from Fotodiox and Viltrox also opens up the options for electronically stabilised zooms. Something that old camera could not utilise in the past.
For APS-C shooters, 17-50mm f2.8 is offered by Tamron, Sigma and Canon.
Tokina used to have an APS-C 50-135mm f2.8 which is a compact version of a 70-200mm f2.8 FF equivalent.
For the budding filmmaker, there's no better time than now to pick up an old body and a few new lenses!
Think about it carefully: A Fujinon MK18-55mm T2.9 professional cine zoom or the stabilised Sony EPZ 16-110 f4 with a second hand VG30 body cost less than a EVA1 body only.
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