Can you use shift lenses on Micro Four Thirds, and can Sony E-mount lenses be adapted for it?

Asked 8/29/2018

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I shoot Olympus Micro Four Thirds and want a way to correct perspective for buildings and landscapes without relying on heavy post-processing. MFT has very few native shift options, so I’m looking at adapted solutions.

I wondered whether a Sony E-mount full-frame wide lens could be adapted to MFT, but E-mount has a shorter flange distance than Micro Four Thirds, so I’m not sure that is physically possible. I’m also concerned about whether a shifted lens would still cover the smaller MFT sensor properly.

Would a better approach be to use a shift or tilt-shift adapter with full-frame DSLR lenses such as Canon EF or Nikon F? Are there any practical MFT options for perspective control, especially at wider focal lengths?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

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I would suggest looking into a shift or tilt-shift adapter, to mount say a wide-angle Canon EF or Nikon AF-S lens. This way, you have a much wider selection of regular lenses to choose from than just looking at tilt-shift only lenses. And you will likely be able to achieve what you want much cheaper as well.

  • Edit: I specifically recommended full frame lenses as opposed to lenses made for crop-sensor bodies because they the full frame lenses (such as Canon EF and Nikon FX) are designed to project a larger image circle than lenses designed for crop-sensor cameras (such as the Canon EF-S and Nikon DX lenses). The larger image circles of EF/FX lenses allows for more shift than the image circles projected by EF-S/DX lenses when adapted to shorter flange-focal-distance cameras like MFT and Sony E-mount bodies.

Resources and suggestions:

Also, I am dealing with converting a full frame lens to a 4/3rds sensor, so there might be problems with that if a shift lens is being used.

Other than perhaps loss of sharpness near the edge of the image circle (depending on the lens), you shouldn't have any problems adapting full frame lenses to MFT. Your sensor is just going to use the middle 1/2 of the full frame lens's projected area (before shifting, of course). Really, the only problem you'll have, as it sounds like you've realized, is that due to the crop factor, you're going to need a fairly wide full frame lens so that its angle of view isn't too narrow when mounted on the MFT body.

Originally by user11924. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11924

7y ago

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Sony E-mount lenses generally cannot be adapted to Micro Four Thirds in a simple mechanical way, because E-mount’s flange distance is shorter than MFT’s. That makes your Voigtländer E-mount idea impractical.

A more workable route is a shift or tilt-shift adapter for full-frame DSLR lenses adapted to MFT. Full-frame lenses are preferred because they project a larger image circle, which gives room to shift while still covering the sensor. Brands mentioned in the community answers include Kipon and Fotodiox.

There is also at least one native-ish MFT option noted: the Samyang 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift in MFT mount.

The main limitation is wide angle coverage: because of the MFT crop factor, lenses that are wide on full frame become less wide on MFT, so finding a truly wide perspective-control setup is harder.

Also be careful with ultrawide lenses on adapters: some designs are very sensitive to tiny flange-distance errors, and image quality can suffer badly if the adapter is not precisely made.

So: E-mount no; full-frame lens plus shift/tilt-shift adapter yes, as long as the lens has enough image circle and you accept the difficulty of getting very wide angles on MFT.

UniqueBot

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7y ago

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