Fujifilm GFX & Adapted Pentax Lenses

I conducted a short photography experiment yesterday. I adapted two 60 year old lenses; one a 21 mm and the other a 200 mm M42 lens (designed for the Pentax Spotmatic). I shot a couple dozen pictures with my Fuji GFX 50S medium format camera. When you nail the focus, this combination of camera and lenses is really awesome. The lenses are small and light and as you can see from the gallery, make good pictures. I am particularly encouraged by the results from the telephoto lens.

A Saul Leiter Influence

I intend to work on my Saul Leiter look in the very near future. (He became known for using 90 mm and 150 lenses to compress the foreground in his photos.) He loved to highlight pictures with bright yellow and red objects -like taxis and umbrellas. He also incorporated indistinct or blurry geometric foreground objects and window reflections, rain, and snow into his street scenes. He pioneered abstract street photography using color film when it wasn’t considered “fine art.”

The 21 mm is equivalent to a 16mm super wide and the 200 is to equivalent to 160 mm on the GFX. Both lenses have a max aperture of 4.0 – which translates on the GFX to around 3.3. Not bad. I set the camera to manual mode. Focus peaking made the focusing quite easy. It is easier still if you set the camera to monochrome – the red really highlights what is in focus.

Here are some examples – the only wide angle shot is the first picture. The camera was less than 5 inches from the coffee cup.

I have many other Pentax lenses (55, 50, 50 macro and a 135) from that era. It is very exciting to realize that my lens kit for the GFX 50S has some important “new additions.” I also have Fotodiox adapters for Nikon and Leica lenses and will highlight those results in my next article…