Blackmagic Forum

Greetings,

I have a collection of Contax lenses along with adapters to convert them for use on Canon EOS and Nikon cameras. I am, however, getting ready to purchase a Blackmagic pocket cinema camera 6K and am considering the permanent Leitax mount conversions.

Half of my lenses are MM lenses (at least I believe so because they have one green f-stop number) the other half do not. I'm not sure if I should purchase the chips that they offer for these Leitax mounts or not. Help appreciated.

I am curious to know what kind of results everyone has had using these Contax lenses with the Leitax mounts. Additionally, I'm also curious about what kind of functionality these lenses provide (with the chip and or without)? Since I'm not familiar with this camera and its various modes I'm not sure how these lenses will react. If anyone is up for a phone call I would be very grateful.

Best regards,

Rip Noel
865-679-6635 m.

Hi Rip, I go a great collection of Contax C/Y lenses too. I did neither Leitax nor chip them. I didn't see a point in those chips, the BM cameras have a pretty good visual indicator for focus and I don't trust those chips anyway.

I'm using them normally with adapters by K&F Concept and they work very well with my UMP 4.6K (1.gen). I don't have any other Canon lenses, but I use the Contax lenses with my Sony Alphas too, so I'm just changing adapters. I got some cheaper adapters by Beschoi and they are not too bad either.

And, yes, you are right about the smallest aperture being in green if it's an MM version.

Leitax are great but expensive but for cinema use are probably worth it to avoid additional adapter to lens movement during focusing. No point getting them chipped for BM cameras as they only report the focal length which is only of use in cameras with IBS.

Hey,

I have been using Contax lenses on the bmpcc6k for a while now and originally wanted to convert them to Leitax but couldn't really justify the price. I did buy one that came with the Leitax however and it does feel nicer though.
Here is a some footage shot with the 28mm and a fotodiox adapter .


Cheers,
Flo

Leitax is great and avoids at least one side of play. Unfortunately, a non-locking EF mount is still prone to play.

All non locking lens mounts are prone to rotational play and not just EF. There are various ways to tighten them up but some require a fair amount of skill and are non reversible.

Thanks to everyone for your comments... I do already have several adapters in here which will get the lenses to the Eos mount so I imagine I'll just go ahead and get the body in here and start doing some testing.

Thanks also to Flo for the footage that was very helpful. Do any of you have trouble with follow focus with this 6K pocket camera? Are you all running external monitors to assist with this? Any recommendations on handling focus greatly appreciated.

Knowing that I'm getting ready to order this 6K pocket for the first time I thought I would go ahead and get a 2 TB Samsung external hard drive. Do you all feel strongly that I should also have a C-fast internal card, at least one... in the camera?

Please let me know your feelings on must-have accessories. Thanks again to everyone for your kind help.

Best regards,

Rip

I have a set of Contax lenses. I was using them initially with an adapter. Then I got a Metabones EF adapter and decided to have Duclos cine-mod the lenses which includes Leitax EF conversion. I feel like they're tighter after the conversion. Since I knew I was never going to be using the lenses on a Contax camera, it made sense to me to get them into a standard mount. But yes, there's always a little play with an adapter.

I use a BM Video Assist 12G for focus. In bright sunlight 2500 nits is awesome.

I can't tell, since I'm using them only on the UMP 4.6K, which has an excellent EVF.
But for follow focus I'd use a collar on the lenses, otherwise you always get a small image shift.
I suppose it can be worse with the 6K, since the body is flexible to some degree.