End of last year we dedicated a blog entry to the new Actar-19 lens. A superb lens, with the distinction of an exceptionally large usable image circle given the short focal length. Crucial, when you’re working with a large sensor and still need to apply a substantial amount of shift, rise and fall.
We’re happy to announce another wide angle lens: The Actar-15. Its image circle is slightly smaller than the 19’s. Still large enough to make it a good choice when a 24×36 or 33x44mm sensor camera is used as a digital back behind one of our view cameras.
So now there’s a choice between 15 and 19mm lenses. The 15 being the more affordable one, the 19 still having a few strengths over it. Let’s first have a look what the difference in focal length does when used on various sensor sizes. We need some boring pictures to compare side-by-side.
Please note, that 4mm of rise was applied. The picture taken with the IQ4 back shows, that we’re exceeding the Actar-15’s image circle when working with this large sensor.
The Actar-15 gives an extreme angle of view when used with a 33×44 sensor and even at a 24×36 sensor it won’t be everyone’s taste. When you’re working with an APS-C camera though (which we didn’t include in this comparison), it becomes much more of a bread-and-butter wide angle. One that performs extremely well and enables a massive amount of rise, fall and shift.
Actus-GFX with Fuji GFX-50r and Actar-19. Here 12mm of rise was applied. The darkened upper corners show that we’re nearly exceeding the image circle. This is more than the Actar-15 can offer.
Links to download some RAW files:
Cambo Blog 