Novoflex 240 / 4.5. Novelty or not?

[Lloydy]

I bought a bunch of stuff today, and one of the items is this Novoflex 240 / 4.5 pistol grip focusing lens. I wasn't really bothered about this lens, what I wanted was the Pentax K and it's lovely old Takumar. Anything else was a bonus. I could find nothing about this 240mm lens, there's some information about the 400, which is generally quite positive, but the 240 remains a bit of a mystery. I was prepared to try it, discover it was rubbish and pass it on. I might have changed my mind.

Here's the lens, on my NEX5 and my monopod, which I found invaluable in using this lens, although the bird picture was hand held.


All pictures are unprocessed except for sizing, shot at ISO 800












Considering these are from the first 26 pictures through the lens, taken as test shots in a rush, these are good pictures. Any softness is camera shake. The lens seems very sharp, very free from fringing, and with nice colours.
On the down side, the minimum focusing distance is about 3 to 4 meters, and 4.5 is a bit slow.
The pistol grip focusing is actually very good and easy to use, especially on the monopod. I use the trigger left handed and press the shutter right handed.
The aperture ring is stepless, the focus is fast, and locks with thumbscrews on each side, which are a bit of a fiddle but I found I could hold focus on the rigger. With the stepless ap' and the quick focus I could see this lens being very good for shooting movie with a DSLR.
I like it, it's not the novelty I thought it was going to be.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Looks excellent, I'd keep it.

[Mir]

i'd be a bit worried of making cops nervous !

But it does look like a keeper..... and fun....

[Farside]

The Novoflex system is superb.
They'll prise mine out of my dead cold hands; wait, they won't as I won't be using it in the winter, I'm not that stupid.

[Lloydy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2htwBTEvsM

I sort of like this guys gun stock conversion, but it's a bit crude in it's execution. I think I will make a tubular alloy gunstock frame for mine, I have most of the parts I need. I will need a remote shutter switch though, and the NEX 5 is IR from the front, so I'll probably make a mechanical lever / button to press the shutter.

[Lloydy]

The Novoflex didn't do badly capturing the heron on the far side of the pool today. The first is a big crop, the second is full size. Both are PP'd and the first one sharpened a bit.

[hifisapi]

the first series of images look good except they are a little low in overall contrast. that can be fixed in PP.

[Lloydy]

It is a very low contrast lens, but other than that I like the optics. With some simple PP the pictures do look very good.

Surprisingly the lens is easier to use than I imagined it would be on the NEX, but I do try and use it with a monopod. I set the camera about elbow height on the monopod with the screen folded out, the monopod is screwed into the Novoflex handle. I use my left hand to focus using the trigger and my right thumb to fire the NEX shutter. Used like this it becomes a natural movement to follow focus. The focus trigger is spring loaded and adjustable for pressure, so holding focus is easy. I'm liking this lens a lot.

[Farside]

I had mine set up like a Bofors gun, with tilt/swivel/yaw and gawd-knows-what on a big old ballhead I found. Only drawback to that was the unweildiness of it when I wasn't actively using it. It was nice to swivel it around tracking something, focusing and firing, but leaving it go was fraught with difficulty as the ballhead just wanted to flop all over the shop, even with a lock on it.
So, I think a more stable platform (and costlier, probably) is needed, but still with the all-directions ability.

[Lloydy]

I use a tiny Gitzo ballhead on my monopod, the one in the picture above, it looks as though a plastic compact camera will be too much for it but it has held the Pentax K10 with battery grip and Tair 300 rock solid, I tried it just to test it. The best thing is, if I just release the lock screw slightly it moves around with resistance, not enough to support the Novoflex and NEX, but enough to make it flexible and easy to use.
This Gitzo head is now over 30 years old, it was my only ball head for probably 20 years. I love it.