The 'Dead Lens' Project
Low cost adapter rings for classic lenses on mirrorless digital.
Adapting Old Lenses to Mirrorless Cameras
The new compact, mirrorless cameras have opened up a world of fun with old lenses. Up until now, people with Canons, Sony's and some other bodies have been mounting high quality heritage lenses. On the other hand, companies like Zeiss and Voigtlander have long been making rather expensive and very high quality manual prime lenses. People are now paying high prices for quite basic old manual lenses to mount on a mirrorless - to the point where ebay is now littered with attempts to sell near worthless, film SLR bodies from which the standard 50mm lenses have been scavenged. But I think most of them have been missing the point. Sharpness may not be the only criterion – what about art and special effects? A few have tried pinhole lenses or Holga and other plastic specials to do ‘Lomography’ but again, why? That style should be done with film – digital is too easy. If I want those effects in digital, I can do it in Lightroom! Some cheap lenses have achieved legend status like the Russian Helios that I get asked for frequently. M42 screw mount and noted for it's 'swirley bokeh' - the weird out of focus effect that was once considereed the mark of a bad lens. But - many don't realise that there are different versions - the older Helios-44 and 44-2 with the recessed front element is the one. The later 44-M is more modern looking, 'improved' and may not do the business.
And then there are crappy old long and wide lenses (and many quite good ones too) that came with a cheap SLR or were bought cheap out of magazines forty years ago to fit one. They didn’t cost much and were sold to amateurs who couldn't afford much. Some were reasonable quality but were small apertured or a bit crude or had some distortion or were soft in the corners or…whatever. Now there are adapters to put them on just about anything so we can have a bit of fun.
I’m talking here about basic lenses that can be bought for a few dollars. In most cases they are not worth repairing. They may produce soft, low contrast, hazy images, smeary coloured, blurred with light flare and colour fringing – or lovely, soft, artistic, painterly images. It depends on luck and the way that you see them. If you can let go of the need to be sharp, for instance, you can use them.
A cheap and basic Meyer-Optik Domiplan 50mm f/2.8 (Tessar) on my EM-1.
Fun Lenses. I find them, clean them, shoot with them for fun and then offer them for sale with or without an adapter and perhaps with macro tubes, hood, or interesting filters if that works and with a few ideas on how best to use them – to take advantage of their flaws sometimes. Everything from old Eat German screw mount lenses for a few dollares to an incredibly rare Leitz Thambar for a few thousand! They come with a full description of their faults, difficulties, deficiencies, good points and suggestions for best use. I guarantee that I’ve shot with every one, to test it at least, on a micro Four Thirds body (Oly E-M1) or a Leica digital full frame. Or a Nikon 1 or an NEX if they were available – whichever I though most appropriate. Images are attached to auctions. I had one lucky cystomer who found a Cosinon 50mm on a flea market table. He likes dark, sharp, grungy images, 300 Spartans style and that lens did exactly that on his Fujifilm digital. Happy man. The great English photographer Bill Brandt found a wide lens on an old and busted camera and built a camera to try it out - it soon became his signature lens for the wide distorted deep depth of field images that made him famous (nude on beach with every pebble and the cliffs in the background all in focus).
I started this project with a few old lenses I had lying around. Some were awful, fungiussed, scratched or challenged in some other way or just plain broken. But all were sort of usable. An old T mount 135mm with a jammed aperture diaphragm. Jam it wide open and use it as a portrait lens – if it isn’t very sharp, even better. (That one became a favourite of mine for quite a while). I used to work in advertising and the motto there was ‘if the product has a flaw, make it a feature’. So, a lens that has scratches and fungus should be regarded as special in some way.
So if you fancy a bit of fun wit an old lens on your spiffy, new digital, why not try these. It doesn't matter if you have a low-cost compact like a Nikon J1 or Olympus E-PM or if you have a wallet crushing Leica M - so long as you have Live View and focus aids like magnification and/or focus peaking, it works.
TECHNICAL NOTES
I wrote this originally before the appearance of full frame mirrorless digital cameras such as the Sony a7 series. In the photographic dark ages when heritage lens mounting was in its infancy. Only the Leica M9-M240 was available beyond pro-grade Canons and Leica users tend to turn their noses up at lesser quality lenses. So this tends to assume a crop factor - usually 1.5x (1.6x for Canon EOS, 1.3x for a Canon 1D) and 2x for Olympus/Panasonic mFT. There have been exceptions such as even smaller sensors units - Pentax Q and Nikon One for instance, but these have not been particularly successful in Australia. They can mount old 16mm movie lenses quite successfully. Generally the advice is unchanged but Sony users had been particularly enthusiastic users of heritage lenses as were a7 users later. The advantage of full frame is that wide lenses are now worthwhile, especially down in the 21mm and 24mm true landscape category or ultrawide and fisheye lenses.
A note on aperture and focal length. Some claim that the aperture of a fast lens reduces on a reduced format sensor and get into bewildering mathematical calculations. This is nonsense. It lacks fundamental plausibility.
They are losing themselves in the erroneous idea that the light level is reduced by the sensor's size reduction. No it is not The focal length changes but not the effective aperture. Think of it this way. It's about the pixels themselves, not the size of the whole field of pixels, the sensor size. If you mask down a window to 2/3rds of the size, it will admit 2/3rds of the light, of cours (assuming an even light source). But an apple on the table in the direct centre light receives the same amount of light or photons per square millimetre. You would have to cover the entire window with a neutral density filter, or net curtain, to get the light reduction (aperture reduction) that they describe. Image that you are playing football on a sunny day and you forgot your sun block cream. Would your chance of getting sunburn be reduced if the fiel was smaller? No, you are like a pixel on a sensor and you get the same intensity of light.
What is being reduced is the receiver, the sensor, and not the light 'window' (aperture). The light arriving at each pixel unit in the path is the same intensity as on a larger sensor or a film. So the effective aperture is unchanged. Of course, the diaphragm does have a masking action when you reduce the aperture but this is not a window. It is a lens with angled light entry and exit o the effect of the smaller hole is to reduce the overall amount of light reaching the sensor. But an f1-8 lens is still f1.8 at widest aperture. The same value of light is projected on to each pixel as on a full frame sensor.
Of course, the standard response to this argument is that I do not understand the physics of optics and the related mathematics. Correct, I don't. But neither do they in their scientific arrogance. They've misunderstood the task and retreated into the wrong reponse or solution, no matter how technical.
Focal Length
A standard old 50mm f2 SLR lens becomes a 75mm on an NEX, Samsung, or Fujifilm NEX; 100mm on an Olympus or Panasonic mirrorless body; 135mm on a Nikon 1; a great fast portrait lens on any of them. What is more a lot of these lenses were often reasonably sharp in the middle but softer around the edges of the image - in the corners. It’s expensive to design a lens that is sharp edge to edge and for a portrait, often unnecessary. But when you mount them on a reduced format mirrorless, you are cropping them down to the ‘sweet spot’, the sharper central zone and they can perform surprisingly well. A good quality manual lens like an Olympus or Pentax wide or standard but with a little fungus around the edges or a scratch or two on the front will deliver crisp and sharp images on a new mirrorless digital. I’ve tested this theory and discovered that most so called faults have almost no effect. (See below). A regular customer of mine shoots an 'undistinguished' 50mm f2 Cosina lens on his Fujifilm X digital. He got it foe $10 off a market stall. It shoots dark, crisp, hgh contrast black and white images and that suits his style perfectly. It has become his signature lens! Best ten bucks he ever spent.
Telephoto gets even more interesting than a fast ‘50mm’ portrait length. A 135mm f3.5 was a bit ordinary in the day but when it becomes a 270 f/3.5 on a micro Four Thirds body, that’s very useful. And a 200mm f/4 is now a light-sucking 400mm f/4. On a Pentax Q a 50mm becomes a 280mm telephoto (or 235mm on later models) which is extreme – a tiny, low cost, stabilised super-telephoto. I have a lot of old 70-210mm zooms (or thereabouts ) which don't sell well for some reason - some are cheap off brand, others good quality. On a mirrorless they can be around 105mm - 320mm or 140mm-330mm or better - that's really usefull and they're cheap!
Tamron 500mm f/8 SP Mirror Lens 1000mm effective
Old Macro lenses are also very good. The smaller sensor gives you a bit more working distance, macro lenses were often very sharp indeed and for most macro subjects, it is actually easier to manual focus rather than let the lens hunt around for ages and make the wrong decisions. So old Tamron and Sigma macro’s, for instance, are very usable indeed for things like flowers and insects. A true macro lens should go to at least 1:2 ratio. The image on the sensor is half life size. That’s equivalent to 1:1 life size on micro Four Thirds!
A stock standard 50mm f/1.8 Olympus OM lens mounted on a macro focussing 2x teleconverter and OM to m4/3rds adapter - and with a hood. An effective and quite sharp 200mm f/4 Macro lens.
The more expensive macro lenses went to 1:1 on full frame, sometimes by using an extension tube. But be careful – some lenses were labelled ‘macro’ or close up when they only went to 4:1 or 5:1. They were close focussing, not macro. (Actually the term should be ‘micro’ but only Nikon used it – Micro-Nikkor lenses).
Wide angles are less exciting so I tend to avoid them – a 28mm for instance tends to be larger, slower aperture, not as sharp as a 50mm and when it becomes a 40mm-55mm f/3.5 instead, well that’s a bit ho-hum. Big and slow. Unless you like a mid-range prime with a bit of distortion, it’s usually not worth the trouble unless you want to try your hand at Leica style manual focus street shooting with a digital body. About twice a week I get asked for a wide angle to put on a digital - wrong question unless you have a full frame digital camera. I can sell you a nice 24mm Tamron for a couple of hundred but on your Canon D70 it becomes a 38mm! Who cares?! And the last truly wide lens I sold, a Tamron 14mm in Nikon mount, is an awesome lens and was destined for a D4 but on a regular SLR its 21mm, huge and $750 wasted!
Full Frame note - That is, of course, unless you are using a full frame body such as a Sony a7. Then lenses maintain their original aspect and an old 28mm becomes a useful item!
There’s another consideration. Depth of field. These lenses do maintain their original characteristics on the smaller sensor bodies – they’ve only been cropped, not extended. Therefore, a 50mm used as a 75mm wide open has more depth of field than the real thing, which you may prefer, or not. A 200mm cropped to 400mm effective has the same depth of field and flattening effect of a 200mm, and in this case a wider depth of field may be a advantage - a 400mm wide open has a paper-thin depth of field. Further, the depth of field increases even more with smaller and smaller sensors so while putting a 50mm on a tiny Pentax Q will give you a near 500mm supertelephoto with a very fast aperture, the depth of field will be very wide indeed – you’ll get more ‘apparent’ focus which means more usable images but you may need to be carefully about where the point of critical focus is placed.
Finally, Aperture. I have heard arguments about the effective aperture of a fast lens used on a sensor smaller than full frame. People have assured me that an f2 lens is slower than f2 when used on micro-Four Thirds, for instance and seem to have lovely, elegant, incomprehensible technical arguments to support that assertion. I'm unconvinced. There never seems to be any discussion about a slowing of full frame capable lenses when used on APS-C sensors, for instance - and surely the same rules apply? I prefer a simple, and plausible argument. It goes something like this - Light is evenly distributed across the frame by the lens (slightly brighter in the middle in most cases); the frame is effectively cropped by the smaller sensor; therefore the amount of light or number of photons falling on each individual pixel is the same regardless of sensor real estate - if the lens and aperture setting are the same. An f/2 lens is still an f/2 lens - it is proportionaltly identical. If you have a simple argument that shows my point of view to be wrong, I'd be delighted to hear from you.
Brands
There were good and bad lenses but - there were few really terrible lenses and even then, you can get interesting results. Remember the Russian Helios - weird out of focus (Bokeh) effects that are now popular. Most Russian lenses are very good and many were military specification. It's confusing because there was a lot of rebranding - if you were prepared to buy 5000 from a Japanese manufacturer in the 1960's, they'd put your own store brand on it and some stores had a 'house brand' - Prinz (Dixons in the UK) and Porst in Germany for instance. They could have been made by anyone. Vivitar in the USA never made a lens or camera but rebranded whatever they could sell. Hanimex did the same in Australia and elsewhere.
So, what was good? Well, lenses from premium brand SLR's are keenly sought. Zeiss lenses in Contax/Yashica mount and QBM mount can sell for very high prices. Rare and special Canon and Nikon lenses are the same. Fast lenses such as 50mm f1.2 are popular for videographers as well as low light fans. Some lenses have gone ballistic in price - Olympus made a range of pro-grade lenses with f2 aperture and I was astonished to find that the 21mm f2 now sells in the $5K plus range. Strewth!
Sigmas and Tamron now make very good lenses indeed but back in the day they made a lot of cheap standard zooms as kit lenses. for Canikons and Pentax. Adequate but not worth the trouble - and we used to joke that Sigma was short for 'significant malfunction. Not now - some my best personal lenses are Sigma's. But Sigma and Tamron also made some excellent lenses way back in the superwide and macro categories - well worth the try. Kiron were a premium brand, especially in the fast prime category such as a 28mm f2. Tokina, a group of former Nikon lensmakers, were also good but had a three level quality offereing so do some research. Vivitar rebranded a lot of cheap stuff but their original Series One lenses from the 1960's and seventies were extraordinarily good and should be tried.
The old German lenses such as Zeiss, Leica and Voigtlander are certainly worth the effort if you can afford them. Now of course Zeiss and Voiglander lenses are made by Cosina in Japan but they are of very high quality and many come in native Canon and Nikon mount, for instance, no adapter required and internally chipped for auto exposure. But they are not cheap.
With the explosion of interest in film photography we have seen a wave of offerings from China - both lenses for old Leicas, for instance and manual specialist lenses for modern digital bodies. Some of these are of great value for money and very well made - 7 Artisans, TT Artisans and Laowa/Venus Optics come to mind. I have a 50mm f1.1 in Leica M mount that I use on an M3 but I'm also happy to put it on a Sony with an adapter.
Then there are the ho-hum, why bother? Well, one reason - I had a customer who found a cheap 50mm Cosinon on a market stall for $10 and it became his signature lens. It produced a strong contrast effect on his Fujifilm digital wich he absolutely loved. So don't sneer at anything. But the 135mm 'Dark invader' that we sqaw the other day? Perhaps not. There were a number of Japanese lensmakers churning out cheap and cheerful direct mail quaity lenses to a price - Cosina and Cimko come to mind (and Chinon but they were usually better) and while they are worth a look out of morbid curiosity, they usually aren't worth the trouble.
Damage
Many old lenses show up with damage of various kinds and are often rejected out of hand. Sometimes this is foolish and you could be passing up a bargain. You’ll see people on ebay offering scratched, dusty and fungussed lenses and claiming that, it won’t affect the image. Often they are right but sometimes they are being misleading. Damage to a lens falls into a number of categories and not all of them are terminal. Some are downright interesting.
Mechanical: A lens with a jammed focus ring is useless of course, unless you want to spend $50-100 to get it repaired. It’s like a stopped clock – only in focus at one distance (like the clock is only right twice a day!) But you could use it for macro with extension tubes, focussing by moving the camera in and out! Hard work though and you only get one enlargement ratio.
A broken aperture diaphragm is different. I actually have an old soft focus portrait lens (a Portragon) which has no aperture at all and never did. A friend uses an apertureless Russian ‘Cyclops’ night vision scope lens as a portrait lens. If a lens can be jammed wide open or you can get in there and remove the blades, it’s usable. Portraits are best taken at wide apertures so that the background goes out of focus and the person ‘pops’ out of the image. Results are variable with non-apertured lenses– it may work well or it may be awful, but it is worth the try.
Dented front filter rings are common and can be knocked out to roughly round with a light hammer and a wooden peg cut to the curve shape – use it like a chisel and be firm. I then screw in a step-up ring (often with some effort) to create a new front ring.
Glass: Scratches, chips and gouges:
The front element often suffers from impact damage in the form of chips and scratches. I had two examples of a standard lens where the earlier built one had a bad, deep scratch on the front element, about 8mm long halfway between the middle and edge. That’s why I bought another, later one but I was surprised to find that the early, damaged lens was still sharper. The traditional method of dealing with this problem is to fill a scratch with a fine black marker. Then use a lens hood to minimise side light which could reflect in the scratch. This kills any flare effect and the black line will not normally resolve on the image except on a wide angle at small aperture. Think of mirror lenses with a huge lump in the middle of the front of the lenses - and it does not show. So damage like this is only a problem with very wide angle lenses which may have enough depth of field to resolve the damage at small apertures and you are less likely to be using such a lens on a mirrorless. 35mm focal length and up is normally fine – unless you are using them on a very small sensor like a Pentax Q which has a very broad depth of field.
But…scratches on the rear element are more serious and may make a lens unusable. These will almost always affect the image in some way. And then there are ‘cleaning marks’. These are very fine scratches caused by cleaning a lens with a dirty cloth. They often form circular patterns and can be seen in strong light. Unlike single big scratches, they can cause fogging and softening of the image and reduced contrast. Never clean a lens with anything but a mcrofibre cloth (from an optician or camera store) or something like a Lens Pen.
Fungus: Fungus grows on both toes and lenses. On a lens it takes two forms. The first is like a cobweb, sometimes growing from the side. Often it is in the layer between two glass elements that are glued together. A second form is a whitish spot that grows on a surface. Both are caused by a lens being left in the dark in humid conditions. You can kill it quickly by exposing the lens to strong sunlight (UV) for a few hours but – that doesn’t get rid of the mycelium, the threads which are the body of the fungus. Worse, if the fungus has been there long enough, the acid that it naturally exudes will have etched through the coatings and into the glass. This is irretrievable. Repolishing can be done but is too expensive for all but the most expensive and specialist lenses.
Fortunately, fungus usually attacks from the edges first so a slightly affected lens can be used on a reduced format sensor and the fungussed area will be cropped out. Large white spots and cobwebs that are in the middle will soften the image, depending on how far back in the lens they are growing. This may mean that you have a dreadful lens – or a lens with a nice, soft effect. That’s the luck of the draw. A small white spot or two will probably have no effect at all once you've killed it with sunlight.
Conclusion
So there you go. It’s not about picking up a lens and expecting it to be sharp and giving accurate colour rendition. It’s all about picking up a challenged piece of glass and learning to work within its limits which, if you think about it, it what photography SHOULD be all about. And best of all, the results are unpredictable and possibly unique to each lens. With film, that used to be a problem. With digital cameras, that’s no problem as you now get instant images to check so that you can modify your technique. Sure, if using an old 50mm or 100mm fast prime to get really sharp images is your thing, go ahead. I may even have the lens and adapter for you to do that, cleaned pre-checked and tested with a good adapter. But if you want to have fun – try damaged and dirty 'compromised' lenses and see what you get.
Lens Adapters
There are a huge number of adapters available to mount heritage lenses on the new, compact mirrorless cameras. It’s easy to make them as the distance between the sensor and the lens mount is much shorter than on a ‘normal’ SLR – usually around 20mm rather than somewhere between 40-50mm. So the adapter is basically an extension tube with no electrical connections (with a couple of automatic exceptions). As in the 1950’s-60’s, everything is manual apart from the auto exposure. Note that there are now adapters which will maintain auto focus for using say a Canon EF lens on a Sony and others that with increase the f-stop but these are specialised and often rather expensive.
There were adapter rings before the mirrorless body – some regular full size SLR’s with conventional viewfinders could mount other lenses in the same way. The champion of this was Canon as their EF mount was shorter and wider than most. So you could mount a Nikon lens on a Canon – but not vice versa. You’ll find plenty of adapters for mounting Nikon or Olympus OM lenses on a Canon EOS, T mount adapters for most original SLR mounts and so on. There are even mounts for putting medium format lenses on to 35mm SLR’s, especially useful for using tilt-shift adapters where the extra coverage of the big lens could be used for side shifting. But compacts like the Olympus mFT mount, the Sony NEX and others made things much easier.
Be aware that there is a huge difference in prices for adapters. You can pay $250-400 for a mount from Germany made by Novoflex, for instance and you’ll get a very well made and precisely machined adapter. Or you can get a good Japanese Kipon or Metabones for around $100 or a Fotodiox brand of the same mount for around $50. (Kipon, Fotodiox and Roxen are good suppliers with wide ranges of adapters). Or then you’ll see the same thing for $10-20 with a name like Fotoga, out of who knows where in China. What’s the difference?
Well the Chinese mount may be cruder in finish, not as precise in measurement and may not fit quite as well – but most of the ones I’ve bought with normal caution have been just fine. I’ve had a couple that were problematic – one was loose and would not lock on to the camera properly; the other was very tight and stiff to mount, hard to remove. In both cases, the seller refunded so there was no harm done. I've even had a couple that were completely wrong - 20mm thick instead of 8mm comes to mind! A typical fault with the Fotga grade is that it is a bit loose when mounted and there is a tiny wobble. Not a serious problem but annoying.The Japanese brands are better and more robust – and Kipon has a huge range with some clever tilt and shift models too – but they probably come out of the same factory in China with a bit of extra checking and finishing. The German ones are extremely expensive and probably only worth it if you are using some very expensive lenses and camera bodies. They are guaranteed to be exact, work precisely and do no damage. But…generally, the use of manual focus techniques like magnification and focus peaking means that what you see is what you get, even if the adapter is a bit ‘off’. You just need to check infinity focus on a distant subject to be sure.
It’s worth mentioning the Tilt/Shift adapters. These either shift the lens sideways, or tilt it in relation to the body, or both. Shift is used for correcting verticals when photographing buildings. Tilt is used for adjusting the field of focus from vertical to an angle. They are a specialised need but fun to explore.
Tamron - Tamron made a range of Adaptall lenses from the 1960's to 1990's. These are manual focus lenses of decent quality with intercghangeable mounts. The mount was complex and tricky to fit as it had mechanisms to transfer the aperture information to the camera.. Typically you didn't swap them around unless you changed your camera system. They are still around and available for not too much - the 90mm f2.5 Macro is a particular favorite of mine. But there are now cheap and useful Chinese 'Tamron' adapters which are a good substitute for the original and sometimes scarce Adaptall adapters. They lack the mechanical aperture conection cams which you no longer need anyway so they make a great alternative.
So what can you mount on an Olympus OM-D or (new) PEN, a Sony or a Fujifilm X body? You’d be surprised! Some of the lenses may be new to you. You can even mount a Sony E (NEX lens or a Fuji X lens on mFT! There are adapters now available for some quite rare lenses too. I made this list up with a quick survey through ebay, looking for the cheapest available adapters. These are the lenses that you can mount at minimal cost. You may ask, why would I bother to mount a Canon EF or Nikon AF lens on to something else? Well, you might if it is a special piece of glass like the Nikon 14-24mm and you want to shoot movies through it. Or if, as I did recently, you have a Lensbaby or similar accessory in EF mount and you want to use it on a mirrorless camera. Or if you now shoot Sony and have a couple of good Canon lenses (guilty). It's handy then.
Note – in some cases where a mount is not available, it is possible to piggyback two mounts. For instance, to put a Hasselblad medium format lens on a Nikon 1, you could first put the lens on a Hasselblad to Nikon F adapter and then use a Nikon F to Nikon 1 adapter. This tends to work well where there were many previous ‘pre-mirrorless’ mounts available, for Canon EF for instance.
I haven't had time to update theis recently. There have been a couple of major changes - the arrival of Nikon Z and Canon mirrorless cameras, each with. a whole set of available adapters to almost any lens. Then there is the remarkable Fujifilm GFX which although it is a medium format digital body, has a very short 27mm flange distance so that almost any lens can be mounted with an adapter, including Leica rangefinder lenses. Seach ebay for the offerings.
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micro Four Thirds Adapters
for Olympus OM-D and PEN, Panasonic G. D not confuse it with the original FT mount for Olympus E digital cameras and a few others - there are a few adapters for this mount but they are less common.
Screw Mounts
M42 Screw Mount - Universal, or ‘Pentax’ 42mm Screw - $6
M39 Leica Screw Mount - 39mm Screw - $4
Robot M26 - $54
T/T2 Screw Mount – similar to M42 but a different pitch - $6
C Mount – 16mm Movie Lenses - $3
D Mount – 8mm Movie Lenses - $
Macro Tube Set - $9
Bayonet Mounts
Canon EF (EOS) - $9
Tilt $46.50, Tilt/Shift $125
Canon EF with aperture – $40
Canon FD/FL - $9
Contax-Yashica (C/Y) - $9
Fuji X Fujinon (original 1980’s X mount) - $46
Konica AR - $12
Leica M - $5
Leica R -$15.50 Tilt $46.50
Minolta MC, MD - $9.50
Nikon F - $8 Tilt - $50, Macro $42
Nikon G with aperture - $28
Olympus OM - $9
Olympus 4/3rds - $47 (full auto, MMF copy)
Pentax K - $9
Praktica PB - $20.50
Sony alpha (Minolta AF) - $15
Tamron Adaptall - $15
Less Common Bayonet Mounts
Alpa – Kipon $100
Argus C3 - $39
Contax G (Zeiss) - $50 – 250 (expensive is MUCH better)
Contax N1 with aperture – Kipon $150
Contax Rangefinder - $24.50
Exakta - $14
Topcon Auto Topcor - $14
Hasselblad - $95
Hasselblad X-pan - $35
Kiev 6, Pentacon 6 (P6) Medium Format - $30
Nikon S Rangefinder - $24.50
Pentax 110 (110 film ‘Super’ SLR system) - $22.50
Rollei Voigtlander QBM SL35 - $24.50
Voigtländer, Braun, Kodak Retina Reflex (DKL) - $61
Zeiss Icarex - $65
Sony E-mount Adapters
for Sony NEX bodies (E-mount, not alpha mount)
Best resource for e-mount adapters as of 1 Jan 2017 - http://briansmith.com/gear/sony-lens-adapters/
Most importantly, the LA-E series adapters that adapt Sony alpha mount and Minolta AF lenses to Sony 'e' (NEX) mount with autofocus. Also be aware that Sony has three mounts which are easy to confuse - FE which is full frame for bodies like the a7 series, E which is reduced format for the NEX series camera and alpha mount (Minolta AF) which suits the original Sony mirror 'a' bodies and the later a99. The E series only suit the reduced format NEX bodies but you can put FE lenses on NEX bodies.
Screw Mounts
M42 Screw Mount - Universal, or ‘Pentax’ 42mm Screw - $9
M39 Leica Screw Mount - 39mm Screw - $4
Robot M26 - $54
T/T2 Screw Mount – similar to M42 but a different pitch - $6
C Mount – 16mm Movie Lenses - $3
Bayonet Mounts
AF Macro Tube Set - $45
Canon EF (EOS) - $9
Canon EF with aperture – $40
Canon EF with AutoFocus –$145 plus
Canon FD/FL - $9
Contax-Yashica (C/Y) - $9
Fuji X Fujinon - $46
Konica AR - $12
Leica M - $5
Leica R -$35
Minolta MC, MD - $16
Minolta AF - Sony genuine alpha to e-mount - LA-EA4 (preserve AF) $300-350
Nikon F - $8 Tilt - $50, Macro $42
Nikon G with aperture - $13
Olympus OM - $9
Olympus 4/3rds - $47 (full auto, MMF copy)Olympus Panasonic micro 43rds $15
Pentax K - $9
Praktica PB - $20.50
Sony alpha A - mount (Minolta AF) – manual - $25
Sony genuine alpha to e-mount - LA-EA3 (SSM), LA-EA4 (preserving AF) $250/350
Tamron Adaptall - $15
Less Common Bayonet Mounts
Alpa – $159
Canon Rangefinder (external bayonet, 50/0.95 lens) $110
Contax G (Zeiss) - $39 – 250 (expensive is MUCH better)
Contax N1 Electronic - $254 Contax Rangefinder - $24.50
Contax Rangefinder - $24.50
Diax - $98
Exakta - $14
Topcon Auto Topcor - $14
Hasselblad - $95
Hasselblad X-pan - $35
Kiev 6, Pentacon 6 (P6) Medium Format - $40
Nikon S Rangefinder - $30
Mamiya Press - $95
Pentax 110 (110 film ‘Super’ SLR system) - $20
Perfex 44 - $37
PL, K-35 (Movie) – Cooke, Arriflex, Zeiss, Baltar, Angenieux - $200-450
Rollei Voigtlander QBM SL35 - $13
Voigtländer, Braun, Kodak Retina Reflex (DKL) - $61
Zeiss Icarex BM - $48-85
Zeiss Contarex - $64
Samsung NX Adapters
Screw Mounts
M42 Screw Mount - Universal, or ‘Pentax’ 42mm Screw - $9
M39 Leica Screw Mount - 39mm Screw - $5
Miranda M44 - $25
Robot M26 - $23
T/T2 Screw Mount – similar to M42 but a different pitch - $6
C Mount – 16mm Movie Lenses - $3
Macro Tube Set - $7
Bayonet Mounts
Canon EF (EOS) - $9
Canon FD/FL - $9
Contax-Yashica (C/Y) - $9
Konica AR - $12
Leica M - ? Use screw to M adapter?
Leica R -$15.50 Tilt $46.50
Minolta MC, MD - $9.50
Nikon AI F - $8 Tilt - $50, Macro $42
Nikon AF-G with aperture control - $18
Olympus OM - $9
Olympus 4/3rds - $47 (full auto, MMF copy)
Pentax K - $9
Pentax DA with aperture control. $18
Sony alpha (Minolta AF) - $35 with diaphragm control, $55
Less Common Bayonet Mounts
Exakta - $14
Topcon Auto Topcor - $14
Kiev 6, Pentacon 6 (P6) Use P6-M42 and then M42-Samsung?
Canon EM (EOS-M) Mount
For Canon M bodies
Screw Mounts
M42 Screw Mount - Universal, or ‘Pentax’ 42mm Screw - $12
M39 Leica Screw Mount - 39mm Screw - $12
Robot M26 - $35
T/T2 Screw Mount – similar to M42 but a different pitch - $17
C Mount – 16mm Movie Lenses - $7
Kiev 16U Movie - M32 x 0.5 $56
Macro Tubes - $45
Reversing ring - $5
Bayonet Mounts
Arriflex S $36 PL - $225 (tilt $285)
Canon EF (EOS) – with full AF & aperture transfer $32-75
Canon FD/FL - $13
Contax-Yashica (C/Y) - $13
Konica AR - $13
Leica M - $11
Leica R -$13
Leica Visoflex - $90
Minolta MC, MD - $11
Nikon AI F - $14
Nikon AF-G with aperture control - $17
Olympus OM - $13
Pentax K - $15
Pentax DA with aperture control. $19
Praktica PB - $80
Sony alpha (Minolta AF) - $20
Sigma SA - $26
Tamron Adaptall 2 - $20
Less Common Bayonet Mounts
Alpa – Kipon $109
Argus C3 - $37
B4 2/3” ‘Broadcast Lens - $150
Contax G (Zeiss) - $30
Contax N1 with aperture – Kipon $119
Exakta - $15
(Topcon Auto Topcor - $15)
Hasselblad - $90
Hasselblad X-pan - $26
Kiev 6, Pentacon 6 (P6) Medium Format - $30
Nikon S Rangefinder - $24.50
Pentax 110 (110 film ‘Super’ SLR system) – Kipon $60
Rollei Voigtlander QBM SL35 - $49
Fuji X Mount
For Fujifilm X and X-Pro bodies
Note that there was an earlier series of X-Fujinon bayonet lenses for Fujica and Fuji SLR’s in the 1980’s and this causes confusion. This is made worse by the common usage of the older Fuji for the present Fujifilm and some are calling the X-mount FX! Worse, the first series of Fujica’s in the 1970’s were M42 screw mount! The original X-bayonet mount is incompatible with the modern X-mount but there are some adapters available to mount them to modern mirrorless cameras.
Screw Mounts
M42 Screw Mount - Universal, or ‘Pentax’ 42mm Screw - $9
M39 Leica Screw Mount - 39mm Screw - $14
Robot M26 - $50
T/T2 Screw Mount – similar to M42 but a different pitch - $26
C Mount – 16mm Movie Lenses - $4
Macro Tube Set - $8
Bayonet Mounts
Arriflex S $35 PL $138
Contax Yashica $12
Canon EF $14
Canon FD/FL $10 (does not suit FL 58mm f1.2)
Konica AR $12
Leica R $150 (Rayqual)
Leica M $10
Minolta MD/MC $12
Nikon F $14 (tilt-shift $235)
Nikon G $19
Olympus PEN F $13
Olympus OM $10
Olympus 4/3 $71
Pentax PK $14
Pentax 110 - $75
Sony alpha/Minolta AF $16
Tamron Adaptall II $14
Less Common Bayonet Mounts
Alpa – $100
Argus C3 - $37
Contax G (Zeiss) - $20 - $129 (Metabones) - $220 (Kipon)
Contax N1 with aperture – Kipon $119
Contax Rangefinder - $80
Exakta - $16
(Topcon Auto Topcor - $15)
Hasselblad - $90
Hasselblad X-pan - $36
Kiev 60 (P6) $26
Nikon S Rangefinder - $28
Rollei Voigtlander QBM SL35 - $15
Nikon CX Mount
For Nikon 1 V1, V2, J1…
Screw Mounts
M42 Screw Mount – $14 (Tripod mount $34)
M39 Leica Screw Mount - 39mm Screw - $12
T (2) Mount $11
C Mount – 16mm Movie Lenses - $7
Macro Tube Set - 3 tube $59
Bayonet Mounts
Arriflex S $53
Contax Yashica $26 (tripod mount) $48
Canon EF $14 (with tripod mount - $40)
Canon FD $49
Leica R $20 (with tripod mount $40)
Leica M $17
Minolta MD/MC $17
Nikon F-AI $13 (tripod mount $40)
Nikon G $16 (tripod mount $48)
Nikon AF (FT-1) auto $240
Olympus PEN F $35
Olympus OM $16
Pentax PK $24
Sony alpha/Minolta AF $56
Tamron Adaptall II $18
Less Common Bayonet Mounts
Contax G (Zeiss) - $30 - $60 (Roxen) - $152 (Kipon)
Contax N1 with aperture – Kipon $119
Hasselblad – use Hasselblad V to Nikon F adapter first? $60
Kiev 60 (P6) $26
Rollei Voigtlander QBM SL35 - $15
Pentax Q Mount
For Pentax Q, Q10, Q7...…
Screw Mounts
M42 Screw Mount – $15 ($22 with tripod mount)
M39 Leica Screw Mount - 39mm Screw - $12
T (2) Mount $24
C Mount – 16mm Movie Lenses - $5
D Mount – 8mm Movie Lenses - $5
Macro Tube Set - 3 tube $59
Bayonet Mounts
Arriflex S $30
B4 2/3” Cine - $150
Contax Yashica $21
Contax G (Zeiss) - $34
Canon EF $18
Canon FD $21
Konica AR - $21
Leica R $25 (with tripod mount)
Leica M $17
Minolta MD/MC $21
Nikon F, F-AI, F-AF $18
Olympus PEN F $40
Olympus OM $23
Pentax K $18 (Kipon Tilt - $180)
Pentax 110 - $21
Sony alpha/Minolta AF $22
Tamron Adaptall II $18