Lens adapters - anybody use them?

Merluza

Merluza

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I'll start with the disclaimer that I tried and search and to my surprise found nothing. Has anybody tried and had any success, or failure, with a lens adapter for an old style lens to their DSLR. I'm interested in trying to make use of a Contax 50mm Planar that I've had for years and would like to try it on my Canon. There are a lot of adaptors about, from the very cheap to the moderately pricey, and I would like to hear of any recommendations or cautionary tales. I was shown a cheap and cheerful one that converted Olympus lenses the other day that came from eBay and he swore by it. I suspect it's a game of chance that you get one with the right tolerances. Anybody use them?
 
The most reliable are the M42 to Canon EOS fit. There are loads of these. I've got three including one with focus indicator but to be honest it's not worth the extra. Price is no guide to quality and M42'S are available at less than £2 off the 'bay and they work.

I have a Pentax 1.7 and really wanted to be able to use this so I paid over £14 (cheaper are available) and the damned thing would not lock onto the lens. The hole for the locking pin had not been made and then I had to raise a dispute to get my money back. E-BAY outfit called "camera-accessories" so avoid them.

Yashica-contax tend to be a tad more expensive and they are more complex and can be a sod to get off, so be careful.

I think they are a bit of a gamble and you need to be careful, but if you find a good supplier let us all know.
 
Thanks for that, you've tapped into my most basic fears about trying this. In this case although wrecking the lens is undesirable damaging the camera would be terrible.

This is the expensive version http://www.leitax.com and seems a reasonable approach although it did occur to me that I could remove the fitting from an old cheap canon lens and just drill some holes in the right place. No doubt there are serious problems in doing this that I am not seeing.
 
I bought an M42 to Nikon adaptor. It's going back.
Seems that on Nikon's, the adaptor has to move the lens a fair few mm forwards, so any adaptor acts like an extension tube. This may be true of other systems.
Consequently it throws the focus calibration out, and without a correction lens (that my adaptor had) wont allow focus on infinity.
If you have a correction lens you may focus on infinity, but not at lens scale setting.
This means that you cant use hyperfocusing techniques, if that's important to you; but more important, significantly to me, you cant use fixed focus lenses, like my old slide copy lens or fixed focus fish-eye.
The adaptor also slightly increases effective focal length, which if you are looking for cheap reach, may be useful, or of no consequence, but of you are looking to use wide lenses, then it can loose a little of what you are looking for, while, I was told some adaptors, may mask or distort at the edges with some wide lenses.
My Nikon is a crop sensor D3200, and it's a grumble in the reviews that this particular model offers no metering when fitted with manual lenses; which is a bit of a pain; means metering through the kit lens then swapping or using seperate meter; & the only mode you can use with a manual lens is fully manual, and you cant use the on board flash.
So... the theory is great... and ad for adaptor I bought said "Use all your old M42 Lenses"... yeah, right. I have the copy lens, the fish-eye, a 29mm prime, 50mm prime, 135 prime and 300 prime. 29 & 50 are covered by the kit lens; copy & fish wont focus, leaves the 125 and the 300, and a hassle at that.
conclusion? Get a refund; put the tenner it cost towards a Kit 55-300... its 5% of the cost! Save hard, get get a proper 10mm fish in Nikon mount..... or..... put it on the old film camera and use the cash to buy film.... £300 for a Nik-Fit-fish... that's a lot of 35mm films & process!
Not a happy experience, unfortunately, and I would have been mega pizzed if I had bought the adaptor, then gone out and bought a bunch of what I presumed would be 'bargain' lenses to use on it, only to discover the short-comings after!
There may be more or less dissadvantages of adaptors mixing and matching other systems; and once upon a time, I had an Adaptal 2 mount for Tameron lenses on my Olympus OM (film-Camera), and shared a few Tammy lenses with a mate who used Nikon system (Nikormat Film Camera).. which wasn't too problematic, but was limited to one make lenses.
Have also successfully re-mounted a couple of T-mount manual focus lenses between Olympus OM mount and M42, but grub screwed, its not a quick switch; but more a permenant conversion.
Suggestion from authority I contacted on the subject was, in fact that If you want to fit 'old glass' to a modern camera, hunt out T-Mount, and remount to system; its far more likely to be 'most' compatible, and most accurate, rather than using system converters.
If you have a tenner spare, and want to give it a go, I don't suppose it can hurt much to see if you can make it work for you, but by my experience, I'd not spend any seriouse money in investing in old non compatible glass on top... I'd put it into buying the the lenses I really wanted, to fit the system I want to use.
 
Don't be put off - be prepared for mistakes. I have an old Carl Zeiss 50mm and on my Canon with an M42 adapter it's brilliant, really bonny pictures. Reminds me of old film days and manual everything.

Just treat it as a side-line to modern togging, like say macro, if you get my drift.
 
I used to use an old Nikon mount Cosina Macro lens with an adapter on my Canon until recently. Manual Focus and manual aperture but worked OK.
 
I've used M42 > Nikon adaptors before with old MF lenses without problem.

I also used to have an adaptor to go from my Yashica 50mm > Nikon that had a corrective lens enabling focus at infinity. The IQ was so bad I soon off-loaded it on eBay :D
 
I use Contax Zeiss lenses on my 6D and 5D. The best adapters I've found are about £30 on eBay and black in colour. They are usually listed as high precision adapters. Note, most cheaper adapters allow focusing beyond infinity. Bear this is mind when shooting landscapes :)

A good resource is mflenses.com by the way, and that Planar is excellent although I prefer the f1.4 version for the shorter mfd.
 
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