M42 to nikon mount infinity focus

can't comment on the adapter you posted, but from the ones I have used....they work although you will lose some quality...although how much is negligible. I have seen ones without a lens, but they were hard to get hold of and very expensive.

in all honesty...I shoot Pentax and steer away from M42 lenses for one reason....no step down control. If you shoot the lens at anything other than wide open, you will suffer for it in your viewfinder...unless you are prepared to open it up then step down after focus is confirmed (I personally couldn;t be doing with it)
 
No personal experience but SRB Griturn seem to be the people to turn to for this sort of thing. From what I've heard, they do proper QC checks on the adaptors to make sure they work as they should. Being UK based, it's also easier to return stuff should it not work! Probably more expensive than a cheapo Chinese version but should work properly!

As Paul has pointed out, using completely manual lenses is a bit of a faff but there are plenty of fine M42 lenses around cheap and if you're into faffing, the experiment is worth doing!
 
I've had two adapters, one with focus infinity and the other is a metal ring.

The metal ring (cost around 5ukp) wasn't spaced for focus to infinity, also was thin enough to turn on the mount (so had a worried five minutes trying to turn it back to remove it).

The other adapter lives on the 300mm tair. I think it is ever so slightly soft, but that is probably the 'glass' in the adapter that is not brilliant. Cost was 15ukp I think.

They are worth a punt for two reasons
1) the older lenses in general are ok and fairly cheap - so if you wanted to try a particular length without spending loads, worth doing
2) gives you the manual controls of the film camera. Admittedly there are faffs with this, but some lenses gave you two aperture rings, one to set and one to temporarily open for focus before rotating back to the set one.


Lenses can be crisp to very crisp, or plain soft.

I think if you search google for mflenses there is a forum dedicated to the m42 lenses. Might be worth a browse there?
 
The problem with the adaptors with integral optics to maintain infinity focus is that they will only use part of the image. If you use them on an APS-C size sensor which already has an effective 1.5x focal length magnification, the combination will give something like 2x.

The best cameras to use old lenses on (apart from old cameras!) are mirrorless 4/3 types and the Samsung NX series as these have no mirror (duh!) and a shorter sensor to lens mount distance leaving room for adaptors.

A company called Metabones makes an adaptor with an integral optic which turns e.g. a 50mm full frame lens into a 33mm lens which covers APS-C. This makes it operate with the same field of view which it would have on a full frame camera. An added bonus is that because the lens now has a shorter focal length, it is now faster by about one stop.

http://www.metabones.com/


Steve.
 
so if i'm gonna use cheap adaptor - no infinity (but how far away i can focus "camera to object" with lenses let's say around 50mm in focal lenth)

if i use adapter with glass - it's degrades image quality
 
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