Vintage lens adapters?

[NateNLogansDad]

OK, my mind is racing and I need to calm down a little and figure this out before I start throwing money out the window. I've come across these lens mount adapters for Nikon called an M42 Adapter. I'm sure these aren't anything new to most of you but my jaw is still on the floor. to those who have used them or know of them........

1. How do they work, quality wise?

2. I figure that zoom/ focus will all be manual correct?

3. I saw one on ebay that says automatic diaphragm will no longer work, is this the Aperture mode?

4. Would you try it?

If these work well I'm going to be a little upset. A few weeks back I saw several nice looking vintage lenses at a flea market close by that seemed really well taken care of. I could have walked away with 5 or 6 for under $200 easily. Is this a whole new world for cheap people like me or a waste of time and $$$?

 

[JoeDif]

I assume the Nikon adapters work similar to my Olympus adapter. If so,

1. Adapter should not affect optical quality noticably. This will also depend on the lens as well. Older lenses can sometimes be a crapshoot.

2. Focus is manual on the Oly adapter. Nikon may be the same.

3. With the Oly adapter you need to set aperture manually with the aperture ring. You also need to focus wide open otherwise the viewfinder can get sort of dark if you try to focus at f/8 or beyond. Once focused you manually stop down the aperture ring to whatever f stop you want to use.

4. Absolutely worth trying. I got an adapter off Ebay for $20. I use it with an Oly 50mm f/1.8 which I absolutely love and a Sigma 28mm f/2.8 which is just ok

Hope this helps

 

[gokenin]

I dont know about the Nikon mount but on the Pentax M42 adaptor we really recommend that you get one from the camera manufacture. The second hand adaptors usual stick up just enough to prevent you from focusing to infinity with screw mount lens. I have one for my K100D and it doesnt leave the camera its my digital Takumar camera so I would say go for it it can open up a whole world of lenses to you

 

[NateNLogansDad]

I want to scream so bad because I had no idea this could be done!!!!! I'm telling you, there were so many tables that had really nice macro lenses, 100-300mm, 35mm, 50mm, 2.8's 1.4's and for like $5-40! Now I won't see anymore like that till I by my next one!

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Next question, does it matter brand name if the adapter has a Nikon mount and the lens screws on? I'm just throwing it out there in case I see something again. Would it matter if it were a cannon as long as it fit?

(Yea, I know I shouldn't put something as inferior as a cannon product onto something as perfect as a NIKON! j/k cannon guys!)

 

[sdshutterbug]

I have done a little research on this myself because I used to own two old Minolta prime lenses (not M42 though) that I wanted to use on my Sony DSLR. I ended up selling them, deciding it was not worth the effort. For M42 lenses with adapters, basically you will not have AF because most if not all of these lenses predate the AF era and cannot communicate that way with the camera (if at all). I wanted to use one of my primes on my kitten who rarely sits still so AF was a must. Another thing is that these lenses were not designed for digital, so the coatings are different (a novice like me would not notice the difference, but this is just something I read). Some people swear by vintage lenses and if you can get them on the cheap they are probably great, but lack of AF is a dealbreaker for me in many cases.

 

[gokenin]

darn double posts.

I use my non AF lens for things that are not moving for the most part they tend to give very rich colors and details that some modern lens dont reproduce

 

[YesDear]

I have no idea what the adapter is you are talking about but I have a general comment. I would not encourage you to even consider putting a lens designed for another brand of camera on you camera, nikon, canon, pentax or whatever.

Different manufacturers design lens mounts for their particular design. even attaching an adapter to a lens to a camera you are changing the optics of the lens by changing the distance from the lens to the mount. to the sensor.

I want a lens to be made by the camera manufacturer or at least be designed for my type of camera.

You mention you could have gotten some great lens for dirt cheap. Trust me in today's world if the lens were worth more they would have sold for more. Most flea market people learn about their stuff today.

I have heard of people tearing up their camera mounts by trying to adapt lens to cameras not designed for them

Bottom line save your money and get a lens designed for your camera. If this was a good thing it would be done all the time. Ever think why it is hard to find out about this stuff?

Just one person's opinion.

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

I am not sure which lenses that you are referring to but I assume that it is pre AI lens. I found an old pre-AI lens that my DF had and sent it away to this gentleman for conversion. You will have to manually focus and guess at exposure but it is a fun experiment.

John White

 

[Groucho]

I have no idea what the adapter is you are talking about but I have a general comment. I would not encourage you to even consider putting a lens designed for another brand of camera on you camera, nikon, canon, pentax or whatever.

Different manufacturers design lens mounts for their particular design. even attaching an adapter to a lens to a camera you are changing the optics of the lens by changing the distance from the lens to the mount. to the sensor.

I want a lens to be made by the camera manufacturer or at least be designed for my type of camera.

You mention you could have gotten some great lens for dirt cheap. Trust me in today's world if the lens were worth more they would have sold for more. Most flea market people learn about their stuff today.

I have heard of people tearing up their camera mounts by trying to adapt lens to cameras not designed for them

Bottom line save your money and get a lens designed for your camera. If this was a good thing it would be done all the time. Ever think why it is hard to find out about this stuff?

Just one person's opinion.

Actually, it is done all the time. Check out here, here, and many others sites. For M42 lens reference, there's here and others places.

Good adapters put the adapted lens at exactly the correct distance to the sensor, so that it focuses the same as an OEM lens.

Now, you may not hear about it for Nikons as much because Nikons are about the worst for using adapted lenses, because of their lens-to-sensor distance. M42 lenses on Nikons can't focus to infinity without the use of an optical element in the adapter. This means that either you lose infinity or lose image quality due to the extra piece of glass. You also have very little choice in terms of adapting other lens mounts. There is one bit of good news - you can adapt superb Leica lenses. (The link takes you to a site that sells conversion kits to put Leica lenses on Nikons or Pentaxes, but the lenses are verrrrrrrry expensive!)

In other mounts, lens adapters are more common. Canons are very flexible and can adapt most other SLR lenses (except, ironically, old Canon manual-focus lenses.) Olympus and other 4/3rds can do even more, and the new Micro 4/3rds cameras can conceivably put just about any lens, SLR or rangefinder, in front of them.

As for tearing up your mount, that is certainly not a big danger with a decent adapter. People trying to adapt their own lenses are usually messing about with the mount on the lens, not the camera.

As for why... well, there are many superb M42 lenses (Zeiss and the Pentax Takumars are the most popular lenses but there are hundreds more) and many are available for cheap. It's not uncommon for adventurous Canon owners to use old Takumar lenses, especially the fast 50s which are available cheap (especially the F1.7, but the F1.4 isn't much more) and are in many people's opinion, better than the OEM ones. The older lenses also are usually a pleasure to use, with hand-assembled metal bodies and wonderfully smooth focus rings (more so than is possible on an AF lens.) They often give a unique look compared to modern lenses, with a lot of "personality." I often forsake my modern lenses for the M42s just for the fun of it.

If anyone is curious about these lenses on their DSLRs, just throw your manufacturer and takumar into Google. Ie, "canon takumar", "nikon takumar", etc. This is an easy way to find messages from forums where people actually use the lenses.

 

[Groucho]

Oh, and for some specific questions...

1. How do they work, quality wise?

2. I figure that zoom/ focus will all be manual correct?

3. I saw one on ebay that says automatic diaphragm will no longer work, is this the Aperture mode?

4. Would you try it?

1. Quality varies amongst the different M42 lenses, just like with modern lenses. There are few bad Takumar lenses and there are Komine-built Vivitars are often very good, and of course the Zeiss lenses are excellent. Generally, the good lenses have very good sharpness, but you will often find more chromatic aberration than on modern lenses.

2. Yes, though I tend to avoid M42 zoom lenses. Partly because the image stabilization is a little trickier with zooms (since you have to manually enter a focal length, and obviously it changes all the time with zooms - you usually enter the smaller number), and partly because zooms tended to be not as good back then.

3. The auto-aperture only works with M42 cameras that have a level to press in the aperture pin that's at the bottom of the mount (like a Spotmatic). No DSLRs have that. What you do is set the lens to Manual and it will change the aperture as you turn the ring - so if you set the aperture to F8, you will actually have F8 as you're looking through the viewfinder (which means a much darker viewfinder, usually.) Occasionally an auto-aperture lens will not have a slider, and the pin needs to be modified to be pressed in fulltime. Anyway, once you do this, you will probably be able to shoot in Aperture Priority mode and get live metering, so all you'll need to do is focus.

4. I try 'em all the time.

Coating-wise, I don't worry about that too much - real-world usage shows no real issues with that. If you don't use a lens hood and use a non-multicoated lens, you may be more likely to get flare, but not a huge deal.

Pentax is the only OEM that I am aware of that makes M42 adapters (possibly Olympus, too, for the micro 4/3rds), so don't bother looking for a Nikon one! You do have your choice of ones with and without the corrective lens I mentioned earlier.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

The adapter I was looking at looks like this

The lens's I had been looking at were either a prime or for macro purposes (for now.) If by any chance I could grab 2 adapters and 2 lens's for under $60 I'd be on cloud 9. Eventually I will move into nice new expensive lens's. I do like to start out with lower end equipment sometimes, that way when I move up in the world I appreciate the better things even more.

I really do want to hear more from people on both sides of the fence on this. Even if you are dead set against it, please tell me why. You guys are constantly teaching me new things even when you don't realize it. It seams that every day I hear a new term and google the crap out of it Thank you again

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Groucho, thanks for the links! I never even thought to look for a manual focus forum! You guys really never cease to amaze me!!!

 

[YesDear]

I agree with everything Groucho said and I stand by my opinion.

Yes it can be done. He agreed that Nikons are some of the more challenging cameras to adapt.
While there is some really good glass you can find, I doubt two primes for $60 probably fit in that category.
If you are learning digital photography do you want to spend your time possibly getting frustrated with trying to get a strange lens to work, no less work well. My belief is your time could be better spent taking pictures with what you have and learning from the practice.

I still have all my film day lens that fit my Nikon and will use them periodically if I have a particular need. All my old Nikon or Nikon mount lens fit and work on my Nikon. I would rather see you go to your local camera store and see what they have in used Nikon mount lens rather than trying to adapt a flea market lens to your camera with an adapter.

Once again just one person's opinion.

 

[Groucho]

Two very good primes for $60 is not impossible. The Takumar 50mm F2.0s go for almost nothing and are great, just not as fast, and the F1.7s go for not much more (probably $40 or so) and are stellar, easily able to stand up to most any OEM fast 50 of today. Komine-built Vivitar 200mm F3.5 lenses can be had for $40 or less and are very good, certainly better than the Nikkor 20cm F4 that I had then sold on eBay. (Not to badmouth Nikkor lenses, as my Nikkor 105mm F2.5 is really very nice.)

As for macros, I paid, I think, $65 for my Komine-built Vivitar 55mm F2.8 1:1 macro and it is really nice, I think.

These shots are ones that I haven't replaced recently, so they are pretty unsharpened compared to the photos I've been posting in the past couple months, to give you an idea of the razor-like sharpness of this lens.

There's really no challenge to making them work, you just shoot in aperture priority mode, turn the aperture ring manually (just like on an old Nikkor lens or any older lens), and focus manually. (Assuming the Nikons can meter with them live, as I kind of assume they can... but since not all Nikons can with older Nikkor lenses, maybe I shouldn't make that assumption?)

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Groucho, thanks for the latest post and pictures. As I've stated a few hundred times already, I'm no expert but I think they look excellent!

I really do want to hear more if anyone else had any other input, either good or not so much. Thanks everybody for being patient with me so far.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Here's where I'm at so far. I ordered an adapter this morning from ebay. I'm really hoping to have it by this weekend because the flea market is happening again at the same place Of coarse if my lucky streak continues on par, there will not be a lens in the whole lot. I'm hoping to take the adapter and the camera with me to try a few lenses out before I buy one or four . This is all just a learning experience for me, please bear with me if I get a little annoying.

 

[spinetnglr]

Here's where I'm at so far. I ordered an adapter this morning from ebay. I'm really hoping to have it by this weekend because the flea market is happening again at the same place Of coarse if my lucky streak continues on par, there will not be a lens in the whole lot. I'm hoping to take the adapter and the camera with me to try a few lenses out before I buy one or four . This is all just a learning experience for me, please bear with me if I get a little annoying.

I can tell you for sure there are some good lenses out there for cheap. There are also stinkers out there. I have seen many come thru the auction house where I work on Fridays. When we get entire estate lots or contents of a home to sell there is often photo equipment that gets sent to auction either because the family does not know what they have or they are not interested in it. I see more vintage Canon and Pentax stuff than anything else. Minolta is close behind. I dont know if the vintage Nikon stuff is more rare to find or if the families hang onto the Nikon stuff just because of the name. Often when an estate comes in and there is photo equipment there will be a decent film body with 2-4 lenses, most likely a prime standard lens like a 50mm along with one or more third party telephoto or wide angles ... usually Vivatar or Takamur. The entire lot will be sold together and generally goes for $75 or less. We have a lot of flea market and ebay vendors who come to our auction and they are only going to pay for it what they feel they can then break it down lens by lens and the body with a lens and still make a few dollars on it so sometimes they do go very cheap. I have seen some very nice equipment and some pretty raggedy equipment come thru so if you are buying from a flea market vendor be sure to carefully inspect anything you purchase. I find that most of the flea marketers know just enough about most subjects to make it sound like they know what they are talking about. If you are going to shop flea markets ... read and study and know what to look for in a used lens, and most of all don't be afraid to haggle price when you are at a flea market ... most vendors have wiggle room with their price but are certainly willing to take your money if you are willing to pay their full asking price. Don't be afraid to offer what seems a lowball price ... you can always come up but once you make that first offer its not getting any cheaper. You might be surprised at the price you might be able to get things for.

Sorry this post got so long winded ... guess I just had a lot to say

 

[Groucho]

I can tell you for sure there are some good lenses out there for cheap. There are also stinkers out there. I have seen many come thru the auction house where I work on Fridays. When we get entire estate lots or contents of a home to sell there is often photo equipment that gets sent to auction either because the family does not know what they have or they are not interested in it. I see more vintage Canon and Pentax stuff than anything else.

Probably because Pentax had the best-selling SLR of all time. There are certainly countless ones out there, both K-mount and screw-mount. You also find a lot of screw-mount because of other bodies using the M42 mount, like Praktica, Fuji, Zeiss, Voigtlander, etc.

NateNLogansDad, there is a basic primer on the M42 mount over at Wikipedia that you might like; it also has links to several other sites with M42 information. You have to be careful; M42 lenses are addicting and next thing you know, you'll find yourself drooling over a legendary Zeiss 180mm F2.8 that weighs over 3 pounds!

 

[NateNLogansDad]

You guys are getting my hopes up! I can't wait till Sunday, I'm really hoping I can find one or two decent lenses.

Sir Groucho, I have to say you have me intrigued. What makes the Zeiss 2.8 so desirable? I checked Ebay and only found 3 worldwide