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A friend was clearing stuff out of his mother's home after putting her in a
nursing home. He asked if I wanted an old box of 'camera stuff' which I accepted
and took home. Inside the box was an old Minolta SRT 101,
prime 55mm 1.7, a 400mm telephoto f5.6 prime, an MC Doubler, a close up
set, and a 135mm Minolta prime that needed cleaning. Score!
At yard sales I never leave without asking if they have any old cameras. Not to
long ago I woman brings out a pristine MAXXUM with a 28-80 AF zoom for five
bucks. At a show I found a box of junk that was $5 per item and inside was a
Minolta 135mm prime, a Soligor 200mm prime, and a Vititar trippler which I paid
a total of $12 for.
If you want to forget the used there are many great M42 optics out there that
are cheap and also fantastic. Try Russion but make sure that the lenses are
tested before purchase. Russian quality control sometimes suffers. Russian
optics is often fantastic!
During this period of time (60's-90's) there were alot of marketing companies
that distributed lenses manufactured by other companies. Vivitar, Soligor, and
many others made some really fantastic lenses but others that were made to less
exacting standards. I learned to look at the lens other than the name on it. I
have a 200mm Soligor prime and a 28mm Vivitar prime that are some of my sharpest
and best lenses. Deal with them on a case by case basis!
Please view my sample pages on lenses and watch the up and comming videos as
they become available!
Remember that Minolta was making 30,000 MC/MD lenses
a month at the peak! There are alot out there!
So? How difficut to use, how good are they, how do your mount them?
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Mounting:
AF A-Mount lense just simply attach to the camera like an ordinary Alpha lens
would! You have to remember the crop factor if you are using an APC sized sensor! A 35mm film lens will have a cropped
image which is the equivilent of multiplying the focal length by 1.5. In othe
words a 100mm lens has the viewing area of a 150mm lens. It is simular to taking
the center of the two thirds of the image. If you are using full frame there is
no crop factor because the sensor is that of a 35mm.
Mounting the manual lenses is a little different based on the type of mount. We
will discuss two types of mounts here.
Mounting an MD/MC len to an Sony Alpha or MAXXUM camera requires an adapter.
Minolta abandoned the traditional mount with the introduction of auto focus.
Auto focus required a contact strip to be present at the end of the lens and a
larger lens body to house the auto focus mechanism so in about 1985 the A-Mount
was introduced. The MAXXUM series and the Sony Alpha DSLRs employed the A-Mount.
When a MD/MC adapter to A-Mount requires that the lens sit about a quarter of an
inch farther from the sensor/film plane than it was designed to do. This
requires a small lens in between the MC/MD lens and the film plane/sensor in
order for it to acheive infinity focus. This small lens effects different lenses
in different ways. Some lenses introduce very slight vignetting and others
produce softening of the edges. More about dealing with these problems and how
to use later on this page.
Remember also that an MD/MC to A-Mount adapter usually has a slight magnifying
effect that is simular to using a teleconverter. Most of the time they are
slight like 1.1 or 1.2 but they still have that effect. Some don't.
Here is a picture of an MC/MD to A-Mount Adapter:
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Mounting a M42 lens to a MAXXUM or Sony Alpha camera is a much straight formward
affair. These lenses mount to the camera with no intermediate lens (in the
adapter) involved. They are screw in mounts so the adapter attaches to the
bayonet and the lens screws into the adapter.
Here is a picture of an M42 to A-Mount adapter: |
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How to
Use:
1. Mount the adapter to the camera.
2. Mount the lens to the adapter.
3. Set your camera to manual operation.
4. Set your auto focus to manual.
5. Turn off your Image Stabilization.
6. Turn on your camera and adjust focus with the lens wide open for maximum
light. Remember that many of these adapters allow for adjustment past infinity
so you might have to focus slightly closer to acheive infinity.
7. Set your aperature to what you want to shoot at and then set your shutter
speed using the in camera meter.
Please note that the adapter itself uses about half a stop. When shooting make
sure and check the histogram because even when the meter says correct you often
have to adjust the exposure to get it right.
Note also that if slight softening of the edges (or to insure proper focus) it
is best to shoot one to two f stops down.
Remeber to test your lenses prior to shooting!
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How good
are they:
You will find that there are slight variations between lenses on how they react
to the adapter. This is far more frequent on the MC/MD to A-Mount converters and
of almost no consequence on the M42.
Some of the lenses that you will test will provide incredible image sharpness
and others no so. It is a lens by lens and a case by case in how they react to
the adapter in use.
I have found that the sharpest images that I have obtained are as a result of
using these adapters and MC/MD lenses they are close to and sometimes surpassing
the image quality of the MAXXUM Series I and II and are far better than the kit
lenses! |
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