My technique for adapting vintage, projector and other odd lenses on my mirrorless camera
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ค. 2024
- A long winded video that I have put together to share what I have learned and how I do adaptations for old vintage lenses. And other odd lenses not normally used on a camera.
Here is where you will find just about any adaption you need for colors, filters, and cameras. rafcamera.com/ - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
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This video deserved many more views... These videos like yours has inspired me to buy vintage lenses. They are awesome... Actually it helps to see photography in a totally new way
Thanks. I am thinking about a follow-up video on the lens adaptions that I use... Hopefully I will find time to do that.
Thank you so much for this. Your video opens up a huge world of possibilities, & the technical material & your clear explanations are just fantastic. I've been looking for a video like this for quite a while. Also love the subject matter of your channel! You remind me of the farmers I knew in Indiana when I lived there.
Thank you! I hope to make a video sometime on how to pull lenses off of old rangefinder cameras and similar and show how I get them to work on my mirrorless. I just need to make the time.
@@KevinPinkerton I hope you realize how absolutely excellent your videos are. I know farmers don't have a lot of spare time. I've subscribed (loved the snakes video!), and look forward to seeing what you do in the future. Farmers were some of my best friends when I was in Seminary & pastoring rural churches. Great to get to know you. What state are you in?
@@stevencbradley thank you again. The farm is a true blessing to my wife and I. I'm in southern Maryland, south of DC on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. My wife's father bought the farm back in the late 50's and my wife grew up farming and made a career out of it when she graduated from college. We are the current caretakers now.
Thank you very much for this awesome video! I enjoyed it so much watching it and got a lot of information! God Bless You! Please keep making your Accelent videos!
You are welcome. I have another camera video adaption in mind, but I have no idea when I will make it. It will be about how to remove lenses from older, folding cameras and getting them to fit onto a helicoid for use on a mirrorless.
This is gold mine. Ton of value. Thank you.
Thanks for showing technical points 😊📸🙏
Will keep in touch
Thank you for the detailled and very well illustrated explanation! I've learned a lot here!
Glad to share.
This is the best video I have found on adapting all sorts of lenses to a mirrorless camera and I have watched a lot of them. If I had watched your video first it would have saved me many hours of research but the school of hard knocks has its benefits :). I will be recommending your video anytime I see someone asking for advice. I agree RAF Camera is the best! We are so lucky to have access to such a great resource. Thanks for all your advice.
Thank you Karen. Indeed, we do best when we learn from experience. I think anyway. I might use my mirrorless lenses, maybe twice a year and that is for selfies. hahahaha. Maybe someday I will add another video with some of my non-normal adaptations. My "artistic" lenses.
@@KevinPinkerton I would love to see a video of your artistic lenses!
@@kmcsmart , I have been working the contents in my head, and it is almost winter here so I should have some time to make one. Videos are not my forte... :)
Amazing video. You explain things so well. Best explanation I have found yet! Thankyou sir!
You are welcome! I am glad it was helpful.
Very instructive and well made video! Thanks! :)
Tilt shift built into the huge adapter space is also a world of possibility. Better if you have an APS-C mirrorless, and use full frame lenses, so that you can still cover the whole sensor with the image while tilting etc. or medium format lenses on FF
That makes sense! I have never shot tilt/shift but I do have an M42 adapter for it. Perhaps someday...
thank you for this from someone who is just starting my vintage lens journey. trying to figure out how to get a petri breech mount lens onto my gh5m2😂
If you cannot find a fixed adapter for it (which you probably cannot), look for an old Petri camera, or perhaps extension tubes or bellows for the Petri and work some magic to get the camera side onto a M65 or M42 threading. For use in a helicoid. M42 helicoids come in shorter lengths than the M65 ones. Super glue is an alternative for adapting the camera mount to a M42 or M65 threaded ring...
@@KevinPinkertonthank you for the response. i have a couple of ideas including a sacrificial petri body already in my cart on ebay. the petri mount looks pretty straight forward to come off the body, I'm just trying to figure out the best way to adapt it to a helicoid. ideally i want a speedbooster involved somehow because the 2x crop on the m4/3 body. the petri lens is in the mail, ill have a better idea what I'm dealing with when it gets here
Thank you for the good information and good quality
You welcome. I am always glad to share!
great 💪🏻
This video is underrated.
Thank you. I am going to do another video sometime on how to adapt some old box camera, TLR and other type lenses to work with a mirrorless. I cannot promise when, but over the winter I hope
Thanks 😊
Very informative - thanks :-)
This, always. Mathieu Stern takes a lot of credit for this type of stuff but @snappiness and your channel go into the same subjects. I wend town an ebay rabbithole troughout the year since I scored some lenses in april and had some old stuff laying around. I still love my Prakticas and Fujicas and whatever M42 stuff I have, but having the adaptability for MFT and I hope in the future for full frame digital stuff is just a such an achievable dream it reinvigorates what I can and want to do.
I had only Nikon F cameras initially and it limited what I could use. Mostly just medium format lenses. But mirrorless opened up the world. Good luck!
Thank you for your video. You might want to compare medium format projection lens with their smaller brothers or even cheap anamorphic projection lens like Zeiss.
I was not going to go into the optics quality so much. Everyone has their own opinion on that. I do use all sorts of projector lenses from 75mm to 35mm film. No anamorphic lenses (as of yet). But mainly just the physical aspect of how I mount these lenses. I am thinking of a follow up video, but mostly to try and cover the adaption tricks I use.
I bought a vivitar 28mm f2.8 in m42. It's a m42 mount but when i screwed it on a fix adapter ring i can't get any focus (close to me or to infinity). The back lens goes too deap around 12mm, it's too close to the sensor. It's seems to be a sort of "customised" lens. In this state it's unusable so i thought to use it as clipboard... But after watching your video, there is a new hope ! Thank you !!!
I have screwed up internal focusing helicoids myself (while taking them apart) and they are next to impossible to line back up. External helicoids can often solve that problem and fortunately M42 helicoids come in lots of lengths. Good luck!
@@KevinPinkerton I'll let you know if i solve my problem (i found external 9mm and 14mm helicoids, i hope to find the good length...)
@@KevinPinkerton Hello i received the hellicoids and the 9 mm length solved my problem !!! The lens is now 100% usable !!!
I just had an idea on how to establish a lenses focal distance without getting too much light coming in from the sides ,making it difficult to see through the lens . , set lens to infinity ,blue-tak it facing camera onto a table top , make a tunnel out of bendy plastic or cardboard etc so that it sits on the table like a Nissen hut / pigsty shape ,just a bit bigger than the lens . then put camera upto the tunnel and push the camera and tunnel along the table until you can see infinity through the lens , then carefully remove the tunnel and measure . I'm going to experiment at the weekend .
I am sure that will work.
If you are trying to find the flange distance on a lens that has a very long distance... hold the lens, pointing it at a wall, and then shine a flashlight thru it from the camera end. make adjustments until you see the sharp image of the flashlight light on the wall. This test is useful for a really long flange distance.
Most of the time, the difference between the infinity focus and the close focus are very small, so when you get close to either one, you are almost there. I have pretty much all of the various adjustable helicoids that you can buy. M42 and M65 helicoids. And I have extension tubes for both M42 and also M65. When I get a new lens, I usually just test it with the different helicoids. You can stack helicoids together too and make a really long tube for testing.
@@KevinPinkerton Yes ,helicoids are great .I'm waiting on a couple of the thinner ones 10mm to 15mm M42 & M39 ,trying to adapt a lens from a Kowa SE camera .Kowa lenses are great .
excellent explanation !! i came across during my search for image circle . would you be kind enough to make more videos like these. the community will surely be benefited. me personally have doubts about how to enlarge image circle (anamorphic project) or how to reduce vignetting while reducing focal length in such situation.
I can certainly show more examples of my knowledge base. But image circles and anamorphic lenses are outside of that area. :) While I do have to deal with vignetting when using helicoids to focus much closer than normal, I just deal with the results as best as possible.
I’ve been researching this stuff as well. Unfortunately the info and discussions on the matter are extremely limited. I have a theory that a medium format teleconverter might be an interesting way to enlarge image circles as the 35mm ones are designed to enlarge the centre of the full frame lenses. Look into DLP projector stacking - some really interesting tech at work with those .
Hey Friend, Im curious to know what the brand of those collars are to adapt the projector lens. The names or links would help tremendously. Thank you for your hard work brother.
There is an RAF Camera link in the description....:)
Really informative. Thanks! Is there a page I could see the images made by these lenses?
I post everything on FB. It is all public and for the last year or so, I have been trying to put the lens I used on the post. facebook.com/kevins.donkeys/
Hello,
Many useful informations! Thank you!
I particularly appreciate your clear info about distance focus.
Could you tell more about the ring with 3 screws to hold the projector lens? What is this called and where to buy?
Thanks and congrats!
That is a collar and I have many of them in different inside diameters, with M42 or M65 other end threading. The best place to get them is RAFCamera online. He is also on ebay. There are some cheaper Chinese collars on ebay and AliExpress too. But these are somewhat limited to just the standard sizes. I have some Chinese collars too. RAFCamera.com is the place I go for just about any sort of adapter I need. He will even make something special for you if he thinks it will sell. You get a special price for the first one or two if he makes them for you.
These collars do require a helicoid. But that is an easy enough problem to solve.
@@KevinPinkerton hi
Thanks a lot for the information.
Since I live in France, RAF option is not going to be easy, but I am going to look into it. I have modified a step down ring 58 to 52 drilled and threaded 3 holes. Works fine but the flange is 5mm, little small for stability. So I am going to look for your solution, or buy a 3D printer 😩
Please keep posting !
Cheers
@@gef3565 Don't forget AliExpress. There are some collars there and I use some of them. I think sometimes that a 3-D printer would be helpful... but that is a lot of money. If you have a machinist friend that has a lathe, they can make these. The threading part requires a machinist that knows what they are doing. But I often drill and tap holes into adapters I makes. No real skill there. Good luck!
Hi! Thank you for the video! Learned a lot! I'm getting a Helicoid custom made for my Carl Zeiss Jena ddr 250mm f4.5 to a m42 mount. Wondering what are your thoughts on it.
On the lens? or the custom made helicoid? I have several CZJ lenses, but nothing that long. I do not own any custom made helicoids either. I have pretty much all of the normal M42 and M65 Chinese helicoids. I prefer the ones with internal brass.
@@KevinPinkerton on the whole set up in general! Basically this is a large format lens, the ones needed to be used with bellows so no focus ring inside the lens. So I'm making a Helicoid with a ring for focus while making sure the flange distance calculations are correct to get infinity focus. So the end of the CZJ lens fits into a Helicoid with a focus ring and the end of Helicoid fits into a M42 mount and this M42 goes into a fixed adaptor that has a male Sony E mount into my camera. Sounds tedious I know. But will have to see how it goes
@@chandrateja8683 sounds like a project! I shoot a lot of lenses that have not focusing ring and no aperture either. Some of them are rather large and heavy. Fortunately, I have quality thin adapters for both M42 and M65 for my Nikon Z (thanks to RAFCamera). So for me, either a 17-31mm or a 20-40mm helicoid works with any M42 lens. For heavier and bigger lenses, I stick with M65 because they are more robust than the M42 helicoids. Adapting lenses is half the fun!
@@KevinPinkerton Excellent!! It sure is a major project! Will let you know how it turns out!
on the pentax example in your video , you choose the m52 adapter to the m65 because you knowed that the diameter of the canon thread it was the same (52 mm ) is it right ?
I am not sure about your thinking on that. When I make an adapter or use a RAF collar, the lens mount influences the helicoid diameter size. I use only M42 and M65 helicoids. I do not use M52 helicoids. But, I do use adapter rings that might be M52. But when I use the adapter with an M52 threaded ring on it, I put it in an M65 helicoid. I use an M52 to M65 adapter ring of some sort. Many lenses can not be converted to M42 without the potential of causing silhouetting. I just use whatever I need to use. I have an assortment of M42, M52 and M65 threaded rings with difference size internal diameters.
Thanks for your video! I was just wondering where can you get a nikon to m65 mount?
Ebay or Rafcamera. RAF sells on ebay and his adapter allows for a 49mm screw in filter between the camera and the helicoid. (or 52mm with a step up ring). The other one on ebay is Chinese and does not have the filter threading inside of it. Here are some links: rafcamera.com/adapter-m65x1f-to-nikon-z, www.ebay.com/itm/254121648525, www.aliexpress.com/item/4001181052617.html
@@KevinPinkerton Thanks for the links :) another question is what is that thing you use to keep the lens in place. The thing between the lens and the adapter.
@@christopherfitz4588, if you have a Facebook account, send me a PM and I can share photos easier. My FB is open for viewing to everyone too. facebook.com/kevins.donkeys/
Hi, i would like to ask an example . I have fujica old bayonet FAX and i would like to adapt to m42 so to use with an m42 NEX helicoid adapter. How i can adapt FAX to M42 ?
I assume you have a Fuji X mirrorless camera and a Fujica X old bayonet mount lens. The flange distance for the Fujica X flange distance is 43.5mm and the Fuji X flange distance is 17.7mm. That gives you 25.8mm to stick a helicoid and Fujica X adapter of some sort in between. That should be doable. My suggestion would be to make an adapter. Look at Fujica X extension tubes as a source for the mating side and see if you can put an M42 threaded ring on the back side. Or purchase a fixed adapter from Fuji X to M42 and cannibalize it for the M42 part. Or if this is just one Fujica X lens you want to mount, then bastardize the mount to be an M42. You may need to get a machinist involved either way. At least half of the adapters I use are ones that I have made. Good luck.
@@KevinPinkerton the fact for using helicoid is because i found difficult to reach infinity on some wide lens , and with fixed adapter i cannot understand if is only a lens quality problem or (also) adapter problem. what do you think ?
@@gilgaladxx8393 , if the lenses that are not focusing on infinity have not been taken apart or worked on, then they should reach infinity with a fixed adapter. Quality adapters would be best, but I have yet have one not work for me. The flange distance is the distance from the film plane (be it film or digital) to the flush face of the lens mount on the camera. Google it. If you have a quality digital set of calipers, you can take a fixed adapter and measure the distance from the camera side of the adapter to the lens side. This should be the difference between the camera mount and the lens mount. In my example above, 25.8mm would be the adapter thickness if you have a Fuji X to Fujica X adapter. If is very easy to screw up a lens so that it does not reach infinity if you take the lens apart and separate the lens helicoids. Or if you leave out a washer or something like that.
And I even like the camera in Nikon yellow ...🦘
haha. That was my way of making sure I picked up the correct Z camera when I went out to shoot. I have had a full spectrum and a normal Z6 when I made he video.