Adapter-mania

Previously, buying a camera was a fundamental decision; opinions, even beliefs, were questioned and sometimes clashed. In fact, it was much more than the choice of a specific camera, but rather of a whole photographic system because most lenses could only be mounted on the cameras of one brand. Depending on your preferences and needs, compact system cameras (CSCs) may have largely eliminated such difficulties. CSCs are incredibly practical and versatile, because of their short flange focal distance and the consequential ability to mount and use virtually any lens that has ever been made via an adapter - irrespective of the brand. Admittedly, most lenses can only be used in manual focus and stop-down metering mode, but thanks to the electronic viewfinders this application hardly poses a problem. Many photographers actually appreciate using old lenses on modern digital cameras. Currently, the demand for some "famous", old lenses seems to have risen to such an extent that the prices are considerably higher than a few years back! Me too, I really enjoy using old, manual lenses (as recently mentioned) and hardly ever miss the autofocus feature for my type of photography. I rather long for the smooth manual focus of the old lenses when using my "modern" lens!

In order to illustrate the plethora of adapters and to help you find an adapter for your camera-lens combination, I have prepared a lens adapter table (the original Google spreadsheet may be more practical than the scrollable table below). Currently, I have only included a (personal) choice of camera mounts and lens types. If you miss a particular combination, please contact me; I intend to update the table in the future! The two top rows (in blue) indicate the different camera mounts and their flange focal distances. Below these two rows, the left column (yellow) features the different lenses. All combinations, for which I have found adapters, are highlighted in yellow and feature a hyperlink to a dedicated hyperlinktionary page, where you find further links that help you find the particular adapter you are searching for. I hope that some of you find this information useful.

2013/06/18 by Unknown
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Comments (2)

  1. Hi Florian,
    seems like we run in synch with our investigations ;-) :
    http://www.mopswerk.de/flange-distance/

    Do you know these sources as well:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flange_focal_distance
    http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/mounts-by-register.html
    Best, Henrik

  2. Hi Henrik,
    yes indeed!
    I did not know the second link you mention, but the wikipedia article, as well as your excellent description (http://www.mopswerk.de/flange-distance/), are mentioned in my hyperlinktionary entry for flange focal distance (http://hyperlinktionary.blogspot.ch/2013/03/flange-focal-distance.html).

    Best, Florian.

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