A Full Frame MIrrorless Body For My Legacy Lenses

Read Ken Rockwell's post on this lens here.

With so many advances in photography, it’s easy to wonder about “across the century” mashups. For me, that means wondering how good, or bad, the lenses of yesteryear were, and are today. I distinctly remember when Vivitar (not a manufacturer, but a brand) announced the Series 1 lens family. The first was a 70-210 macro zoom lens, which sold for the princely sum of $320.00 in the late 70’s. Most important, it was the first lens that was advertised as being designed by computer. This was a time when CAD was a description of a nefarious villain and not an acronym. Since then, I’ve acquired several Vivitar and Takumar lenses before the turn of century, although most of them have never been used in the field. Incidentally, I was a Pentax shooter at the time.

Image source: Amazon.com

Fast forward to the twenty-first century. I’ve have passed through my Nikon DSLR phase and shoot almost exclusively with an X-T2 for publication and an X-E1 for personal work. I have acquired adapters for mounting my Nikkor lenses on X bodies, but because of the APS crop factor, I was never able to use my film-era wide angle lenses to their full potential. The answer would be a full-frame, mirrorless body with plenty of adapters to accommodate my assortment of legacy lenses. A search for “full frame mirrorless cameras” located a possible option: The Sony A7. I found that KEH in Excellent Condition, complete with a Battery, AC Adapter, and a Micro USB To USB Cable in Excellent + Condition for $549.00. I had read that the A7 did not ship with battery charger, so I also ordered a battery package from Amazon that contained  two Wasabi non-OEM NP-FW50 batteries and a dual USB charger.

Adapters: Fortunately, the mirrorless-to-legacy lens adapters are inexpensive. Unfortunately, variations in the manufacturing tolerances between the adapter and the lens itself may introduce some binding during the installation. It is fortunate that most of my older lenses utilize the "universal" 42mm thread, often called the Pentax thread. Mounting these screw-mount lens, while tedious at times, is less dependent on the precise machining required by a bayonet mount. Variations in manufacturing tolerances can sometimes create a bayonet interface that is either too tight, or too loose. Screw threads are much easier to manufacture. 

For the record, the adapter that wound up on my A7 was purchased here.

You can see that the adapter is mounted directly to the body and the lens of my choice mounted to the adapter. This lens is a Vivitar 20mm F 3.8, a ridiculously wide angle lens when it was introduced, and respectably wide when I purchased in in the early 1980s. Adapting these lenses to any of my Fuji bodies with their APS / Cropped Frame sensors reduces their effective focal length by about 33%, making my super-wide lenses merely wide. At first I didn't think I would need to purchase a Nikon adapter for the Sony, but I have a few Nikkor primes that would be interesting to bring into the digital world. These Nikkors, coupled with my collection of Takumars, will put me on the same footing as I was when I first pursued photography in the early 70s. 

This is starting to sound like fun.