lens mount adapter

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lucien

Senior Member
Howdy, I was thinking about this today. Is it a good idea to buy a lens mountadapter in order to use other manufacturers lens? Do they work? Are there any drawbacks? I was looking at some prices at lens and I see that Sony and Pentax are cheaper overall than Nikon. So if I go out and buy an adapter for one of these said companies, before doing my homework on overall lens prices of course. Would they work as they should? By that I mean will they drop an f/stop etc. Will they still provide lens feedback to the camera body? And will they autofocus? Aka business as usual? If not it's not worth it


Thanks,
 
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rocketman122

Senior Member
lucien said:
Howdy, I was thinking about this today. Is it a good idea to buy a lens mountadapter in order to use other manufacturers lens? Do they work? Are there any drawbacks? I was looking at some prices at lens and I see that Sony and Pentax are cheaper overall than Nikon. So if I go out and buy an adapter for one of these said companies, before doing my homework on overall lens prices of course. Would they work as they should? By that I mean will they drop an f/stop etc. Will they still provide lens feedback to the camera body? And will they autofocus? Aka business as usual? If not it's not worth it


Thanks,
Click to expand...

metabones seem to be the best from the many wedding videogs I saw who use them. they cost a few pennies. but usually saw canon sony panasonic users who wanted to mount nikon lenses on theirs. nikons mount is problematic at best. I have not seen amny adapters from sony canon and such that will allow it to fit on the F mount.
 
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480sparky

Senior Member
There's more to it than just the physical mount. Nikon's F mount is a smaller diameter than most other cameras. This means any adapter must move the lens away from the focal plane in order to mechanically attach the lens to the F-mount. Then there's optics to take into consideration. A measurement called flange-to-focal-plane distance is important. That's the distance behind a given lens it's designed to focus at. Each manufacturer is different.

Since most lenses are designed to focus in a shorter span than Nikon, mechanically adapting a lens will cause it to lose the ability to focus at mid-distances to infinity. Fine if you're planning on shooting macros, not so fine for portraiture, sports, wildlife and landscapes. The addition of another lens element or two can correct the focus issue, but then you start to lose image quality.

And NONE of the adapters will communicate fully with the camera.

My advice: Let Pentax shooters use Pentax lenses, Canon shooters shoot Canon lenses, and get yourself some proper Nikon lenses to shoot with.
 
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lucien

Senior Member
good points, and the price of the adapter is about the price of a decent lens anyway. Don't know if you don't ask

thanks,
 
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