Old school/off brand primes

[Rohape]

I've always wanted to try off brand/ old school primes. I can't stop looking at this guys work.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fodder/...7594320195534/

I would shoot between 50mm and 85mm I'm thinking. I looked around on POTN and couldn't find any good threads on the subject.
Anyone have advice or suggestions of considerations?
I will hopefully be picking up Conway's 5D on friday. It's not a rush to do this.
Thanks for any advice!

[Thats Fresh]

your picking up Conways 5D? nice. although he takes care of it, that thing is already mint. good find.

[Rohape]

I'm hoping to. He said he has a tentative looker on Wednesday. If not then it's all mine on Friday!

[Jinxt]

It depends on whether you are looking for 3rd party lenses which are made in a Canon mount or if you are looking to modify lenses built by other manufacturer's to convert them over to an EF mount either yourself or using an adapter.

The strongest older players tend to be the Olympus Zuiko glass built during the OM-1 era, the Contax made Contax/Yashica mount lenses, Konica Hexanon glass and lenses built for the Pentacon screw mount such as the Zeiss-Jena glass built in East Germany and the Jupiter series Russian glass (both of which are medium format players).

You can also look into some of the more serious medium format glass and track down some of the Pentax 6x7, Bronica Zenzanons and Mamiya 645 lenses.

Some of the Vivitar glass built during the 60's was pretty fantastic but it's hit or miss because certain lenses were built with certain element/group designs and manufactured in different plants during different years, built to differing tolerances.

I would start with looking for some of the Zuiko's for the best price/quality/ease of conversion ratio out of the lot.

[Rohape]

Based off your post Joey and hunting through POTN I've seen some good reasons to play with the older lenses. Looks fun.
Now i'm in a suspended dilemma. Suspended because I'm waiting for the person to get back to me on brand.
I'll have to make some quick choices since I'll be in the VAB area on Friday. Mind if I give you a shout when I get word Joey?

I'm thinking the 50mm may be a Zeiss lens. Rokkor was the other brand I found that was used on Minolta. I just don't know what mount this is.


MINOLTA SLR, lenses, and metal carrying case - $75 (virginia beach)

[professorman]

I was thinking about it for a while, to get old school manual lenses for macro work.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=838933

[Jinxt]

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm about 70% sure that Zeiss never made any glass for the Minolta X-style MC/MD mount.

The Rokkor-X lenses for the old Minolta MC/MD mount were pretty nice and I still have a few laying around somewhere along with an X-570 and X-370N. I don't think those really have a big following in the alternative lens crowd though so there may not be any quality mount converters to let you convert them to EF.

You should dig through the alternative glass forum on fredmiranda.com THAT will open you up to a whole lot of stuff

[Rohape]

Originally Posted by professorman

I was thinking about it for a while, to get old school manual lenses for macro work.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=838933

Thanks for the link. I've been watching this one and fumbling around websites looking.
This post/picture hooked me. The COC are just amazing!
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...postcount=1355

I've been following this thread.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=644277

Originally Posted by Jinxt

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm about 70% sure that Zeiss never made any glass for the Minolta X-style MC/MD mount.

The Rokkor-X lenses for the old Minolta MC/MD mount were pretty nice and I still have a few laying around somewhere along with an X-570 and X-370N. I don't think those really have a big following in the alternative lens crowd though so there may not be any quality mount converters to let you convert them to EF.

You should dig through the alternative glass forum on fredmiranda.com THAT will open you up to a whole lot of stuff

I looked around for MD adapters. They exist, just extremely rare.
I'll have to go check out FM. Thanks for the help today!

[Rohape]

I just realized we posted the same thread. LOL

[Jinxt]

If you do track down an MD to EOS adapter I have an extra Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD that you can have if you want it. When I shoot with the Minoltas I pretty much only use the Rokkor-X so the normal MD is just collecting dust.

The thing about the adapters that makes them less desirable is that to maintain infinity focus across the different physical mount there needs to be a glass element in the adapter which is almost never made to as high quality tolerances as the lenses that get mounted to them. Most people looking for the actual quality and characteristics of the lens they are mounting opt for a physical modification to the lens mount which alleviates the issue since there isn't any physical distance added by an adapter ring between the lens and body (which throws the focus plane out of spec). An adapter works very well if you use the lens from 5 ft away and closer, but usually once you go past that focus distance things get really craptacular and throughout the range you will lose the characteristic look of the lens due to the low quality element in the adapter.