I am a new Nikon shooter. I've been a Pentax guy and have shot many years exclusively with M42 lenses, namely Pentax Takumars. I have a large collection of pristine Takumar lenses that have been gathering dust since getting the D600, which I have not been happy with at all.
Well, today I shot my first test shots with my favorite lens, the Takumar 200mm F3.5 Preset lens. I am using my D600 with a modified Bower infinity adapter.
So far it looks VERY promising
My dog Freya stood in for the test subject. BTW, 200mm on a full frame is A LOT different than 200mm on a crop sensor. I could almost use this as a portrait lens!
So far I am very happy. I thought that I would no longer be able to use my favorite lenses, my Taks. Now I see light at the end of the tunnel. I'll have to do more testing, but so far the optical element in the adapter doesn't look like it affects image quality, or sharpness. I need to shoot a few landscapes to see how well the adapter works on the edges as well as distortions.
Very nice. One thing I will miss about shooting with Canon are all the lenses you can adapt to EOS, but luckily there are great Nikkor AI lenses out there
Did you do the modification to the adapter yourself?
Dustin Gent wrote:
Very nice. One thing I will miss about shooting with Canon are all the lenses you can adapt to EOS, but luckily there are great Nikkor AI lenses out there
Did you do the modification to the adapter yourself?
Thanks.
I bought a Bower Infinity adapter (has a glass element). The problem with it is that the mirror will hit it (at least it did on mine). It is close to passing, but not quite.
So I got a heavy glass pane and some fine sandpaper and sanded down the back of the adapter using the pane of glass as a fully flat surface. I had to take a few hundredths of for the mirror to pass. .
I tried it out with my 28mm F3.5 Super-Tak as well as my Macro Takumar 50mm F4 Preset. Both seem to be sharp out to the edges
I have a test board made up for focus/distortion tests. I need to set it up and see just how much the glass element in the adapter degrades the image, if any.
Beautiful dog and wonderful photos. I switched from Pentax to Nikon in 2009 but like you still have my Taks (I kept 28, 35, 55, and 105) just in case. Keep us posted on how the landscape shots turn out.
I use Takumar 50mm f/1.4 and Pentacon 135mm f/2.8, both M42.
The 50mm needs adapter with infinity correction, but the one I have is just bad.
Pentacon seems to be working fine, but I have Sigma 150mm marco and use it most of the time.
Nice results!
I'm happy you posted this. I've been wondering if an M42 lens would work properly on my D800. I also used to shoot Pentax and LOVED my 50mm f/1.4 takumar lens. I've tried all the different 50mm f/1.4 nikon mount lenses but they just don't produce the same "look" as the takumar lens. I'll have to try it out now.
Just a couple of shots using my Super Tak 28mm F3.5 with a modified Bower adapter on my D600.
The center is plenty sharp, but it looks like the adapter makes this lens pretty soft at the edges. I'll probably not be able to use the Taks with my D600 for landscapes
