Newbie Help

chris_henning

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Hi
I have been given a Nikon D5000 and a couple of lenses and am getting to grips with it slowly
But I also have an old Minolta film lens
Minolta AF 28-135mm F/4-4.5 zoom lens

Can this be attached to a Nikon D5000?

If so what sort of adaptor would I need.

regards


Chris
 
Can this be attached to a Nikon D5000?


I would not even spend a penny in that direction since
many things have changed since the production of the
Minolta lens. I would suggest you explore the used of-
fers on the Nikon thread. :cool:
 
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I agree with kodiak, I wouldn't bother trying to fit the Minolta lens to your Nikon. However if you still want to try then just google Minolta to Nikon F Mount adapter and you'll find several. Whether some retain the AF or not I'm not sure, but it should tell you.
 
Can this be attached to a Nikon D5000?

If so what sort of adaptor would I need.
Yes it can be attached. There are lots of adapters out there. Fotodiox is one manufacturer that makes a lot of adapters, and there are others. Google is your friend. Make sure you read the small print though, to check that it's an adapter for mounting Minolta lenses onto Nikon cameras, and not the other way round.

But it probably wouldn't be worth doing. Three reasons.

One issue is the incompatibility of flange focal distances. The Nikon F mount is 46.5.mm and the Minolta mount is 44.5mm. That means you could theoretically fit a Nikon lens onto a Minolta camera using an adapter which is 2mm thick, but to do it the other way round, as you want to, the distances don't work. The Minolta lens would have to be mounted further away from the sensor than it is designed for, and that means that either you lose the ability to focus at distance, or you need a corrective optic in the adapter, which of course reduces image quality.

The next reason is that you won't be able to use much of the functionality offered by the lens. You won't be able to autofocus, you won't be able to control the aperture of the lens, you might not get focus confirmation from the camera when focusing manually, and you probably won't be able to meter properly without stopping down the aperture manually (using the camera's depth of field preview control) as part of the process.

The third reason is that the image quality won't be very good. Lens design has come on in huge leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, especially for zoom lenses. Any cheap but modern zoom is likely to offer better image quality than an old zoom.

That's not to say you shouldn't do it. It might be a fun project, learning about stop-down metering and such like. But don't do it thinking that the lens us going to be useful for your general photography.
 
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If you have any intentions of getting into photography then get a modern lens for it and forget trying to adapt some old junk you had for free.
 
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