The following images are representative of the type of photos the MC Rokkor – PF 58mm f/1.4 lens can deliver on various camera bodies. I have used post-processing on most of the RAW images. Some may have been cropped and some may have had sharpening and noise reduction applied.

Click here for an in-depth review of the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 lens.

You can expect similar results if you mount the Rokkor 58mm on Sony A-Mount and E-Mount cameras with an adapter. Naturally, the lens yields excellent photos on Minolta film SLRs as well.

Click on an image to see a larger sample.

Rokkor 58mm Samples with a Sony A7s

Full Frame E-Mount Sensor with Adapter

Rokkor 58mm Samples with a Sony A6000

APS-C  E-Mount Sensor with Adapter

Rokkor 58mm Samples with a Sony A350

APS-C A-Mount  Sensor  with Adapter

Rokkor 58mm Samples with a Minolta SRT-MC

35mm Film Camera — Native Minolta SR Mount

• #Rokkor58mm
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• #fastprimelens

Click here for an in-depth review of the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 lens.

The post MC Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 Sample Images appeared first on Alphatracks.

For a gallery of Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 images, Click Here!

Officially known as the MC Rokkor – PF 58mm f/1.4, I’ve shot with this Minolta prime lens on 35mm film cameras, APS-C digital cameras and full-frame digital cameras. The resulting photos have never disappointed me.

The MC Rokkor – PF 58mm f/1.4 lens is a fast, inexpensive prime lens that can be easily adapted to Sony Mirrorless cameras. I have also employed an adapter to shoot on Sony A-Mount cameras, with favorable results.

About the MC Rokkor – 58mm f/1.4 Lens

The MC I version of the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 was introduced in 1966. My copy is the updated MC II which Minolta began selling in 1969. Although the lenses are similar, the general consensus is that the MC II is the superior optic.

MC stands for meter coupled, which means this lens can relate f/stop information to the camera’s light meter. The camera cannot physically adjust the aperture, but the meter can tell what f/stop has been selected. Back in 1966, this was a big deal.

According to Minolta’s internal code, the PF designation represents a lens with 6 elements in 5 groups. The body of the lens is all metal, no plastic here.

Similar to the majority of Minolta’s early SR mount lenses, the body is black, while the mount and the aperture are silver. The Minolta designers probably thought that a silver background would make it easier to read the f-stop markings in dim light.

Since the 58mm f/1.4 dates to 1966, it is a purely mechanical lens. There are no electronic connections, which means this lens lacks autofocus and electronic aperture control. Hardly surprising, since these features weren’t available on Minolta SLRs until many years after this lens was discontinued.

At 10.2 ounces, it is a relatively heavy lens, which is partially the result of the previously mentioned metal construction. Personally, I like the heft of this lens. The overall weight of my photo gear isn’t a big concern for me. I understand that photographers value lightweight baggage. A camera bag full of gear isn’t much fun to lug around. But in use, weighty cameras and optics can go a long way toward dampening vibration. Given the option, I would always choose sharper images over a few tired muscles.

There is no imprint indicating my copy is the MC II version. Minolta never labeled these lenses as MC I or MC II. There are two primary ways of telling the two versions apart.

The first is the serial number. According to various online sources, the MC II version of this lens starts at 5064519. Thus, a lens with a lower serial number will be an MC I version, while anything greater will be the MC II.

A quicker method of identifying the MC II version is to glance at the focusing ring. The superior MC II has what is known as a “hills and valleys” design, where the metal grip undulates with high and low areas. The MC I features a circular grip with knurled areas and a band that has a constant height throughout its circumference.

I haven’t shot with an MC I lens, so I can’t really comment on the actual differences. I can say I love the results I obtain with my MC II 58mm, and the easy to grasp wavy grip is an added bonus.

I am not a pixel peeper. I seldom fritter away much time analyzing charts and graphs taken with a particular lens, since I’m not in the habit of photographing charts or graphs. Corner sharpness and edge fall-off are crucial aspects, but what I really care about is the look of the images delivered by a particular lens.

While I avoid lenses with egregiously undesirable characteristics, I am most concerned about whether a given lens can produce sharp and clear images. My MC II version of the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 consistently produces great images for me, on 35mm film, digital APS-C and digital full-frame cameras.

In testing, the lens is slightly soft at its maximum aperture. Stopping down to f/2.8 improves sharpness, and the lens is razor-sharp at f/4 and above. This is based on examining images taken under controlled conditions. When making actual photographs, I haven’t detected any lack of sharpness when shooting wide-open.

In testing, I also noticed corner vignetting when shooting wide open. Once again, the darkened corners were visible in testing, but didn’t seem to affect any of my real-world images. In any case, the vignetting is absent at f/4 and smaller apertures.

Smooth focusing with the 58mm f/1.4.

Another reason I love this lens is the feel of the focusing ring. The ring conveys a precise tactile impression. The focus action on my copy is velvety smooth. Whenever I twist the ring on this lens, it radiates quality.

Maybe I just got lucky, because other reviewers claim their version has a scratchy focusing ring. My lens provides the smoothest focus of any manual focus lens I own. Despite the effortless focusing, the focus stays where you put it, without the focus shifting caused by a sloppy ring.

Flare

Most, if not all, vintage lenses exhibit flaring when shooting into the sun or intense light. My copy is not particularly horrible in this regard, but you do need to take care to prevent flare. I acquired my copy used, and it came with a collapsable rubber hood. I use this hood almost all the time, indoors and out. Minolta specified the D55NA metal hood as the standard shade for the 58mm f/1.4. I have found the rubber hood does an excellent job, and it is easier to fit in my gadget bag, so I have never bothered replacing it.

The Rokkor PF 58mm f/1.4 on Minolta SR Mount Film Cameras

Naturally, this lens was designed for film cameras and it is right at home on a manual focus Minolta such as the SRT series. Practically any 50-60mm prime lens from this era will yield excellent results because the engineers had so much experience in this area. More complicated optics, such as zooms, wide-angles, and telephotos require more care in the design. However, the “normal” lenses of 50-60mm focal lengths were a lens maker’s bread and butter. Hence you would expect this lens to work well on 35mm film cameras, and it does.

It was a different world in the 1960s, and camera makers lavished great attention on the “kit” lenses for their SLRs. Today’s kit lenses are usually merely adequate; camera makers expect buyers to purchase from their top-tier lens lineup if they want excellent image quality. The kit lens is frequently treated as a throwaway compared to the much more expensive “professional” optics.

In that bygone era, manufacturers treated the lens that came with the camera as the foundation of their camera system. The kit lens was considered an example of other lenses in the lineup, so nearly all of the base “normal” lenses were very high-quality.

Of course, the 58mm f/1.4 was never the base lens. To justify its existence in the Rokkor line, it had to be superior to the already first-class Minolta standard 50mm.

Adapting the lens to the Sony E-Mount

I use a cheap — by that I mean inexpensive — metal adapter to attach this lens to my Sony E-Mount cameras. All Minolta SR mount lenses have a flange focal distance (FFD) of 43.5mm. In contrast, the Sony E and FE mount cameras ( all the mirrorless models ) have a flange focal distance of 18mm.

Why do we care about this? All interchangeable lenses are designed to focus on a specific plane located at an exact distance from the mounting flange. This is known as the Flange Focal Distance. If the FFD of the lens is different than the FFD of the camera, it becomes impossible to focus the lens properly at infinity.

Without spending time on a physics lesson, it is easy to see that if we use an adapter that is 25.5mm thick (18 + 25.5 = 43.5), it will hold our Rokkor SR mount lens perfectly at 43.5mm from the film plane. Thus, we will have no problem focusing.

Because there are no additional lens elements employed in this type of adapter, they are simple to manufacture. As long as the lens is held exactly 25.5mm from the mounting flange and there are no light leaks, any adapter will produce excellent results.

Adapting to Sony APS-C Cameras

On an APS-C camera like the A-6000 series or the NEX models, the smaller sensor creates a focal length of 87mm. This makes for a great portrait lens.

Some full-frame lenses lose quite a bit of character when mounted on a smaller sensor. The Rokkor 58mm f/1.4, however, still produces wonderful bokeh on APS-C cameras when opened to maximum aperture.

In addition, wide-open sharpness improves on an APS-C sensor because you are effectively cropping away the outer edges of the photo and only utilizing the center image.

Adapting to Sony Full-Frame Cameras

One of the advantages of adapting a lens like this to a full-frame camera such as the A7 series is the lens is designed to cover a full 35mm frame. This lens produces first-class results when used in full-frame applications.

Under careful full-frame testing conditions, I was able to detect a slight amount of light fall-off at the edges at f/1.4. The vignetting is fairly mild and I never noticed it in my day-to-day photos. It may seem like I am making excuses for this lens, but that is not the case. I never noticed vignetting until I ran an in-depth test. Like the soft corners, the light fall-off completely disappears at f/4 and smaller apertures.

Don’t tell the nay-sayers, but I think the results from using this old lens on a full-frame Sony are on par with the top-tier modern glass. Naturally, you have to forgo autofocus and shutter priority exposure. But aperture priority works and in many cases focus peaking is more than adequate to achieve pin-sharp focus.

I am not saying I don’t occasionally miss autofocus. In certain cases, like birds in flight, autofocus is nearly mandatory. But for the majority of my shooting, manual focus is more than sufficient.

Adapting to A-Mount dSLRS and SLT Cameras

On an A-Mount camera, adapting this lens — or any SR lens — is a different proposition. A-mount cameras have an FFD of 44.5mm, a distance 1mm greater than the 43.5mm design specification of the SR lenses. Because of that extra millimeter, a simple adapter cannot be used to mount an SR lens to an A-mount camera. The lens could be used for close-ups, but it could not focus at infinity.

Physics dictates you cannot make an adapter that would hold the lens closer than 44.5mm. The mirror box of an A-Mount camera is too thick. The adapter would need to move the lens inside the camera; a physical impossibility.

There are adapters that can make this possible, but unlike the simple E-Mount adapters, the MD to A-Mount adapters incorporate a close-up lens inside. This lens recasts the light so the image will converge properly at 44.5mm from the flange.

Purists argue that introducing an additional lens element into the light path will degrade quality. They are particularly troubled when these adapters are not made by major camera manufacturers. Most of these adapters are sold by small Asian vendors. How could these tiny operations develop an internal lens that won’t downgrade a sharp Rokkor lens? They point out that these off-brand sellers can hardly be expected to grind an element that could match Minolta’s standards.

There may be some truth to this concern, especially if you are a pixel peeper. In my own experience, I see very little difference between images shot with a Minolta film camera and the same lens adapted to an A-Mount Sony APS-C dSLR. I can’t comment on how well these adapters perform on full-frame Sony cameras because I have never used an SR lens on a full-frame A-mount camera.

At any rate, unless you are producing 30 X 40-inch prints, I doubt you will detect much difference.

One interesting note: In your quest for MD to A-Mount adapters, you may come across glassless adapters without an internal lens. As you have learned, these lenses cannot focus to infinity. But they can focus properly at closer distances, particularly if you are shooting close-ups. If you have a yen to do some Macro photography, these glassless adapters are perfectly suited to mounting an old SR Macro lens on an A-Mount dSLR.

Video Applications

I am primarily a still shooter, so I haven’t used this lens with video very often. The wide aperture, nice bokeh, smooth focusing and low cost suggest that this lens would be a wise investment for any video content creator.

Buying a used copy of the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 Lens

The Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 has been out of production for decades, so if you are buying one of these lenses, it is almost certainly an “experienced” optic. Fortunately, Minolta sold a ton of these lenses, so they are relatively easy to come by. You’ll find them on eBay, used camera stores, pawnshops and flea markets. At the time this is written, prices range from $20 to $100. A careful shopper should have no trouble locating a nice example in the $50-$60 area.

With its metal body and solid construction, reliable working copies of this lens are readily available. Flaws are few, but they do exist.

Watch for dents and other evidence of being dropped. This lens can take a lot of punishment, but dropping any lens can cause a host of problems, including rough focusing and dented or unusable filter rings. In extreme cases, the lens may suffer misalignment of the optics after a fall, leading to degraded optical quality.

Many older lenses suffer from sticky aperture blades. This isn’t a concern if you are using the lens with an adapter, because adapted lenses don’t make use of an automatic aperture anyway. For film shooters, however, you want to be sure the aperture blades snap closed as they should.

Haze and Fungus

Haze and fungus are the by-products of improperly stored optics. Some people buy moldy lenses hoping they can clean away the fungus and get a bargain. This calls for some solid camera repair skills, as the lens will require dismantling.

More importantly, fungus is a living organism that can eat away the surface of the glass. This will destroy any special coatings applied to the lens elements. In extreme cases, the fungus can permanently etch the glass.

With plentiful copies of this lens available at attractive prices, I would steer clear of any that exhibit fungus and look for a variant with pristine optics.

From the tone of this review, it should be obvious I highly recommend this lens whether you are shooting with a Minolta film SLR or adapting it to a Sony digital camera. It isn’t in the same class as the legendary Rokkor 58mm f/1.2, but you can expect to pay five or six times as much for the f/1.2 lens. That is if you can find one. For everyday shooting, the fast, inexpensive f/1.4 warhorse will serve you well.

Minolta Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 at a Glance:

• #Rokkor58mm
• #minoltalens
• #fastprimelens

For a gallery of Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 images, Click Here!

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Sometimes photos find you, instead of the other way around. I encountered the figures shown here while training my dog at the Schiele Museum trails in Gastonia.

Fortunately, I had my Sony A7S with me, along with a Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 lens. I am working on a review of the 58mm f/1.4, so I brought it along on the off chance I would find something interesting to shoot.

The trails are not very large and I have been there many times. To my surprise, I found a collection of life-size figures scattered along the trails. I had no idea the museum was hosting its annual Scarecrow Walk. Instead of a casual walk in the woods, I was suddenly surrounded by lifesize fantasy figurines.

Limited to a 58mm Rokkor Lens

Since I wasn’t expecting this bonus, all I had was the 58mm. it’s a great lens, but probably not the one I would have chosen had I known about the scarecrows ahead of time.

Most of the figures were suspended on trees above the ground, so I would have preferred a longer telephoto lens so I could capture more of an eye-level perspective.

Despite this handicap, I was still able to record some intriguing images. To a degree, the low angle of few made some of the figures more sinister and intimidating.

Creating a Spooky HDR

I bracketed several of the exposures, and wound up making handheld HDR photos in Lightroom. The resulting images were crisp and clear, but lacked the ominous vibe I thought these effigies deserved

Generally, when I’m working in Lightroom, I try to make my images as true to life as possible. I adjust the white balance to make skin tones accurate and carefully tailor colors to match what I saw when I snapped the shutter.

In this case, I wanted a somewhat spooky, otherworldly look. Nothing too crazy, no exaggerated unrealistic colors. I wanted something with a natural appearance, with just a subtle hint of mystery.

I tried darkening the background to suggest day into night, but I didn’t care for the result. So I reverted to the original daytime settings and started experimenting with color grading.

The Lightroom Effect

I first started with the calibration tool in Lightroom. I tuned the blue and red saturation sliders to get the effect I was looking for. For some of the images, I experimented with some presets, then adjusted to color grading dials in the color grading area.

I like the final results. As I said, this isn’t my typical workflow. I enjoyed getting out of my comfort zone and seeing what I could achieve going away from the original art.

Notes on the Rokkor 58mm lens

I really like the Bokeh effects created by this 55-year-old lens. If you examine the guy with the pumpkin head and false teeth, the background is smooth and creamy. The wolf’s head bokeh isn’t as gentle, but I find it pleasing. The out-of-focus artifacts on the ’80s lady and the stuffed policeman have some jarring elements, but they are still acceptable.

The bokeh in the image of the Scary Potter figure with the jack-o-lantern face is pretty messy. I might find it objectionable for a calm, serene study, but I think it actually works well for the spooky subject matter.

All of the images look sharp to my eye. Any vignetting you see is deliberate. I wanted dark corners to direct the viewer’s eyes to the subject. I applied a dark vignette around the edges of all the photos in Lightroom.

I am so glad I had my Sony Mirrorless Camera with me when I happened upon these figures. Cell phone captures just wouldn’t be the same.

The moral of the story is always be ready and keep a Rokkor in your back pocket.

The post Putting the Scare in Scarecrows with a Rokkor Lens appeared first on Alphatracks.

Telling tell A-Mount and Rokkor Lenses Apart

So you are strolling through a flea-market or garage sale and you stumble across a cache of old Minolta lenses. They look clean and the optics are clear. Will they fit your Sony Alpha?

If you read my earlier post on using Minolta lenses on the Sony Alpha, you know that only A-Mount Minolta lenses work on the Sony Alpha without using an adapter. So the question is, can you identify which Minolta lenses use the A-Mount?

Brand Name appears above front element

Although Minolta never used the term A-Mount on their lenses, most A-Mount lenses sold in the North American market carried the name Maxxum above the front element. Minolta used different trade names in other countries, so presumably A-mount lenses may have been marked differently on other continents. In today’s global environment, you may find that lenses from other countries have made their way to the US, and North American lenses could have wound up in other continents. So you cannot rely solely on the brand name to determine whether a Minolta lens is in fact, an A-mount lens.

Still, all lenses marked Maxxum are A-Mount optics.

Most of the older Minolta lenses are marked with the Rokkor name, but Minolta started selling SR lenses before the Rokkor brand emerged. As the Rokkor line was being phased out, Minolta stopped using that name on their lenses, so many Rokkor mount lenses are floating around with no identification. Minolta also marketed an inexpensive series of lenses under the Celtic brand name. These use the Rokkor style mount and are not A-Mount compatible.

Rokkor lenses have an Aperture Ring

Except for a few fixed-aperture lenses, all Rokkor lenses have a physical adjusting ring that controls the aperture opening. If you find a Minolta lens with an aperture ring, it is definitely a Rokkor style mount, not an A-Mount. Catadioptric (mirror) lenses do not have an adjustable aperture, and you may come across other specialty Rokkor lenses without an aperture ring. If a lens has a ring, however, it is not an A-Mount lens.

Electrical Contacts on A-Mount

Another clue to the lens type is found inside the mount itself. Rokkor lenses are fully mechanical and have no electrical contacts. A-mount lenses, on the other hand, use electrical contacts so the camera can control the aperture opening, auto-focusing and image stabilization. If you see contacts inside a Minolta mount it is not a Rokkor, and is either an A-Mount or Vectis style lens.

One minor caveat: just before releasing the first auto-focus Maxxums, Minolta experimented with focus-confirmation Rokkor lenses. These were only used on the rare X-600 bodies and only marketed in Japan. These lenses do not provide auto-focus, but when used on a X-600, the camera will indicate when the lens is properly focused. While quite rare, these Rokkor style lenses do have electrical contacts to communicate with the camera. I doubt you will come across one of these, but you can still tell them apart from A-Mount lenses, as the A-Mount optics have either five or seven contacts on the mount.

Diaphragm post on Rokkor

One last difference between the A-mount and the a Rokkor lenses is the mechanical automatic diaphragm mechanism. On the Rokkor optics, the auto-diaphragm is controlled by a cylindrical post that protrudes from the mount. On the A-mount optics the camera operates the auto-diaphragm through a recessed lever inside the mount. Some of the pre-Rokkor SR lenses did not have an automatic diaphragm, and these lenses do not have a control post. Overall, however, the auto diaphragm post is dead give-away that the lens in question is using a Rokkor style mount.

You should now be equipped to easily recognize the differences between the A-Mount and Rokkor lens line. You still need to watch out for Minolta Vectis lenses, however. These were created for the short-lived Vectis SLR Minolta created in the late 1990s. They look quite similar to the A-mount lenses, but they are NOT compatible. Avoid Vectis lenses if you are looking for glass to fit your Sony Alpha dSLR.

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The most common question I get about the Sony Alpha dSLRs is “Can I use Minolta lenses on the Sony Alpha dSLR?” The answer is, not surprisingly, “it depends.”

Over a span of fifty-plus years, Minolta produced a dizzying array of optics. The company continued to pour its own glass, long after other camera manufacturers started to outsource their glass making. In addition to making lenses for photographers, Minolta produced optics for scientific, medical, and industrial needs. A lens may say Minolta on it, but that is no guarantee that the lens is appropriate for photographic use.

“I don’t care about that, I just want to know if my dad’s old Minolta lenses will fit my new Sony Alpha!”

I understand, but the answer is still “it depends.” Fortunately, figuring out which Minolta lenses are compatible with the Sony mount is fairly straightforward, but there is a lot of confusion and misinformation about.

Minolta created a number of lens lines during its photographic manufacturing period. The early Minolta M43 Leica mount lenses were so well designed that Leica actually contracted Minolta to produce some of their optics. Minolta also produced lenses for its short-lived 110 SLR.

Three Distinct Lines of Minolta Lenses

In the last fifty years or so, the bulk of Minolta optics production was devoted to lenses in three major mount types:

• A-Mount autofocus lenses (1985 – 2006) which are fully Sony compatible
• SR and ROKKOR manual focus lenses (1958-2001), which can only be used on the Sony Alpha with an adapter
• Vectis autofocus lenses, which cannot be used on the Alpha

As you might expect, there are idiosyncrasies with certain lenses that could affect whether a specific lens is 100% compatible. The statements above, however, apply for the overwhelming amount of Minolta glass.

Let’s look at each lens mount in detail:

Minolta A-Mount lenses

Minolta introduced the A-mount in 1985, and with only a few slight variations, they continued to use the same mount for all their top-level SLRs and DSLRs until the Minolta photographic assets were sold to Sony. Although Sony has started to use the term Alpha mount to describe their dSLR lens system, it is really the old Minolta A-mount. Minolta A-lenses work on the Sony Alpha because Minolta originally designed the mount that Sony currently uses. Sony has beefed up the camera mount in its later offerings, but the lens mount itself is exactly the same as on an A-Mount Minolta. So all Minolta A-Mount lenses attach and operate perfectly on the Sony Alpha. There is no difference because the mounts are identical.

As I said, there are a few idiosyncrasies that affect some of the Minolta lenses. The biggest of these involves the power zoom lenses. When Minolta introduced the “i” series film SLRs, they included a power zoom feature that allowed users to change the focal length of certain lenses by pressing a button. I’m not sure how useful an asset this was, but Minolta sold a ton of these lenses.

There are no power buttons or zoom motors on any Sony Alpha, or for that matter, any Minolta dSLR. So obviously, you can’t use the power zoom feature of the i lenses on these cameras. But that is the only limitation. These lenses attach to the Sony Alpha, just like any lens in the Sony catalog. Autofocus, auto exposure, and auto diaphragm all work perfectly. So does image stabilization. The only limitation is that there is no power zoom; you have to zoom manually. So technically, the i lenses are not 100% compatible with the Sony Alpha….but do you really care? For all practical purposes, the i optics work just fine.

Sony also indicates that Minolta DT lenses (designed to cover the APS-C sensor) may not work correctly on the full-frame A850 and A900. They do work as expected on the APS-C cameras that comprise most of the Sony dSLR lineup.

What about third-party A-mount lenses? Almost as soon as Minolta introduced the A-mount in 1985, lens makers like Tamron, Sigma and Vivitar started cranking out auto-focus optics to fit the new Maxxum AF cameras. So there are thousands, if not millions of non-Minolta, non-Sony A-mount lenses out there.

In theory, these lenses were designed to be compatible with the original Maxxum 7000. Minolta lenses for the Maxxum 7000 are fully compatible with the Alpha, so you would expect the third-party optics for the Maxxum to be usable on the Alpha.

In truth, most older third-party A-Mount lenses work beautifully on the Alpha. Unfortunately, some early third-party lenses don’t work correctly when attached to the Sony Alpha. Some manufacturers offer an upgrade program to convert older lenses to work on the Sony dSLR mount, but this involves time and expense.

If you are considering buying a third-party A-mount lens, I suggest that you check out the lens database at Dyxum. They have an entry for almost every A-mount lens in existence, including optics you probably never knew existed. The great thing is every lens is rated for sharpness, quality build, and general usefulness. You can check whether a third-party lens will work on the Alpha. In just a couple of minutes, you will have an idea if a particular lens is a dud or a bargain.

Follow this link if you are unsure how to tell A-mount and Rokkor lenses apart.

Minolta Rokkor lenses

Next up, you will run across millions of older Rokkor and SR mount lenses. Minolta cranked these out in great numbers before they introduced the Maxxum autofocus cameras in 1985. At one point, Minolta was churning out 30,000 lenses a month, and they did that for years.

What many photographers don’t realize is that Minolta kept many of the older Rokkor lenses in their catalog for years after introducing the Maxxum. As late as 2001, you could still buy a brand new X700 manual focus camera from Minolta, and they also offered many of the more popular Rokkor lenses to go with it.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, Minolta probably would have continued to use the Rokkor X-mount on the Maxxum cameras, but they couldn’t find the room to incorporate auto-focus into the Rokkor design. So they made the painful choice to abandon the old mount and create a completely new design for the autofocus cameras.

This means that you cannot attach a Rokkor lens directly to an A-Mount camera. The mounts are completely different, there is no compatibility.

Of course, Minolta realized that they had millions of existing customers with extensive collections of Rokkor lenses. These photographers were unlikely to adopt the new Maxxum models unless they could bring their older lenses with them. So Minolta designed an adapter that allowed Maxxum users to make use of Rokkor lenses. These adapters were actually in the form of a teleconverter, and for a long time were very expensive and difficult to find. More recently, a number of accessory manufacturers have responded to the need by offering inexpensive Minolta MA-MC adapters. I will delve more completely into MA-MC adapters in a later post in this series. The important thing is that the only way to mount a Minolta SR, MC, MD Rokkor style lens to the Sony Alpha is with an adapter. Unless you want to seriously modify the lens, which is another possibility I will discuss in another post.

Minolta Vectis Lenses

The final lenses you might run across in your search for used Minolta lenses are known as Vectis mount lenses. In the 1990s, Minolta developed a line of APS (Advanced Photo System) cameras they called the Vectis. Some of the Vectis models were fixed lens rangefinders, but Minolta also offered a Vectis SLR that offered interchangeable lenses. There was even a 3mpVectis dSLR known as the RD3000.

While Vectis lenses are not as common as the A-mount and X-Mount optics, you may still run across them on eBay, Craig’s List, pawnshops, and used camera vendors. They look quite similar to the A-mount lenses and many of them are marked with the Minolta logo.

Do not be fooled. Vectis lenses are not compatible with the Minolta A-mount and there is no way to use these optics on a Sony Alpha. When the Vectis SLR was introduced, Minolta announced they were creating an adapter that would allow photographers to use their existing A-mount lenses on the new Vectis cameras. As far as I can tell, the adapter was never put into production, so the A-mount and Vectis lenses are totally incompatible. Even if Minolta did actually produce the adapter, it was designed to attach A-mount lenses to Vectis cameras, so it would be no help in using Vectis glass on the Alpha models. I don’t know of any adapter that would mount a Vectis lens on the A-mount, and I doubt that there is sufficient interest in the V-mount optics that any third party will ever produce one.

The post Using Minolta Lenses on the Sony Alpha appeared first on Alphatracks.

Forty years young, the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 is a delightful lens to shoot under available light. It is manual-focus only and requires a adapter to fit it to the Sony Alpha.

For a lark, I tossed my old Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 lens into my bag. My idea was to determine if the small increase in aperture opening (f/1.4 vs f/1.7) would offer any real advantage.

Of course, using the old Rokkor on the Sony Alpha requires a MD to MA (A-Mount) adapter, which has the same limitations as the M42 lens adapter. The MD to MA adapter also includes a glass element that is required  for any Rokkor to focus at infinity on an A-Mount camera.

Rokkor lenses require an adapter to mount on the Sony Alpha

This is the first time I had actually mounted the 58mm f/1.4 lens on an Alpha A-mount dSLR. Typically I use my MD to MA adapter to allow me to use my Rokkor 16mm or the Rokkor 500mm f/8 mirror lens. Since I have the excellent auto-focus Minolta 50mm f/1.7, I have never felt the need to play with the f/1.4 on the Alpha.

Still, when shooting under available light conditions, even a partial increase in f/stop openng can make a huge difference. Shooting at f/1.4 also reduces the depth of field, allowing the subject to pop out of the background.

The f/1.4 stayed in the camera bag for the morning, as I used the other lenses to record the AM Bar Camp sessions.  I used a flash to capture most of these images. In the afternoon, I finally dug out the Rokkor adapter and clicked the f/1.4 in place for a little available light shooting.

Lens is older than the subject matter…

My copy of the f/1.4 lens is used, so I don’t  know it’s early history. I know it is an early model, because the focusing ring is a star-shaped metal grip. The later models of this lens use a rubber grip surface, rather than metal. The kit lens on my first Minolta, purchased in 1973, had the rubber grip, which tells me the f/1.4 version I own is older than that. I’m guessing the lens dates from the late 1960s.

Bar Camps attract all ages, and I was by no means the oldest person in attendance. That said,  most of the attendees looked to be in their twenties and early thirties. That means that when the Minolta assembly technicians screwed together my old Rokkor,  most of the people I photographed were yet to be born.

So how well did the old warrior work on the Alpha? I loved it! Originally I thought I would snag a few images with the Rokkor, then shift back to one of my other lenses. Instead, I left the 1.4 glass on the camera for the entire afternoon. It felt comfortable and well balanced. This is a manual focus lens — there are no auto-focus Rokkor  lenses — but the focusing grip is smooth and precise.

You can check out my Bar Camp Charlotte 2 gallery here. You can compare images from the 50mm f1.7  A-mount lens to the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4.

Which lens is better: Maxxum 50mm f/1.7 or Rokkor 58mm f/1.4?

I can’t really say the 58mm f1.4 lens is really superior to my 50mm f1.7, either in sharpness or light transmission. On other hand, it was a joy to shoot with, and looking through the viewfinder really made me appreciate that big f/1.4 aperture.

One thing that surprised me was that the bokkeh (the appearance of out-of-focus elements in an  image) on the Rokkor was slightly harsher than I am used to with the Maxxum 50mm f/1.7. There isn’t a huge difference, but it is noticeable. It may be the lens, on the other hand it could be the adapter. I intend  to investigate and will publish some tests  in the near future.

Of course, I have no attention of giving up my Minolta Maxxum 50 f/1.7. It has a number of advantages…auto-focus and fully automatic exposure to name two. So I will continue to use the f/1.7 lens in the future.

The Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 has no auto-focus capabilities and until I get around  to buying a chipped adapter, it can only be used in the manual exposure mode on Alpha dSLR’s like the A350.

Despite the obvious drawbacks, I have a feeling that the old Rokkor f/1.4 hasn’t seen the last of the Sony Alpha. When the lighting conditions are right, that big aperture opening trumps the A-mount len’s better features.

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Second only to questions about vertical grips for the Sony Alpha A100, the most numerous Alphatracks searches involve lenses. Questions like “Can I use old Minolta lenses on Sony A100?” are frequent. Intriguingly, I have even gotten questions like “Will my new Sony lenses fit on my dad’s old X700?”

Confusion reigns when photographers, especially those new to the dSLR scene, attempt to sort out which Minolta lenses fit which camera. Minolta produced SLR lenses from the 1950s until 2006 — and Sony is still selling re-branded versions of some of the more popular Minolta glass. That is a heck of a lot of lenses. Those new to the world of SLRs hear that the A100 will accept Minolta lenses, so they can be forgiven if they expect an old MC lens from 1972 to attach to the A100. Conversely, there are brand new A100 owners who are doubtful that recent A-mount Minolta lenses will work on their camera.

This will be a three part series focusing on lens options for Minolta SLRs, as well as the KM and Sony dSLRs. I’m not going to explore any particular lens — instead I will delve into the different lens mounts and attempt to dispel some of the confusion.

First up, the Rokkor SR, MC and MD lenses.

Minolta — or at least the company we know as Minolta — had a long history producing cameras long before the era of SLRs. After making a variety of rangefinders and the famous Autocord Minolta the the plunge and entered the SLR ranks. The first Minolta SLR, oddly enough, was known as the the SR2, even though it was released before the SR1 model.

Both these SLRs introduced the Minolta designed, three blade bayonet mount. Introduced in 1958, the Minolta mount was superior to most competing contemporary SLR lens mounts. At the time, many competitors still relied on the old-style screw mount. Most SLR makers ended up redesigning their lens mounts to keep up with technology — but the Minolta mount was so well designed that the camera maker was able to consistently update their technology while still keeping backwards and forwards compatibility between cameras and lenses.

The original SR mount lenses were “stop-down” lenses, meaning you had to manually close down the lens to the aperture you wanted. In theory you would focus wide-open, then stop the lens down to make an exposure.

By the time the Minolta SR7 arrived is 1962, Minolta and others had figured out ways to allow the camera to automatically stop the lens down to the correct f-stop. In Minolta’s case, you could focus wide open, then when you pressed the shutter, a rod would cause the lens to close down to the f-stop you had set. As soon as the exposure was finished, the lens would open up again to provide a bright view finder.

The first “MC” lens appeared with the original SRT101 in 1966. This was the first SLR to offer through-the-lens metering. Minolta added a tab to the lens to allow the camera to tell which f-stop the photographer had set. Minolta dubbed these lenses MC for “meter-coupled.” It utilized the same SR lens-mount — but the MC lenses had the extra tab.

Many MC lenses featured a depth of field preview button. It was redunant, because nearly every Mnolta SLR of the era featued a DOF preview. The DOF lever disappeared from the MD lenses.

It is important to understand that, despite the rapid change and improvements, virtually all Minolta lenses would fit on any Minolta SLR. Of course you needed a MC lens if you wanted to meter with an SRT, but you could use the older SR lenses in manual mode on the SRT. At the same time, you could use a MC lens on a SR series camera with no side effects. There wee a couple of very specialized lenses that might need slight modifications to work properly, but virtually all SR and MC lenses were fully interchangeable.

This happy state of affairs continued as Minolta introduced the improved SRT102. I don’t have any accurate production figures, but in the mid-seventies, Minolta claimed their main lens factory was cranking out 40,000 lenses a month. Add in specialty lenses produced elsewhere, and it appears Minolta was producing nearly a half million MC lenses per year.

The Minolta SLR system, circa 1975. Taken from an old Minolta marketing piece, this probably shows the Rokkor-X lens lineup, as the XK, the SRT 102, the SRT 101 and the SRM motordriven camera are shown. The XK used Rokkor X (MC) lenses. The MD lenses wouldn’t be introduced for another two years. Sadly, with the exception of the filters, copy stands and ambient light meters, almost nothing shown in this photo can be used directly on any current dSLR.

Minolta’s first electronic shutter cameras

1973 saw the first Minolta with an electronic shutter, the legendary (and expensive) XK. This was followed up quickly with the more affordable XE-7 and XE-5. All three of these cameras offered a new option for Minolta shooters. In addition to shooting manually (the only option with previous Minolta SLRs), the new X series camera now offered an aperture priority setting. A photographer could select an f-stop and the camera would set a shutter speed that would provide the proper exposure. The Minolta engineers were able to make this work with no changes to the MC lens mount. So once again you could use all Minolta lenses on the new cameras in manual mode. If you wanted to use aperture priority, you needed an MC lens.

At first, I was a little disappointed that my new XE-7 only offered aperture priority since I was shooting auto racing full time and a fast shutter speed was of major importance to me. I quickly found out that I was worrying about nothing, as I could just rack the aperture ring back and forth to cause the camera to set the shutter speed I wanted. Still, at the tme, I didn’t understand why Minolta didn’t offer a shutter priority option. The reason was simple. The camera had no way to adjust the aperture with an MC lens. So you couldn’t select a shutter speed and have the camera set the aperture to the correct exposure.

1977: the XD-11 and the first MD lenses

The two tabs on the aperature ring indicate this is a MD lens. The first tab is located near the green f22 marking, while the MD tab can be seen near the orange 50-135 marking.

Always thinking toward the future, the Minolta engineers solved the shutter priority puzzle in 1977, They released the XD-11 — the world’s first SLR that offered a choice of either Aperture or Shutter priority (as well as manual) modes. In order to bring off this magic, however, they had to make a slight change to Minolta lenses. Nothing drastic. Just a small tab added to the aperture ring. With this small change the XD-11 and subsequent X700 variants could stop down or open the lens when in shutter priority mode. Since this lens was designed for a dual mode camera, Minolta adopted the name MD for these dual mode lenses.

The original SR lens mount was now nearly twenty years old, but full compatibility was still maintained. You could attach the new MD lenses to an old SR2 or you could use any old SR or MC lenses on your new XD-11. Of course you couldn’t use the old lenses in shutter priority mode, but you still could shoot in aperture priority or manually.

The X700, released in 1981, was Minolta’s first Program mode camera — it could set both f-stop and shutter speed when in the program setting. This required no changes to the lens mount or lenses. You could use any MD lens in program mode. You could still use the older lens as well — with the same aperture or manual limitation.

Auto focus — death knell for the Rokkors

Finally, in 1985, advances in camera design finally caught up with the famed Minolta lens mount. That year, Minolta introduced a full system of automatic focusing cameras. It was a major advancement, and placed Minolta well ahead of all other camera makers. To bring this off, however, Minolta had to drastically redesign their lens mount for the first time. Even the wizards at Minolta couldn’t find enough space in the X-mount to incorporate autofocus.

Almost all of the original Minolta lenses were identified as Auto Rokkor while the MC lenses carry the legend Rokkor-X. The early MD lenses also carried the Rokkor-X designation, but the name disappeared along the way. Even Minolta’s economy Celtic line carried the MC marking.

The new Maxxum A-mount spelled the end of backwards compatibility. The X-mount lens opening was too small to allow for the various sensors and contacts required for the electronic focusing components. So the A-mount was born, with a larger opening and electronic connections to replace many of the X-mount’s mechanical workings. The two mounts look similar, but the lenses are not interchangeable between the systems.

Contrary to popular belief, however, the introduction of the A-mount did not spell the end of the X-mount. Minolta continued to produce variations of the X700 and X-570 cameras for many years after the introduction if the Maxxum and the A-mount. I was quite shocked to see that Minolta still offered the X700 in it’s product line in 2000, some fifteen years after the introduction of the A-mount.

That means you cannot use a timeline to identify whether a lens will fit the A-mount dSLRs. A Minolta lens purchased in, say 1996, is probably a A-mount, but could very possibly be an X-mount.

In addition, that also means that there is a huge amount of older SR, MC and MD glass out there, some of it fairly new. No wonder there is so much interest in using these great old lenses on modern dSLRs.

There are options to use the Rokkor lenses on the A-mount and other cameras — with some severe restrictions. We’ll discuss that in part three. Before we get into that, however, we need to explore Minolta’s (and Sony’s) A-mount lenses.

While I used my own experience and my collection of old Minolta literature to assemble this article, I did use some other Minolta-related websites to check some facts and dates. If you want to delve deeper into Minolta manual lenses, try Minman at http://members.aol.com/manualminolta/. You’ll find a wealth of information about manual-focus Minolta cameras and lenses. Another excellent source is Peter Blaise Monahon’s website at http://www.geocities.com/peterblaise/minoltamf/. Either of these sites should provide you with all the info you want on the SR, MD and MC lenses.

Next time we will look at the A-mount and which Minolta lenses fit the Alpha dSLRs.

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