Which Adaptor?

[Fran Hill]

I recently read in a magazine about converters which allow you to use old lenses on new digital cameras. I would love to do this as I have an old Ricoh film camera and a bunch of nice lenses that I got from a friend second hand, but I would like some advice on buying an adaptor.

The lenses I have seem to have a Pentax K mount, and I have a Canon 550D, does anyone know of a good, reliable company that sell this type of adaptor? I have seen a few on ebay but I am wary...

Also, I read that there is a lever on these lenses which could scratch or interfere with the mirror on my camera and that it should be removed before attaching the lens to the new camera, is this true? is there a type of adaptor that would help me overcome this problem or how would I go about getting the lever removed?

thanks very much

[inkista]

Fotodiox will let you avoid eBay if you want. Adorama and B&H both sell Fotodiox rings, iirc. I usually got my C/Y and Olympus OM adapters from big_is and happypageHK on eBay and haven't had an issue.

As for levers on the back, inspect the lens. if there's something that sticks out past the lens mount, then go do research on the specific lens. They're all individual and it's a case-by-case basis. And be aware that whether you shoot a crop body or a 5D makes a big difference. I have three C/Y lenses. They all worked fine without issues on my crop body Canons. On my 5D mark II, one of them (Planar 100/2) needed parts ground down (I used an emery board, actually, since it only needed to be ground down 1mm), one of them (Distagon 28/2.8) works as long as I don't focus to infinity, and the other one (Tessar 45/2.8) whacks the mirror consistently.

The fora for this kind of stuff are the ones on manualfocus.org, mflenses.com, and fredmiranda.com (alt. gear).

The six mounts you can easily adapt to Canon are:

• Nikon F
• Leica-R
• Contax/Yashica
• Olympus OM
• Pentax K
• M42

Mirror clearance issues on the 5D are most common with C/Y and Leica-R and mostly with wide angle lenses. Be aware that everybody wants the wide (because of the crop factors) and fast glass, and that will still cost a premium if you go shopping for vintage glass.