Friday, August 05, 2011

Adapters for Pentax K Lens on MFT Cameras

As a resource, I thought I would supply a list of those brands of adapters I have located that allow the use of Pentax K lenses on Micro Four Thirds (MFT) cameras. You can be sure that these firms will also offer adapters for other such lenses. And they also might very well provide adapters to other camera systems. So this information might be more generally useful.

This is not a list of recommendations as I have not compared these brands. Even the cheapest adapters available from China on eBay are made of aluminum and brass and might very well provide an excellent fitting for your lenses. I have converted all selling prices to US dollars but this does not indicate shipping charges or ease of purchase depending on where you live.

All but one of these adapters assume your lens has an aperture ring; if not, you will only be able to use the lens wide open. The adapters provide no electronic coupling at all. However, they all (should) latch to the aperture lever, so that stopping down the lens is automatic. With the auto-exposure features of the MFT bodies, they are very convenient to use in aperture-priority mode.

Novoflex offers an adapter with aperture control ring, so that newer digital lenses can be used easily on MFT bodies. Very expensive at $240.

Voigtländer have an expensive adapter. I have no idea why it should cost $179.

Fotodiox offers a simple adapter for $40 and a Tilt-Shift adapter for $130. Anyone have experience with that?

jinfinance sells an adapter for $50.

Rainbow Imaging sells an adapter for $23.

Rocks Photographic sells the PIXCO adapter for $22, but this same Chinese brand is available on eBay for $18 including shipping.

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2 comments:

Ben said...

I would be interested to know if you have any experience using these adapters with a zoom lens. I recently got the Fotodiox adapter without the aperture control ring for $20 and it seems solidly built and a tight fit on a GH2 but my lens (Pentax 35-105) goes way out of focus between zooming in and out.

robin said...

Most inexpensive zoom lenses do not maintain focus across the zoom range. You have to refocus after zooming. Perhaps that is what you are experiencing. I do not use zoom lenses, and so cannot be sure!

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