Keeping vs Converting Lens Mounts

[BrendanLeahy]

I'm currently facing a decision of keeping my Minolta glass with their original MC mount vs. converting them to Canon EF.

There are some great manufacturers out there now for mounts, and RED even has their own Leica-M mount. I was fortunate enough to find a couple of guys that made a custom Minolta mount for the RED, so I've been using that and love it - the MC mount feels rock solid.

Minolta glass, when used with the existing cheap twist-on MC-to-EF converters, can have strange backfocusing issues or crop in on the lens image. Going all-in with a professional EF conversion would mean a permanent EF mount without those problems. It would also mean I could use the lenses on other bodies with a Canon mount in the future.

I'm curious about those that have had to weigh a similar decision, and why you went one way or the other? Are there great benefits to keeping the original mount with your lens that I may be overlooking?

 

[Phil Holland]

I use a hefty amount of vintage glass. My overall guiding light to what and how I'm doing things comes down to what mounts I'm using. Which are:

- PL Mount
- EF Mount
- the occasional M Mount
- and the occasional E-Mount

E and M mount glass can't be mounted to EF or PL, but many lenses from Nikon-F, Leica-R, Minolta-MC, Olympus-OM, etc... can be adapted to EF for instance.

So if I'm mainly using an EF or PL mount on camera I want my lenses to "be that". So usually I test out a lens with a quick locking adapter, but then I go in for the real deal and either get them modified at Duclos Lenses or pickup a bolt on conversion plate from a company like Leitax, as that's much more solid than twist and lock adapters.

There's the additional concept of getting a 3rd party lens mount for a RED camera dedicated to whatever mount, but the truth is I'm using other lenses as well that I've either adapted or modified to EF or PL.

You can always rip off a Leitax mount and put the OG mount back on if you one day decide to sell the lens. If it's something that needs to be physically modified, that's not possible.