Lens find…

My father-in-law used to own – I say ‘used to’ because he died about 6 months or so before my wife and I met – a Minolta SLR camera from the 70s. I have an interest in old photographic equipment, especially lenses, so while I was down there during Seollal, I had a closer look at his gear. One of the lenses was of particular interest – a Rokkor 58mm f/1.2.

Just a brief diversion to explain what that means.

Rokkor is the brand name for Minolta lenses, just as Takumar is for Pentax, Nikkor for Nikon and Zuiko for Olympus. 58mm is the focal length – how much the lens sees. 50mm is considered to be pretty much what the human eye would see through the camera if there was no lens attached, so 58mm is a slight magnification of that. The close-up shots you see at sports games are typically taken with 300mm or 400mm lenses. The “f” indicates the amount of light that enters the lens. It is a complicated concept, suffice to say that the lower the number, the more light can enter the lens, the heavier the lens is and the more expensive. For a good explanation of the “f stop” concept see here.

I do a lot of low-available-light photography (I abhor using the flash), so the low “f stop” number on this lens caught my eye. I did a little research on the ‘net and discovered that this particular lens has some excellent characteristics and is highly desirable. “Great” I thought, “but can I use it on my Canon DSLR??”. The mount is the problem. 1970s Minoltas of course, have a different lens mount than a 2007 Canon. I own several Takumar (Pentax) lenses from the 50s and 60s that I can use on my camera via a special adapter so I assumed that there would be one for the Minolta. There is, but there are a couple of reasons why this particular adapter is not good, so I have to adapt an adapter to get the thing onto my camera.

The lens needed some work, it had some pretty serious fungus inside. Yesterday I took it apart and cleaned it and it came up very well. The fungus doesn’t appear to have damaged the glass at all, which is fortunate. I removed the unnecessary parts that would get in the way of the mounting and filed down where the mount will be attached. I’m going to try and appropriate an electric drill from school today so I can complete the conversion tonight.