Ossum!

The only lenses I have for my 400D are my 50mm 1.8 and 17-40 4.0 L, both great lenses in their own right, but I often find myself wishing for a bit more reach and a bit more macro. My old Minolta SRT 103 is a different story, I have piles of primes for it, including a couple of those lovely 135mms, which is why I often end up staring at them, trying to pull a Uri Geller on the mounts. So far they have refused to bend, so I have devised a more low-tech method.

The big but, and I don’t like big buts, is that the Canon’s sensor plane, at 44mm behind the flange, sits half a millimeter deeper inside the body than the Minolta’s film plane. In short, this means that a Minolta lens on the Canon will never be able to focus to infinity, but it will be able to focus closer than before (this is exactly the same effect as extension tubes).

I ordered a third party Canon body cap (since my original had already been appropriated for a pinhole conversion). I then drew a 45mm diameter circle on it (making sure it was centered) and started to drill out everything inside. After rather a lot of massaging into shape with a Dremel, I have an adaptor with a hole so tight that my Minolta lenses wedge in and stay in without any other support.

The maximum focal distance on the 135mm is dissapointingly close. Probably in the region of 4m, which at an effective focal length of over 200mm is too short for portraits. Close-up is a different story though, focusing may be very tricky, and I miss the SRT’s split prism, but when you get the focus right, the pictures are sharper than glass in your underpants, even at 100% magnification.

The experiment has been fun, and I expect to get some interesting, possibly even some good, pictures out of the setup. It certainly won’t be my walkabout lens, but for R60 (that’s about 101 Maldivian Rufiyaa at the current exchange rate) it sure makes a nice macro lens.

The shots taken with this combo can be seen here, all tagged adaptor.