Earlier on in the year I went through the process of sending a lens to Bellamy at Japan Camera Hunter to be converted by MS-Optical in Japan. I chose the Nikon L35AF as a donor camera and for my £400 odd I got a M-Mount, rangefinder coupled lens with focus and aperture controls. The end result is a great quality bit of kit… But for £400 you’d hope so!
Whilst I am very happy with my converted lens (short of me forgetting to ask for it in Leica thread mount – that was a head slap moment, I can tell you), it did make me wonder what level of conversion could be achieved on a very small budget. I started down the road of converting a lens with a little help from a friend of mine who has access to a lathe. That project is taking quite a while due to his varying access to said lathe, so in the meanwhile I started chatting to a few other people about further options.
At some point in proceedings Raymond Yee – who was in the early stages of setting up website ‘lost lens caps‘ – got in touch. He’d been experimenting with a 3D printed body cap style lens conversions, primarily with the lens from the Yashica T4. The Yashica lens was the second choice to the Nikon for me, so since I had one on hand that I was happy to donor he send me his 3D printed adapter.
I shan’t go into the details of how to extract the lens from the Yashica as Ray covers that on his site here. It is pretty easy though. Once extracted it was just a case of mounting the sealed lens unit into the back of Ray’s adapter – in my case with a load of blutak.
Alongside the adapter Ray also sent me a aperture to play with. Ray says its around f/8, though it looks a little larger to me. Quite cleverly the aperture just slots and rotates into place.
Of course, despite these adapters being M-Mount, there’s no way of focusing them on a M-Mount camera. As such they are perhaps more ideally used with an helicoid M-mount adapter and some sort of compact system camera. My work cameras are Sony A7 series cameras, and since I like to mount my M-mount lenses on them once in a while I already have such a bit of kit to hand.
Using it on the Sony A7s there is some quite pronounced vignetting both with and without the aperture in place. Without this is just part of the character of the lens I think, and with its possibly due to the thickness of the aperture itself. But to be fair, I’m not one to grumble about such things. Otherwise, the quality of the results is fairly impressive given the relative cost of the conversion.
The biggest issue is with sharpness falloff toward the edges of the frame. If you look at the left edge of this frame you will see the fall of is even more severe than on the right – this indicates to me that the lens isn’t mounted quite parallel to the sensor… Which is probably the fault of the use of blutak as much as anything else…
This issue is of course much less obvious where the subject isn’t as noticeably parallel. In the photos like the one of the flowers above, and the following images, it’s still possible to see the issue, but is less problematic to the end result.
It’s fair to say, shots using my digital camera aren’t exactly perfect. That being said, I’m sure with some greater care the lens could be mounted flat, and as I say, depending on subject matter, it might be less of an issue anyway. Where the subject is centre frame, the quality of the lens really shines through. I really couldn’t be happier with the above photo of Connie.
Of course, not being a big user of my Sony system cameras recreationally, my main interest was really in what could be achieved using the adapted lens directly on one of my m-mount cameras.
As mentioned, there’s no way to focus this lens when it’s mounted directly on a M-mount camera. Thankfully of course it came with an aperture plate so I was able to stop down the lens to increase depth of field. Combine this with the fact that I have one of Ray’s earlier prototypes that’s set to focus at about 5m, with the aperture in place I have a lens that’s fixed pretty much at its hyper-focal distance.
As you can see, the results are quite pleasing. The vignetting remains, but as does the inherent qualities in the little Zeiss lens. Of course, this is far from the ideal conversion for an M-mount film camera, but if you have a broken Yashica T4 and lack the budget or inclination to send it for an all singing all dancing MS conversion, this strikes me as pretty much the most obvious alternative.
If you would like to get your hands on one of these adapters, or just find out a bit more, head on over to Ray’s fledgling website Lostlenscaps.com
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Comments
Max on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 06/06/2016
Alex Hakimi on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 06/06/2016
I wouldn't mind shooting a lens at a fixed focus distance, 3.7 meters @ f/8 would be my personal sweet spot. It would, however, be the icing on the cake to adapt a lens that incorporated manual focusing. This got me thinking about potential compact cameras with such a capability. The XA/XA2 lens has a unique internal focusing mechanism with an external manual focus lever. I wonder the difficulty I'd be up against in converting said lens to M-mount with the standard focusing mechanism.
Comment posted: 06/06/2016
Dean on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 08/06/2016
Comment posted: 08/06/2016
Vitor Hugo on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 08/06/2016
I have one that's dead and would love to adapt this lens to a X-T1.
Comment posted: 08/06/2016
dominic on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
the link left above: http://lostlenscaps.com/defaultsite takes me nowhere...is it correct?
i would like to know more about this, or to get in contact with raymond yee, but there is nothing about him online.
d
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
Comment posted: 12/06/2016
Ken Hindle-May on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 13/06/2016
Comment posted: 13/06/2016
David Marx on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 21/06/2016
i bought a broken T4 and own a A7, so i'll give it a try. Where can i find the 3D model?
Comment posted: 21/06/2016
Aaron Reichow on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 30/06/2016
I intend to finish the job at some point with a Leica M helicoid adapter and a 3D printed lensboard to get them together.
Lots of punchy colors, vignetting, low contrast, and pretty flare prone. The latter three might be helped a lot with a better adaption - the E mount body cap is grey and I wouldn't be surprised if there were light leaks. A slight hood or at least a filter ring lip also couldn't hurt.
A lovely, tiny lens for E mount. :D
Comment posted: 30/06/2016
Comment posted: 30/06/2016
Gianni Dal Mas on 3D Printed Yashica T4 lens conversion
Comment posted: 13/07/2016
Great post! I've read the entire 35MMC site after I landed on your Yashica T5 review... this conversion will be really worth a try when my T5 will die... one day...
I bought one last year just before a trip to Bolivia where I shoot it along with my M2 and 35mm Summaron 2.8.... Well, reviewing the films (XP2 and TRI-X), for each and every shot taken with both cameras and lenses, I ended up choosing the one taken with the T4!!!
The Zeiss 3.5/35mm really has that special bite and pop, the T4 had me hooked after the first roll.
But now, I fear electronics will fail some day, so I'd like to ask you (a part from the kind of conversion explained in this post and the one from MS-Optical), which lens do you think is the equivalent in M or Screw mount (or even SLR!)? I'm not looking for the kind of perfection a Leica 35mm f2 ASPH can give, but the special "je ne sais quoi" coming from that little Zeiss Tessar.
Thank you so much for sharing your passion!
Gianni
Comment posted: 13/07/2016
Comment posted: 13/07/2016
Comment posted: 13/07/2016
Comment posted: 13/07/2016
Comment posted: 13/07/2016