Leica lens on Nikon body, adapter?

[yun_chen1]

Is there any way to mount a Leica lens on a Nikon body? Any adapters?

Or what? Thanks.

[charles barcellona www.bl]

Leica M, R, or LTM

 

on

 

Nikon RF or F style mount?

 

ASAIK, the only conversion is to put Leica R on Nikon F, and it requires camera conversion, not lens conversion. Technically, you could put a Leica R lens on the Nikon RF (or Contax) cameras with an adapter, but I've not ever heard of one. Maybe on Gandy's cameraquest.com you can find one.

[george_l._doolittle]

This also interests me . I have done some investigation and find

there is no adapter to be had off the shelf. While it is possible,

the engineering and manufacturing cost would be greatly in excess of

the cost of a new "R" body. There is little doubt in my mind that a

Nikon F3HP is the superior camera body and Leica lenses are the

superior lenses, so it was a quest worth undertaking.

[joshroot]

I'm going to guess that he meant mounting a Leica M lens on a Nikon SLR body. Though I could very well be wrong (happens a lot around here)

 

If I am right though, the answer is not really. Brecause the Lens-to-film distances are much greater on Nikon SLR's than on Leica rangefinders, an adapter would have to have it's own optical glass element in order to let you focus to infinity. And that would almost certinly degrade the quality (and increase the price) enough that it would be pointless to do. That having been said though, I do recall seeing such an adapter at one point. Though I don't remember where.

 

The other way to do this is with Leica lenses that were intended to be used with the Visoflex system. You can get an adapter for your Nikon SLR to use those lenses. You mount the Viso lens to it just like if you were using an actual Visoflex. www.cameraquest.com has these adapters I think.

 

If you are asking about Leica RF and Nikon RF. The answer is no, there is no adapter. Though it will work the other way around if you can find one.

 

If you are asking about Leica R and Nikon SLR, I'm pretty sure that this is possible. But someone else will have to comment on it. I do know that you can use Leica R lenses on Canon EOS, but I can't remember about Nikon.

[panya w.]

I had successfully designed a mount change on Leica R lens into Nikon mount which preserve both infinity and close focus. You can see picture of Summicron on Nikon FM <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1383948"> here.</a> I was utilizing my mechanical engineering skill to burn some $$$. :) For use with new Nikon D-SLR, it is a bit tricky as it does not have the chip to do metering.

[joshroot]

Panya, I know that older Nikon lenses can be "chipped". I'm not sure if it would be possible to add to your adapter, but it might be worth looking into. Maybe you could set it up to trick the dSLR somehow.

[andrew n.bra hrefhttp]

Either Mr Wong doesn't care about infinity focus, or he has had a bit of spare time to

spend in photoshop... :?)<P>

 

No free lunch guys. You cannot mount R lenses onto Nikon F mount cameras and

maintain infinity focus (without extensively modifying either the lens or camera

mounts), as the 0.5mm difference in lens-to-film distances doesn't allow

the machining of an adapter ring.<P>

 

I cover all this in exquisite detail in the Leica FAQ I maintain at:<P>

 

<A HREF="http://nemeng.com/leica/017e.shtml">

http://nemeng.com/leica/017e.shtml</A><P>

 

OTOH, if you don't care about infinity focus (say you just want to shoot macro), then

you can mount practically any lens onto any camera body. Nothing new there. :?)

[panya w.]

Andrew,

Please don't prejudge other based on your experience. If you read carefully what I had written, I said that I designed a mount change that had preserve both infinity and close focus, not an adaptor.

 

Josh,

I had looked into that and the cost is prohibitive if I want to make it elegantly, e.g. no wires/chip hanging out of the lens.

[panya w.]

Here is the design.

[andrew n.bra hrefhttp]

<I>I said that I designed a mount change</I><P>

 

So in other words, you physically altered the lens-mount ring on your Leica R lens.

Of course this is do-able! I was under the impression that you had machined a

separate adapter ring, which cannot be done (if you want to maintain infinity

focus).<P>

 

The problem with hacking your R lens though, no matter how elegantly done, is that

you end up with a crippled lens. You won't be able to use it on R bodies (without re-

engineering) and it isn't fully compatible with all Nikon bodies either (as you point

out, no built-in chip). There's also a Q with how compatible it is with Ai/Ai-S

indexing.<P>

 

IMO it makes much better sense to modify a spare/beater mechanical Nikon body.

That way, should ever the need arise, you can easily sell either lens or body. Trying

to sell a Nikon F modified-mount R lens however would be pretty difficult, especially

if you wanted to pad the price to earn back the extra $s you spent on having the

mod. done.

[alex_lofquist]

I have mounted a 200mm f/4.5 Telyt on my Nikon F4S using commonly available adaptor rings. (Note that the Telyt is a short mount which is probably a requirement for infinity focussing.)

[panya w.]

No, I didn't alter the len mount ring on the Leica R lens. I just loosen the 6 screws that hold it and replace the ring with the ring mount I designed. The Nikon F mount to Leica R lens was CNC machined from a solid brass, and chrome plated for the final product (the prototype does not have a chrome plated). If I need to sell my R lens, then I just put the original R mount back. So my Nikon can use both Nikon lens and Leica R lens and my Leica R still use the Leica R lens. Actually I sold all my Leica R body already. The only thing I needed is a screw driver. The metering is through stop down metering as you probably know, because the AI level on the Nikon rotate in reverse direction from a Leica R aperture.

[mark-j]

I have a custom adapter from the '70's to mount Visoflex II or III on a Nikon body. You must use stop-down metering, but any Viso lens or accessory can be used. I have used the bellows 2, 90 Summicron (short viso mount), 135 Elmarit (short viso mount), 280 f:4.8 Telyt and 400 f:6.8 Telyt on Nikon bodies. All of the above lens combinations give the same focus range as when used on a comparable Leica body. The biggest problem is that Nikon focuses in the oposite direction to Leica and switching between them is a pain.