Now I have really gone off the deep end. Or, I just have too much time on my hands. Anyway, I have several Minolta cameras and prime lenses left over from when I used to shoot film. I've always liked the idea of using the Minolta lenses on one of my Pentax DSLR's. The problem is that Minolta lenses can't be mounted on a Pentax, plus even if you could mount a Minolta lens, due to differences in the Minolta designs, you would not be able get focus at infinity. Ah, who cares about all that. I was determined to find a use for those old Minolta lenses. Then I had an idea, since I can't get focus at infinity using a Minolta lens on a Pentax camera, why not try shooting macros with one of the Minolta lenses. So here is my first try.

For this shot I used a Minolta 50mm f/1.7 at f/2.5, 1/80, iso 400 with a 25mm extension tube on the K20D. No post processing other than to resize.

[gawan]

Wonderful shot! I absolutely love the bokeh! One of the best I have seen...

So what Minolta to K-mount adapter you used?

[xs400]

Wonderful shot! I absolutely love the bokeh! One of the best I have seen...

So what Minolta to K-mount adapter you used?

Georg,
Thanks for your comments. Let's start by saying the Minolta to Pentax setup is still a work in progress. But I'll tell you what I've done so far.

The extension tube I used was originally a Vivitar 2X teleconverter PKA mount I got on ebay for $5. However, the optics in the teleconverter were bad and all images shot using the teleconverter were very soft. So I removed the optics and converted the teleconverter to an extension tube. It actually works well with my Pentax lenses.

Minolta lenses have a mount that is significantly smaller than Pentax. If I put a Minolta lens in a Pentax K mount, the Minolta lens will sit flush on the mount, but the Minolta lens does not lock in place and the lens will just fall out of the mount if the lens is not held in place by something. To take the shot above, I held the lens in place by hand while taking the shot! Otherwise the lens would have fallen out of the mount and onto the flower or on to the ground.

After seeing the results from this first attempt at shooting the Minolta lens on my K20, I was quite pleased with the results. Like you, I was impressed with the bokeh.

It turns out you can buy a Minolta 50mm f/1.7 lens on ebay for about $5. Other Minolta manual focus lenses are also relatively inexpensive. A set of extension tubes for PK mount would be another $10. So here is what I am thinking of doing. To get a Minolta lens to mount on one of my Pentax DSLR's as a dedicated macro lens, I may use epoxy to permanently mount an extension tube to one of my old Minolta lenses. Besides the 50mm, I also have 135mm and 200mm Minolta primes.

I still have to try out the Minolta 135mm and 200mm lenses with the extension tube to see how the images look. I will also see if I can find a non-permanent method to attach the Minolta lenses to an extension tube.

I'll put future posts regarding my Minolta/Pentax experiments in the SLR Lens Discussion forum.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.
Frank

[deadwolfbones]

I love my Minolta Rokkor-X 50/1.7... I should probably try this.