[neostyles]

So young one with a technical question. Im a little confused about the relationship between the distance between the sensor and the lens and availability of adapters (Is there one)? It seems like this is one of the major advantages off mirrorless. The NX1 is a baby compared to dslrs but it already has zillions of adpaters. Any clarification would be awesome. Thanks!

[Adam]

So young one with a technical question. Im a little confused about the relationship between the distance between the sensor and the lens and availability of adapters (Is there one)? It seems like this is one of the major advantages off mirrorless. The NX1 is a baby compared to dslrs but it already has zillions of adpaters. Any clarification would be awesome. Thanks!

The shorter the distance from the sensor to the lens mount, the easier it is to adapt lenses, since you'll just be able to create hollow tubes with different mounts rather than adapters that have corrective elements.

[markoneswift]

Depends what you want to know my friend. I can tell you what I know as a former NEX owner and that is that mirrorless has a very small flange focal distance ( I believe that is the correct term ) - in other words a very small distance from the back of the lens to the sensor so it can accept a great many 'adapted' lenses from many other systems. On my NEX, I used Canon FD and M42 screw thread lenses - if I owned a Canon DSLR though, the flange focal distance is incompatible with FD lenses unless an optical adapter (as opposed to a tube type adapter) is used. This type of use introduces additional focal elements into the image path and often causes weird results.


Looking at Pentax adapters, you can of course adapt M42 screw lenses to K mount because it is a Pentax standard and as such the lens / sensor distance is compatible. You cannot adapt Canon FD or EF lenses though due to the lens / sensor distance. Another issue to remember is that sometimes, adapted lenses can actually foul the mirror box of a DSLR and can cause physical damage.....

[kai_in_paisley]

And of course, there are plenty of cheap adapters to use Pentax K-mount lenses on NEX cameras, I've got a few of those, and use them with an A7. These are just tubes as well, so they don't reduce the optical quality as such. (You do lose any iris control by the camera of course.)

But it really depends on what lenses you want to use. Once you look at adapting newer lenses onto your NEX, another thing to think about is that, depending on type, the lenses might actually not have an iris control ring, if they were designed for cameras where that's done from the camera - like Minolta AF lenses for example. For the Minolta lenses, and Canon ones, you can get more expensive adapters with electronic contacts, but not sure about other makes.

One more thought: I found that, because of the reflective surface of the sensors inside the A7 / NEX cameras, older tele lenses, which can be quite flarey to begin with, can become really difficult to use on the Sonys, you can end up with a lot of flare at the slightest sign of a light source in your frame. I have some M42 135mm lenses, which really don't work well on the A7 because of this.

What type of lenses do you want to adapt / use?

Kai