Sunday, June 17, 2007

Minakta or Exolta?

Over the past few years I seem to have accumulated some Exakta cameras and lenses. In fact, my first SLR was an Exakta Exa 1a, back in 1974. That camera, though primitive compared to the standards of the day, taught me a lot about photography and served me for a number of years. I sold it quite a while ago, and a few years ago, acquired another Exa. I don't use them all that much, but they are interesting and somewhat peculiar SLRs. You can read a lot more about Exkata cameras on the Exaktaphile's web pages.

I was recently looking through a box of miscellaneus adapters and found a peculiar little lens adapter from Minolta - the "E adapter". Ha! An Exakta lens adapter for Minolta cameras. That was rather surprising, but since I have an M42 mount to Minolta, I guess it makes sense. There were a lot of decent lenses made for Exaktas (and Topcons that used the Exakta mount at one point), and putting them on a more modern camera body makes sense. I got out my Minolta X-700 (a fantastic manual camera, in my opinion), and put on the adpapter. I then attached one of my Exakta lenses, a Zeiss Jena Tessar, and I had a 56 year old lens on my camera, and I could shoot in aperture prioity if I wished. Cool. Now I'll goof around with these things and will post some images of my results later.

As much of a Nikon lover as I am... their mount pretty much is Nikon or nothing. So, it's fun to able to play around with other permutations of lenses and cameras. OK, so you Canon Eos people have had all kinds of adapters for years.

Here are some images of the gear:



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4 comments:

  1. Bryan C11:07 AM, June 21, 2007

    That's neat, I didn't know there was an adapter for Minolta bodies. I have an Exacta-Canon FD adapter that I use quite a bit. There are some really nice Zeiss lenses available in Exacta mount.

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  2. Anthony1:45 PM, June 21, 2007

    Ah, some love for the Canon EOS! Mark, I'm surprised!

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  3. Jason5:18 PM, September 09, 2007

    There is a Nikon-Exakta mount available as well... Check out www.kevincameras.com in the Exakta section.

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  4. Anonymous4:09 PM, August 04, 2008

    Hey Mark! Your name just pops up all over the place! I was Googling for an Exakta-Nikon adapter and you were one of the first hits. I've also learned that these adapters, if you can find one, are expensive!

    However, I do have the same Exakta-Minolta adapter you have. Found it on a 400mm f4.5 Piesker Tele-Picon (Made In Berlin) lens at a consignment shop in Ann Arbor for $50 total, adapter & lens.

    At a garage sale, last summer, I obtained a 28/3.5 Angenieux, a 58/2 Zeiss Biotar and a 135/3.5 Rodenstock-Yronar along with a beautiful Exakta Varex VX that works but has pin-holes in the shutter. It even came with the original receipt. It was purchased by an American soldier in Germany in the mid-to-late 1950's. This group of equipment was $20 to me at the garage sale. So, while I have the VX repaired, I'll use the lenses on my Minolta SRT-102. This is the kind of stuff that continues to make using my old film cameras that much more fun to use.

    Looks like you have some nice lenses there yourself, and, it's cool you can go Av with your Minolta X-700. We'll have to go out shooting again and have a Minolta/Exakta day.

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