Guide to Minolta MD/MC material

I have put together a skeleton that might serve to get things rolling...

Why would I consider using manual focus Minolta lenses on my Minolta/Sony DSLR (or Minolta AF film camera)?

Most of those lenses are very good, and it's a bit of a shame to completely abandon them for digital work.
They're much less expensive than Minolta's later autofocus lenses.
There are a handful of exotic lenses that don't exist as autofocus versions.

What options are available to do this?

Minolta brand optical converters with 2x image magnification.
Third party optical converters with 1.22x image magnification.
Third party "chipped" optical converters with 1.22x image magnification.
Third party physical adapters without glass elements.
Mount conversion procedures.

What are the drawbacks?

Optical converters with glass elements degrade the image quality and change the effective focal length and aperture of the lens.
Physical adapters without glass elements prevent the lens from focusing on distant objects.
Mount conversions retain both image quality and infinity focus, but are more difficult to implement.
The camera's metering system may respond differently to some of these lenses, requiring you to make additional adjustments to obtain correct exposure.
In all cases you will lose autofocus and auto aperture control.
In most cases you can also expect less accurate image stabilization because your camera doesn't know exactly what type of lens is attached.

Which manual focus Minolta lenses are good candidates?

Primarily the fast and/or exotic ones. It makes less sense to devote effort to adapting an old lens if affordable autofocus versions are available. Some examples might be the 35mm f/1.8, 35mm Shift CA, 50mm f/1.2, 58mm f/1.2, 85mm f/1.7, 135mm f/2, 200 f/2.8, and 300 f/4.5.

Another popular option is to obtain a third party glassless physical adapter to use with Minolta macro lenses and bellows systems. The loss of infinity focus is irrelevant in this case.

For a concise and complete table of ALL Minolta manual focus lenses, look here.

NEW: After noticing the post below, I realized I have a nicer and more complete photo of the Minolta MD lens range:



Edited by sybersitizen - 14 March 2009 at 19:27