Minolta MD lenses

onesock

onesock

Member
I'm new to interchangeable lenses, and am lucky enough to be able to borrow several made in the 70's for a long time. Before I splurge on a $75 Chinese adapater on eBay so that they'll fit my GH1, I wanted to get the opinions of folks that might have worked with them.

They are:

Minolta MD W. Rokkor-x 28mm 1:2.8
Minolta MD 50mm 1:2
Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm 1:35 Macro Zoom (MD mount)
(According to http://www.robertstech.com/vivitar.htm this is a pretty badass lens.)

Should I opt instead to just invest in a Nikon/Canon adapter? Or should these work well enough that I should be good? I'm looking for lenses that will primarily be faster than the kit lens. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
I've shot with both those Minoltas just on 35mm still film though. I have tons of Minolta lenses.

The 28mm is pretty good, nothing stellar.
The 50mm F2 sharp and nicely compact which is good for still cameras, but not so good for focus pulling.


The 50mm F1.4 MD and MC Rokkor versions are much better only cuz they are much faster than the F2. But not sharper at F2.8. MC Rokkors are the best mechanically of the whole Minolta series, but MD's tend to have better coatings and slightly(?) better performance.

Many Vivitar Series 1 lenses of the 80's were very good lenses, from different manufacturers Komura, Cosina, Soligor, etc... Looks like you've already done some research on that one.

The cost of your lenses is so small that you haven't made much of an investment, so you could still switch to Nikon if you wish. You can also just stay with Minolta and you can save $$ as they are much cheaper than Nikons.
 
Great, thanks for the advice. I think I'll hold off and buy some used Canon or Nikon lenses with the appropriate adapter. It doesn't sound like I'm going to see much of an improvement with those lenses over the kit lens.
 
I didn't mean to suggest that the lenses were bad. They are not, both of the Minoltas are as good as Nikon equivalents. Not many people were thrilled about the Nikon 28mm F2.8 AI either. I find it hard to let go of my Minoltas even though they are largely irrelevent except for the GH1/35mm adapters, and I'm keeping them because there are some great lenses in the bunch that I have. Most of mine are in fact, great lenses but not worth very much, so I don't bother to sell them.

What I meant was that the lenses you have are monetarily not worth very much. So if you felt you would do better investing in Nikon or Canon for the future, you should do so. Because combined I think the lenses you have are worth less than $100 total.

You can't go wrong with Nikon - so many bodies can take them because of their longer focal flange distance. Good luck with that.
 
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