Quinn 4

The other day I found a Nikon F Model camera. The Model F made between 1959 to 74 one. I have a lot of Canon FD lenses. Can I get an adopter to fit the Canon lenses on the Nikon camera. If not, how about M42 lenses on the Nikon?

Kozan Loc: Trenton Tennessee

Yes. Fotodiox model FDNKG. About $34.95. Not sure if Band H has it, but search around.

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

Not worth the time ,trouble & money. Due to registration distance differences, any mechanical adapter will not allow infinity focus, just very up close. Adapters that do allow infinity focus will have to have an element in them. Of course any element will be of inferior quality thus IQ will be impacted. Best to just buy older Nikon MF lenses if you want to use the old Nikon F.... ( I have an F2 myself, but lots of older glass)

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Yep! Canon FL/FD/FDn is problematic on Canon EOS, although possible with considerable effort. Even harder to Nikon cameras. Nikkor lenses on Canon EOS is much easier.

BebuLamar

Nikon used to make lenses for Canon but Canon never made lenses for Nikon.

bull drink water Loc: pontiac mi.

I have a Nikon d200 last week I mounted a 200mm fd f2.8 with a 39 dollar adapter. the results were good to me.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

So does the adapter have a lens in it, and do you have full functionality?

Ot would be interesting to know which specific adapter. Thanks.

rickdickey

Quinn
The registration distance for a Nikon is 46.5mm.
For Canon FD it is 42mm. Any registration shorter than 46.5mm will require an adapter with glass or physically altering the lens (doable is some few cases). Your only real opportunity to use other lens on the Nikon is to move up to medium format lenses with available adapters. They will focus to infinity. The m42 registration is shorter than Nikon.
An alternative to going up in lenses is going down in cameras. Virtually all prime maker lenses will fit, with adapters, on the micro four thirds cameras. They will focus to infinity but will normally be manual focus and f stop. These cameras are the primary reason old,good glass have gone up in price.
Hope this helps.
Rick

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Registration distance is key. For DSLRs mirror contact can be a consideration.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Not having infinity focus, doesn't mean completely useless, macro work often uses extension tubes so the registration distance isn't an issue. Portraits with longer lenses also works in a lot of cases, your usually not interested in the background being in focus. The glassed adapters are pretty much similar to small tele converters only usually not using many elements so IQ suffers. It has been known for people to remove the glass and just use them as a small extension tube.

It's kind of interesting to note how lenses focus the closer you focus the further out the lens elements need to be (ok some will move elements internally but thats not important right now) At 10x focal length distance its about 10% of the focal length so for a 100mm lens focused at 1 meter the lens elements will be at around 110mm getting closer than that tends to require much greater extension than the helicoid can provide e.g at 2x that 100mm lens would need to be around 200mm from the sensor plane. its a logarithmic function and focusing further out the movement gets smaller and smaller in fact so small that you can't move the elements a noticeable distance at 100x (10 meters) the 100mm lens would only be at 101mm (a 200 mm would be 202mm for 20 meters). for a 1000x a 100mm lens would be at 100.1 mm essentially that's already infinity.

So with the registration distance of nikon you can't bring the lens close enough to reach infinity, a short focal length lens is not going to focus very far out before reaching the limit. A 200mm lens on the other hand will have some usable focusing length. I've used enlarger lenses on DSLR and Micro 4/3 and some lenses are useable I've had success with 80mm and 105mm lenses with m42 adapters and helicoids. 80mm is close to the practical minimum focal length for a DSLR. For M43 there are a lot more options, I was lucky enough to find an m43 to cctv and m42 adapter plate, ironically this plate couldn't get infinity focus on a cctv lens (nearly but...) the m42 part works well though and with a m42 helicoid for focusing you can adapt all kinds of vintage lenses if you can figure out how to attach them. M39 is pretty easy for example.

blackest Loc: Ireland

The M42 registration distance is 45.46 mm which is just over 1mm shorter than required in my previous post that would limit a 100mm m42 focus to around 10 meters or 30 feet or for a 200mm around 20 meters 60 feet is the limit. So something in m42 in this sort of range might be good for portraits on Nikon.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

I know that FD lenses cannot be used with modern Canon bodies but using Nikon bodies I would prefer to use Nikon made lenses with it.
When it comes to M43 why not Olympus and Panasonic?

Quinn 4

Yesterday, I send out a reply but somehow it get lose. Try a second time. Thanks to Screamin Scott/ Rickdickey/ Blackest for all the information you guys posted. I end up buying a Nikon MF lens. This is why I like UHH.

Hbuk66 Loc: Oswego, NY

I use Canon fd and Nikon ai lenses on my Sony a7 with appropriate adapters with no problem.Just bought a Nikon f lens that is on it's way to me and I will let the hh know if that works out, also. No autofocus. Takes incredibly sharp photos.

blackest Loc: Ireland

2 sides really the images and the costs. Some lenses have character, some people might see this as flaws but often that little bit of difference can make a photo stand out. With Panasonic and Leica although they share camera designs to some extent the Leica lens are produced differently and to more exacting tolerances (according to Leica anyway).

Then there is cost, if you already have the lens available then you can use them. Although anything on the wide end is likely to be only available from Panasonic or Olympus due to the crop factor. Usually when you adapt a lens you don't have autofocus, that may bother some people.