I have been in a slump for several years now, pictures have been taken by cellphone, but spending more time with these manual lenses again, has somewhat rekindled my interest back to photography, which has always been a fun hobby to me.
In the earlier DSLR only days for me, I had a M42 to Pentax P/K and Canon EF mount adapter, but they were a bit challenging for my eyes to confirm if object is in focus through the optical view finder..
With mirrorless cameras, I started with the M4/3 mount (Olympus/Panasonic), and I bought the adapters to work with the old M42, Canon FD and Konica AR mount lenses.
Older Pentax:
I have only adapted M42 so far, my collection are mostly made by Pentax, with a couple of old Ricohs, no issues adapting them so far, but I have heard that older Fujica M42 lenses may have some problem with the aperture pin (?), I just don't know for sure, since I don't own them.
I also have a few manual K mount lenses, but I haven't bothered with getting an adapter for them yet.
Canon:
Older mounts are called FL and FD; ne of my Canon FD lens has similar issue with the aperture pin, it kind of gets in the way to have it mounted on the adapter.
Konica:
Mount name is AR, so far, I don't have any of this type of problem with any of the Konica lenses, they have all mounted on the adapter without an issue.
The built quality of these old lenses have been superb. I love the mechanical aspect of these old lenses.
The brand of adapters I have been using are made by Fotasy, you can find them on Amazon. There are more expensive brands, but I can't tell you if they are better. The Fotasy adapters feel very solid to me, although some times they feel tighter on a few lenses.
Because of the crop factor issue with M4/3 cameras, I decided to purchase an used full frame mirrorless, a Sony A7Sii, which I know the adapters will be readily available as well, and affordable.
A couple of camera features that can help you with focusing on these manual lenses:
1. Focus magnification: you can activate this feature, usually you can set a custom button to call up this function while shooting, and it can magnify a specific spot to assist you with making sure the image is in focus.
2. Focus peaking: not all cameras may offer this feature. The idea here is to highlight the area that are in focus. I have found that this is not very accurate, it is still problematic with wider angle lenses, where you will see a sea of highlighted area (peaked), and is not always correct to me.
My preference is with focus magnification, which is available on the older Olympus E-PL1, but does not have focus peaking.
These brands are not in my arsenal now, but being considered.
Olympus manual Zuiko, these are on expensive side, that may keep me from getting into this system.
Minolta Rokkor lenses, which have the MC, MD (maybe others as well) labels, these seems to be in the affordable column (2024), but I just haven't pulled the trigger yet, trying to limit myself to one lens a month, :) you know what I mean.
Nikon AI/AIS: future.
Leica Thread Mount lenses: Not sure yet, probably can only afford the Canon or Russian LTM lenses if I do get into this.
I guess I better include some test hosts -
From Sony A7Sii, Konica Hexanon AR 135mm f3.2:
