Adapting Vintage Lens To Fujifilm Tips
A little while ago my good mate Faizal gave me his Minolta 40mm Leica lens to use during our Venice trip. I never used an old manual lens on a Fuji body before so this was a learning curve and I’m so glad I went down this path.
The experience was great and the photos were some of my favourite from the trip. They have something about them that a modern pin sharp lens can’t get. If you have some old vintage lenses knocking about or you manage to get one for cheap, this blog will help you get up and running in no time.
Crop Factor
In most cases you will be adapting old film lenses which are all full frame. Therefore you need to remember the crop factor of 1.5. This means that a 40mm Minolta lens is actually more like a 60mm on the Fuji.
Adaptor
I use adaptors from Urth and have one for the Fuji and my other Sony body. With that said any adaptor will do the job especially when electronic contacts are not a concern.
Shoot Without Lens
The first setting you must change is called “SHOOT WITHOUT LENS”. You need to switch that on. This lets the camera take photos without a registered lens attached. Since vintage lenses won’t have any contact points, the camera thinks there is no lens attached at all. If you have this off, the camera won’t take any photos.
Manual Focus Mode
Be sure to put the camera into manual focus mode yourself as it won’t do it automatically. This has caught me off guard once when I couldn’t work out why focus peaking wasn’t working. If you have an XH body, you can even assign a custom mode for manual shooting.
Shooting Mode
I generally use Aperture Priority or Manual. Shutter priority won’t work because the camera can’t control the Aperture. Manual gives you the most control however Aperture Priority works just fine.
Focus Peaking
I use focus peaking as my main way to nail focus when shooting. I set it to red and high however other colours might work better for you.
Focus Check
I assign one of the buttons to Focus Check. Usually it will be one that’s very easy to reach. This gives me a digital zoom that I can then use to double check focus if I want to be 100% sure. Just press and hold DispBack button for a few seconds to get into the button set up menu. Then change one to Focus Check.
Dual Display
Fuji cameras have a dual display that can be enabled by first putting the camera into manual focus mode and then pressing the Disp Back button on the camera to enable it. One display will be your actual composition while the other will be a smaller zoomed in version. This saves you going down the Focus Check route but for some it can be a distraction.
