Adapting Vintage Camera Lenses for Digital Cameras

In this instructable, you will learn how to adapt one of your vintage camera lenses (lenses made for film cameras that are manual focus) to work on a digital camera, and how to adapt your design to turn your lens into a macro lens. Vintage lenses have a really cool look that is quite different to modern lenses, and are typically a lot cheaper than modern lenses for the same quality.

There are some things to note:

For some cameras (mainly DSLRs) it is not possible to convert the lens to them, as the flange length is too short to make an adapter that allows the lens to focus to infinity. The lens will still work, however would now be a macro lens, so do bear that in mind.

1. A vintage lens
2. A digital camera (Needs to be one with interchangeable lenses)
3. A 3D Printer
4. Autodesk Fusion

If you are wanting to convert your lens to a macro lens, skip this step.

As mentioned in the introduction, not all lenses will be able to focus to infinity properly as their flange length is too similar to the cameras flange length or is larger than their cameras flange length. To find if your lens will work properly, use this link to find your 2 different mount flange lengths, and use the equation below to find out the length your adapter needs to be to work as a normal lens.

Camera Flange Length - Lens Flange Length = Adapter length

If your output is negative, or very small, e.g. 2mm, it is not possible to adapt your lens to allow it to focus to infinity, but will turn into a macro lens.

For me, the lens wont be able to convert without becoming a macro lens (44mm - 42mm = 2mm).

The next step is to get the 2 mounts, so for me, I am adapting a 50mm f1.8 Canon FD mount lens to Canon EF mount camera. Before you go and try to model the mount, it is worth trying to see if anyone has already designed the mount you need. I got lucky and someone had already designed an EF mount, so I used that and they had kindly included the .f3d file which made it very easy to use afterwards. When looking for a mount, try to get a .step file or .f3d file as that is easier to use, compared to a .stl or .3mf.

For the FD mount, I had a spare mount off another camera, which I screwed onto the final mount instead as it would be more durable than plastic.

I'm not going to go over how to design the individual mounts in fusion, as that would make a very long instructable and different mounts can be very different, but if you want to learn Fusion, this is an amazing course, showing you how to 3D model using it.

Links to mounts:

Canon EF Mount (.f3d and .step)

Canon FD Mount (.scad file)

Now you have found or designed your attachments, you now need to combine them so that the thickness of the 2 attachments is equal to your flange length you calculated earlier (don't worry too much about this if you are making a macro lens, just make the adapter as long as you need to be able to combine the 2 models. Bear in mind that the longer your extension, the closer your lens will be able to focus.)

Now it's time to print off your design. (I recommend you print out the individual mounts to test they work first, they most likely won't fit first try, change the design a little and once they work print them connected together) Sometimes it is tricky to print them together, as there may be some overhangs, so you could either add a little chamfer to them or print the individual mounts upright, then glue them together. I find that using supports really lowers the quality of the print, even if I have good settings, so I like to try and avoid them as much as possible. When printing your adapter, its very important that you use black filament or paint the inside of your adapter black, as the colour of your filament will change how the picture looks. For example, I printed a mount in green, and here is a photo I took with it. You can see a green wash over the picture, compared to the other picture where I covered the inside with black card. (They're the last pictures, so you'll have to go through the them to see better what I mean)

Now its time to try out your new lens! Enjoy!

(Here are some pictures I have taken using my custom adapter and the 50mm 1.8 lens)