Squirrel

Continuing with my Minolta on Nikon experiments.

The problem with what I was doing the other day--using my Minolta zoom on the D300--is that there's no advantage. My Minolta Rokkor 75-200 f4.5 is in no way an improvement on the Nikon Nikkor 80-200 f2.8 AF. In fact, it's a slower lens without autofocus capabilities. So we'll treat the squirrel shot from a couple days back as a proof of concept, and move on.

Well, I got the adapter for my Nikon 1 yesterday, and here are three photographs which were shot using the Minolta lens on the V1. The gold finch (really not sharp enough by my usual standards) and the single squirrel (on the borderline) were shot at 200 mm; the two-squirrel shot (excellent sharpness) was set around 135 mm. All three shots were hand-held and manually focused.

This setup has a real advantage: The 75-200 f4.5's a much longer lens than the camera's native 30-110 mm f3.8-5.6 lens. At full extension, this is equivalent to a 540 mm lens on a film SLR. That's a noteworthy gain.

This is another Fotodiox adapter, and really all it does is step down the lens barrel size. Attaching this lens/adapter combination has a significant impact on the camera's behavior. Most modes are disallowed, and while manual mode is permitted it loses the camera's light sensor, effectively turning the camera into a fully manual device. But it works.

We'll keep experimenting, probably on both cameras. I have other Minolta lenses, some of which are quite quick; those would be gains on the big camera in some situations. This could be fun.