reusing old slr telephoto lens with olympus 740

I'm sure that this question has been asked before but my googling and
yahooing is not finding my answer so here goes.

Are there adapters that would allow me to use my old Minolta telephoto
lenses on my Olympus 740? I'm totally willing to give up auto focus
or auto anything. I do see how this could be a chore since the
original slr telephoto assumed that there was film right behind it not
another set of lens, but it does seem like it would be possible to
make such a thing work with an adapter that has yet another lens in it
to make the compensations.

At least the 740 does have some kind of thread on the front of the
lens.

regards
Don

 

The Olympus C-740 is a fixed lens ultrazoom camera, so there's no way
you could remove the lens to fit your old Minolta lenses. I believe
that there were originally wide, tele & macro conversion lenses that
screw on to the filter adapter, but since the camera design is 4 years
old, they may be hard to find now.

You might be able to use Minolta SLR lenses on the Sony Alpha DSLR.

 

tks Alex,
what triggered all this thinking on this subject is that we are bird
watchers and it would be nice to occasionally couple this 740 to a
telescope or binnocular to get a better picture of a bird out there.
To do that requires some kind of coupler that must have some kind of
lens in it to compensate so the image size is reasonable when veiwed
thru the scope. Then I realized I had this old minolta zoom lens and
I got to thinking maybe I could somehow use it in a similar manner.
So even if this coupler created a slightly unwieldly and not
altogether optically perfect solution it would at least be good enough
to capture a recognizable bird image. So part of the question I was
trying to answer was just what kind of lens do they put into those
screw in adapters. From what you are saying about the 740 its
particular lens implementation may not easily lend itself to do
something like this. Too bad, I really do like this camera.

I once was in to the SLR thing big time but I just got tired of
carrying around something so big. This 740 is so convenient to use.

Obviously, trying to save a few bucks here too. Something that
usually invites rude remarks here on newsgroups.

tks
Don

 

Now that you've supplied enough info as to what you want to do, I have a
suggestion.
It's possible to get an eyepiece that converts an SLR lens into a telescope.
I've seen the adaptors on eBay occasionally, the one you're after would
be for Minolta MD (if it's a manual focus lens, or Dynax/Sony Alpha
mount if AF).
Once you've got the eyepiece adaptor, you then need a coupling tube to
attach the lens of your Olympus C-740 to the eyepiece.

I suspect that what you're really looking for is a screw-in
teleconverter for your Olympus C-740.
This would be easier to find than an eyepiece adaptor and then fiddle
around with coupling tubes, as the teleconverter is a rigid unit with
your camera when it's screwed in.
It's also a bit easier to mount/dismount that the slr lens plus eyepiece
adaptor plus coupling tube.

 

I'm sure that this question has been asked before but my googling and

You would not only need an adapter, but an adapter with a lens element
to correct the afocal.

On the other hand, you can get a reverse-lens-ring and reverse mount
the Minolta lens on the front of the 740 for some extreme macro
photography.

Chieh

 

what triggered all this thinking on this subject is that we are bird

Take a look at the Leica Digital Camera Adapter 2. This adapter allows
you to attach Leica Televid telescope to digital cameras and camera
phones. I don't know what the Olympus 740 is like, but I tested the
Leica Digital Camera Adapter 2 and it works with my Panasonic DMC-LX2
(same as Leica D-Lux2), Sony DSC-P92, and a few of my camera phones.

Chieh

 

I should have researched a bit more

I didn't realize that there were so many options for the 740 in particular the screw on tele and wide angle adapters for reasonable prices. That may well be good enough for bird pictures and may even be interesting for general photography use. I guess I'm lucky that the 740 has threads on the lens

I'm sure quality is not so hot but I'm just not into lugging around SLRs anymore even though they have gotten smaller.

Can someone comment on how well these 2x telephoto adapters work on a 740. Will it effectively make it a 20x or is there distortion or vignetting or something like that when you go that high?

I am still interested in making that minolta telephoto lens become a telescope so I need to look into that further.

So many hobbies, so little time. Thanks for all the feedback

best regards

Don