Cheap m42 lenses with thin "mount plate"

Anu · Joined: 14 Apr 2009 Posts: 879

I was wondering which are the cheapest m42-lenses with the following two properties of the m42-mount-part:

1. maximum or close to maximum width.

2. minimum thickness.

I may at some point buy myself the Praktica-B version on the Pancolar 80/1.8 (cause of the price and minimum focus distance), and then convert it to m42, so that is why the above requirements.

For those few who are interested in my Prakticar 300/4 -> m42-conversion, I already have an adaptation which reaches beyong infinity, though with no aperture control. While this is already satisfactory, I will at some point enable the aperture control too (though I'll probably lose the infinity focus unless I bother to adjust it - at the moment I have no clue how it's done on this lens - but as reaching 50 meters or so is enough, it's not really important).

Scheimpflug · Expire: 2011-11-18

In all honesty, the cheapest M42 lens is probably "whatever you can find locally". There are many unremarkable M42 lenses that sell quite cheap, but you usually end up paying a fair amount by the time the auction fees & shipping/handling is all finished. Sad

Alternately, have you thought about using a metal M42 body cap? You would have to drill/punch out the center, but they're very cheap... Less than 5 euro by the looks of it... and they would be cheap to ship as well. If you get one and it is too thick, it would be a piece of cake to have a machine shop plane it down a bit since they are already flat.

Anu · Joined: 14 Apr 2009 Posts: 879