Lens Adapters
You can find lens adapters that allow you to use your favourite lenses of one make on to camera bodies of another make. As an example, you can use your Canon lenses on Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses on Canon bodies, Canon/nikon lenses on Olympus/ Panasonic bodies etc. Such adapters are available from various manufacturers like Adaptimax, Bower, Fotodiox, Novoflex, Vistek etc.
But why would you want to use brand ‘ X’ lens on brand ‘ Y’ body? Why not use a lens made by the original body manufacturer? Here’s one reason. Your friend uses a brand ‘ X’ system and you want to use his lens on your brand ‘ Y’ camera body because that particular focal length is not available in your brand ‘ Y’ system. Or maybe the two of you just want to share one lens between you (to save on the cost) but you use bodies of different makes.
Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages to this method. As an example, by using a suitable lens adapter, I could attach a Nikon 300mm f/4 lens on to a Panasonic G-series Micro Four Thirds body to get a 600mm f/4 equivalent focal length (the crop factor for Micro Four Thirds bodies is 2x). The disadvantage would be the loss of autofocus!
A particular lens adapter that I’ve come across (from Fotodiox), when combined with a suitable lens, actually serves as a ‘shift-lens’. Using this combination, you can very easily create a mini-panorama. Using a firm tripod is a must. The adapter fits between the lens and the camera body. With this particular adapter, you attach the adapter to the tripod via its own collar. Take the first shot by sliding the camera body to the extreme left, the second shot with the body centred and the third shot with the body to the right. (Generally, we would mount the body on to the tripod and move the lens; since a tripod collar is provided on this particular adapter, we can shift the body instead!). Moreover, the design is such that it is not practical to mount the camera body on the tripod as the tripod’s mounting plate fouls with the adapter.
Note 1: In this case we should use a lens with a wider coverage (a fullframe 24mm lens for example). Doing so will ensure that corners don’t get darkened when the lens/body is shifted. If you use a APS-C lens instead, chances are that you will get vignetting.
Note 2: Infinity focus is not very sharp when using this adapter.
Shown here are the three ‘ body shift’ shots of the adapter/camera and the final panorama. Thanks to Satish Rajpathak and Sarvesh Rajpathak from Pune for the loan of the adapter and the panorama pictures. The final picture is of course created using the Photomerge feature in Photoshop.
When taking pictures for a panorama, it is necessary to overlap the images by 25% to 40% (depending on the focal length of the lens). When using the Fotodiox lens adapter to create a panoramic view, you do not have to bother about the overlap amount as the adapter takes care of that.