I have a deep love of lenses and all the physics, chemistry and mechanical engineering that goes into their designs. It really came about as a spin-off from my camera collecting – specifially 35mm SLRs – because often a body would come with an interesting lens. Many were, of course, classic primes from the camera maker, but there have also been plenty of third-party curiosities from brands now long gone.
In the past, these were mostly destined to sit on the shelf as very few of them warranted a roll of film even just for fun. Mirrorless has changed all that because the configuration – with its shorter flange back distance – means that mount adapters really come into their own and you can pretty well fit anything you want to any mirrorless mount with levels of functionality varying from nothing to the works, including corrections for fitting 35mm format lenses to cropped sensor bodies. Or you can go the other way and fit full frame DSLR lenses to your Fujifilm GFX medium format mirrorless body. These adapters with conversion optics are pretty expensive, but if you want to revive a beloved ‘legacy’ lens, it could well be worth the investment. I have a brilliant Zeiss Distagon T* 15mm f/3.5 rectilinear ultra-wide in the Contax/Yashica mount and I use it on my Fujifilm X-Pro3 via a C/Y-to-X adapter with full exposure control functionality maintained (it’s equivalent to a 22mm on ‘APS-C’).
