Freelensing with Minolta and Olympus Lenses

Although there are both optical and macro lens mount adapters available to mount Olympus and Minolta lenses to Nikon bodies, they all add about 10mm of extension to the optical path. Great for extreme closeups in the case of the macro-type adapter, but for wider shots you need to get closer. Freelensing is an easy and inexpensive way to achieve that, and offers some creative effects as well.


Minolta SR-Mount (MC and MD) lenses are a good choice if you want to do some freelensing on a Nikon body. The Minolta SR mount will fit right inside the Nikon F-Mount flange, and while you won’t achieve infinity focus, you’ll get pretty close. The lens slips right into the mount, making alignment easy, and blocking much of the stray light. It will not foul the mirror or any other mechanics of the body, so don’t worry.

So are Olympus lenses. The mount doesn’t fit quite as far in, but you get a farther working distance because the flange/focal distance on Olympus is very, very close to Nikon’s (within 0.5mm!). So close in fact, that they don’t make many lens mount adapters for Olympus.

The Olympus Advantage
The Olympus bayonet is almost exactly the same size as Nikon’s, only the notches don’t line up. So, the lens’ flange can rest on the tabs of the mount, centered within its outer flange. This make alignment easy. I hold the lens in place with the thumb and index finger of my left hand, and place my middle finger on the depth of field preview button. This is the Olympus advantage, as I can focus and preview at full aperture, then press the button in to stop down to the taking aperture. Its 46mm flange focal distance provides about a 30"far focus distance, so there’s plenty of latitude to tilt the lens for selective focus or leave a gap for light leaks, part of the unique qualities of freelensing.

The other Olympus advantage is that they make 0.5mm thinner replacement mounts that will enable you to achieve infinity focus. Unfortunately by doing this you lose the nice hyper focal scale on the Olympus lenses, and the depth of field preview button (which in Olympus lenses is deftly built into the lens itself). But, I digress.

The Minolta Advantage
The Minolta has an advantage over Canon with its ability to set the aperture without having to mount the lens to anything. It fits deeper within the mount to the extent that there is only about 1mm distance between the lens and camera flanges. But, with Minolta’s 44.5mm flange focal distance, the far focus distance is closer than the Olympus’. If I shift the lens a little to the right, it sits nicely within the mount.

The technique I use is to set Nikon’s Non-CPU setting to approximate the lens I am using, and shoot using Aperture Priority. I then preset the focus (usually infinity) and the aperture (usually f/5.6 to enable focus confirmation) on the lens first, as it’s difficult, and perhaps a bit risky to attempt it while I’m holding the lens in place. I hold the lens to the front of the camera with my left hand while I hold the camera body with my right. Then, I move in and out while checking the focus confirmation LED. Once the area I want is in focus, I trip the shutter.

With either lens, you can get some tack-sharp closeups and amaze your photog colleagues by saying you did it with a Minolta or Olympus lens and your Nikon body, which they will likely deem impossible. It works nicely with TTL flash as well, although you might have to experiment with the Exposure Compensation setting. Shooting above f/5.6 gets you really sharp images, but makes focusing a little more difficult unless you’re using a tripod.

Finally, avoid dusty conditions if you can, as you’ll have the mirror box exposed. I would definitely not recommend doing this at the beach! Be sure to blow out the mirror box afterwards to prevent anything getting onto the sensor when the mirror flips up during normal photography.