10-30 and 30-110 mount is made of...

Helen said:

olyflyer said:

...metal. No question about it.

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I read the original post and thought that there was no way that the mounts of the 10-30mm and 30-110mm could be anything but metal. But when I had a close look at my 10-30mm, I noticed that there is a slight manufacturing defect on the tip of one of its bayonet claws, which reveals that inside the chrome plating it actually does appear to be black engineering plastic - it effectively has an unfiled-down "sprue" on this tip which has resisted being plated. Close comparison with the 30-110mm shows the same construction and "feel" of the mount, though that one doesn't have the giveaway of the finishing fault. Both lens mounts have a rather subtle but characteristic plastic moulding seam forming two sides of a rectangle around the largeish single screw on the side of the protruding part of the mount (between the claws and the mounting ring with the fixing screws that attach the mount to the lens). The ring itself seems more convincingly metal but I'll have to look closer. I have the 10mm pancake lens and interestingly, that one's mount is all-metal - it feels and looks (on very close inspection) somewhat different. Probably that explains the arguably over-tight fitting that many have remarked on for this lens.

Hybrid material lens mounts have been done before (it started back in the 35mm film SLR days and initially went as far as also having black, all-plastic mounts on the actual camera bodies too, though that didn't go down very well with the buyers. Around the time of the series of Minolta AF SLRs that included the Dynax/Maxxum 5 they learned to hide it by chrome-plating the camera's mounting ring, but left the bayonet claws black - interestingly, this is what Sony still does on the NEX cameras [and probably the more affordable Alpha DSLR models too]. Weirdly, the NEX lens mounts do appear to be all-metal though - it's the camera mounts that aren't!). However, this full chrome-plating of a Nikon lens is the most convincing disguise I've so far seen.

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Seedeich said:

After close inspection I also come to the conclusion, that the mount looks like injection molded plastic, coated with metal.
All the same for the 18.5, 10-30 and 30-110.

Fortunately I’m completely convinced of the virtues of plastic, if one chooses the right kind.
Just thinking of all the fasteners, that are used in outdoor gear.

I’m more concerned about filter threads made of plastic. The risk of mounting the filter skewed is a lot greater.

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Fredrik Glckner said:

I believe it is probably chromed plastic. Except for the lenses 70-300mm, 32mm, and 10mm, as I understand, which have actual metal mounts.

Anyway, I think that plastic is a sensible material for lens mounts of small lenses. My only problem with this practice is covering them with chrome to make them look like metal: I would have preferred matte black nylon (or whatever material is well suited). That would have been more honest. On the other hand, it would probably have created a storm of complaints.

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Sonyshine said:

Only one MFT lens has a real metal mount. All the rest are plastic. It's normal these days.

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Sonyshine said:

Read the Lens Rental article on lens construction. The use of metal is often as trim not the construction. What appears to be a metal mount is in fact usually plastic:

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/12/assumptions-expectations-and-plastic-mounts

His definition of the 'mount' is worth reading - most people call the bayonet fixing the mount. It is not. The mount is the bit that connects the lens to the bayonet.

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