using Old Lenses via Adapter with Samsung NX1000

Dumb adapters are out there and they do work.

If you look at your mount on the camera there is a confirmation pin at the 5 O'clock position. This needs to be pushed in for the camera to fire. The adapters will push this in for you.

Timmbits wrote:

I have just purchased a Samsung NX1000 (got a deal I couldn't pass up).

There are lots of nice used lenses out there, especially 50mm f2, f1.6, f1.4 that would make a nice 75mm equivalent portrait lens or macro lens.

Is anyone able to tell me if it is possible to use the camera with such a lens mount?

I realize that you lose all automatic control. I tried to press the shutter with my kit lens off, and the camera refuses to do anything - just giving me an error message that no lens is attached. Since these adapters don't have a chip and no electrical contacts, I'm wondering it will just do that same thing, or if it will work.

The old lenses work better than you think, even giving you automatic control since Aperture Priority works. You have to change the aperture manually since the camera isn't able to do it, but the camera is able to maintain the proper exposure since it can still automatically adjust the shutter speed to get the right exposure. The lens adapter lets the camera think that a lens is attached, since the lens sensing is mechanical, not electrical. So with no lens and no lens adapter mounted, the camera always complains about a missing lens in any of the PASM modes if you press the shutter button.

With a lens adapter mounted but without a lens attached, the camera still complains about a missing lens, but only when you shoot using the P or S modes. If you use the M or A mode, the shutter button will trip the shutter whether a lens is mounted on the adapter or not. Some camera brands (think Nikon) don't have aperture control rings on some of their lenses, so if you want to use one of these lenses that don't have aperture rings, you'd need to get a lens adapter that has a mechanical linkage that will let you adjust the aperture anyway.

Timmbits wrote:

Good, so you can see, that dial #1, in the first page, allows you to select "M" for manual. "A" should allow it as well.

The only thing that I still need to know, is with an old lens attached, how to get the bar graph or 5x or 8x on-screen, to help in focus.

You can't get the MF Assist to work with an old lens. The trigger that tells the camera to use the MF Assist is when it detects rotation of the lens's MF ring. The old lens would have to mount directly on the camera (lens adapters wouldn't pass focusing signals to the camera) and be NX compatible. All you can get with old lenses is exposure metering using M and A shooting modes, at best.

Timmbits wrote:

Billx08 wrote:

You can't get the MF Assist to work with an old lens. The trigger that tells the camera to use the MF Assist is when it detects rotation of the lens's MF ring. The old lens would have to mount directly on the camera (lens adapters wouldn't pass focusing signals to the camera) and be NX compatible. All you can get with old lenses is exposure metering using M and A shooting modes, at best.

Ahhhhh! Now we're getting somewhere! Are you CERTAIN about this?

Yes. [Edit: I was mistaken] Even though I knew what the answer would be, I tried it just before posting with my NX200 and two lenses, one made by Nikon and the other was Samsung's 16mm pancake lens that was mounted on the NX200 at the time. Turning the focus ring on the 16mm lens immediately brought up the 8x magnification. Turning the focus ring on the Nikkor did nothing. But it turns out that I was wrong because I forgot that there was a second way to trigger the magnification. You can get the magnification to work either by rotating the focusing ring or by pushing the [Enter] button on the back of the camera.

I'm bidding on some lenses, and it's not too late to stop... but even if the answer is "no", I'm wondering how hard it will be to focus with the LCD screen only and if might be tempted to still give it a go.

The answer, fortunately, isn't no, but past experience with my NX100 before I updated the firmware to allow 2x magnification, showed that practically all of my photos were unacceptably blurry. When I used 2x after the firmware update, focusing improved tremendously. Not quite as accurate as using AF, but pretty close. With 5x and 8x with the NX200, manual focus is as good as using AF.

Timmbits wrote:

Thanks very much. you mean the "OK" button? there's no button labelled Enter on the NX1000. (just to be clear, we're talking about the NX-one-thousand)

Right. I didn't look to see what the legend on the button was but after checking it does say [OK]. There may not be enough space to use "ENTER" with an easily readable font on small buttons. I guess that I'm too used to the [ENTER] button on my Nikon DSLRs, but on Nikon's P&S cameras, the center button also has [OK]. I've never seen an NX1000, but it appears that its center button is the same as the ones on the NX100 and NX200.

Timmbits wrote:

Awesome!
found the pin, thanks very much!
samsung tech support told me it would not work at all.
glad I didn't trust that answer.

Of course Samsung would say no.

They haven't licensed their mount out to anyone to make lenses for them, so they can't officially support any lens other than their own NX line.