Something In Between

Minolta has made many great products throughout the years with various gems that you can add to your collection. One lens you should keep an eye out for is the Minolta MD ROKKOR 45mm f/2. If you’re new to lens adapting, we cannot recommend this lens enough due to the quality you get for the price. You’ll notice that the Minolta 45mm, like others in this focal length, are very compact. This is due to the physics behind optical lens design which dictates that the ideal focal length for any given format is it’s diagonal. The diagonal for a frame of 35mm film or a full frame sensor would be 43mm. Less elements also means more sharpness or rather more contrast.

This focal length is gives you enough room to compose for both landscapes and portraits, the middle ground of prime focal lengths. I found that this lens is great to for those weekend adventures where all you want to do is take photos. With a full frame camera, there is very little vignetting across aperture ranges as well as chromatic aberrations. When using it with an APS-C sensor, the lens feels more like a 50mm with the added crop factor. Normally when I adapt to APS-C, I avoid focal lengths 50mm and up if my focus is scenic photography over portrait work. Possibly one of the best aspects of this lens is the minimal to no loss in contrast; this is a common issues when adapting lenses to digital.

Below are some photos taken on APS-C:

The images in the set above were all taken at f/4 which I believe is the sweet spot of this lens. For a better look at the lens without crop, below are photos taken with the lens using a 35mm film camera (believe it or not this lens was adapted to a Canon A-1):

If you’re bored of your 35mm or 50mm and want something compact, I cannot recommend this lens anymore. Most of us are doing scenic work but for those moments that we need to capture a candid of someone, this lens will not fail you. The max f/2 aperture is also great for most low light situations and offers standard bokeh performance. The price for this lens have been consistently at $50-$100 and you should never pay more than the max range for this lens. Happy photographing!