is my lens broken?

[crowelemental]

Hi,

I am using an albinar 80-200 zoom mc macro lens with an adapter on my nikon d3100. But I find that anything past about 15 feet away is beyond the lens maximum focus. Is this the lens' maximum potential? Or is it broken?

 

[vimwiz]

Hi,
macro lens

15 feet away? Macros are for very close up work?

 

[crowelemental]

I thought it was capable of macro focus and long distance...

 

[Overread19 7]

What kind of adaptor are you using?

Sometimes you can attach a lens from a different brand onto another brands camera body; however the distance between the lens and the camera is critical. If the lens is too close or too far away you might not get all the performance out of the lens. Too close is easy and normally corrected in adaptors just by spacing things out - too far away and you can often need adaptors with a glass element in them (because you can only move so close before there is no space for the adaptor - and the distance needed might even be inside the camera itself where the lens would then be hitting the mirror as it flips up and causing damage).


edit
Also check the body of the lens and make sure there isn't a "macro" button switch on there. If there is chances are you have to adjust the focus/focal length and then disable the button.

 

[Propsguy]

The lens should focus to infinity and needs servicing if it does not.

 

[KmH]

Overread is referring to the Flange Focal Distance (FFD) - Flange focal distance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Does your adapter have a glass lens element in it? If not, I do not think the lens is broken, but that it was not designed for Nikon's FFD.

 

[amolitor]

It's not clear what is going on here, the OP needs to clarify some stuff.

Is this a lens that requires the adapter to mount to the Nikon? That is, is the adapter to make it fit the camera, or is the adapter for some other purpose?

Has this lens/camera combination ever focuses differently, or did you just get it, and it only focuses like this?

 

[daggah]

It's not really worth spending any effort to get a manual lens working properly on a crippled body like the D3100 anyway.

 

[crowelemental]

It is an adapter for my minolta lenses to fit on my nikon body.
It does not have a lens.
the standard lens works fine on my d3100
but this minolta lens will not completely focus to infinity
Here is the lens, so you guys can see for yourselves.

 

[daggah]

It's because the Minolta mount is designed for a smaller flange distance than the Nikon mount. So your adapter either won't let it focus to infinity, or it's a cheap, poorly calibrated adapter using an additional glass element that still just didn't provide the exact distance needed.

Again, there's little point in trying to make this work, it's just not worth it on a D3100. You won't get any kind of metering and will be guessing your exposure settings, and the electronic rangefinder won't work either.

 

[amolitor]

That doesn't seem like much of an adapter, if it won't permit infinity focus. I suppose it's possible?

I certainly would not rule out the possibility that your lens is busted.

 

[vimwiz]

Your adapter is pobably not able to focus to infinity (To do so usually requires [quality] correvtive optics).
I had a s similar issue with a cheap adapter for an EOS to make it take older FD (manual) lenses. The adapter couldnt let it focus to infinity.