What kind of adapter to use

[Dk79]

Hello there!
I bought a year ago a Panasonic GF1 which I absolutely adore but I would like to use a few more lenses with it other than the stock 20mm(which is basically 40mm).
Sine the lenses I want (a macro and a wide lens) cost the equivalent of 2 brand new gf1's I started looking for other alternatives.
A lot of people use dirt cheap mamiya lenses and quite a few others but what I don't know is what kind of adapter I need for these lenses to work.
Panasonic is selling 2 of those which are for specific kind of lenses. One for 4/3 lenses and the other for leica ones.
Am I missing something or can these adapters be used with other types of lenses?
Thanks in advance for your answers!!

 

[Dogman]

The adapters are designed to fit other brands of lenses' mounts to the micro 4/3 mounts. With the adapters you mentioned, you can adapt standard 4/3 lenses (Olympus and Panasonic and any others designed with standard 4/3 mount) to micro 4/3 and you can adapt Leica M-mount lenses (of any brand) to the micro 4/3. You have to have an adapter to fit the specifc lens mount involved and adapt it to the micro 4/3 mount. There are numerous adapters available for various brands of lenses. If you go to B&H, Adorama or Amazon websites and search for "micro 4/3 lens adapter", you will find several that allow you to put other lenses on micro 4/3 cameras.

You do lose functions however. I have a Fotodiox brand Canon EF to micro 4/3 adapter. Those lenses lose the ability to adjust aperture as well as autofocus function. I have a Voigtlander brand M-series adapter and, of course, you don't get autofocus with those manual focus lenses and you can't use all exposure modes on the camera. I also have the Panasonic 4/3 to micro 4/3 adapter that I use only with an Olympus 25/2.8 lens on an E-P1 and it functions well. When I put the Olympus lens with adapter on my G1, however, the focus is kind of screwy--something that may be corrected with a firmware update. Also, people have reported that wide angle lenses adapted to micro 4/3 cameras do not perform particularly well. I haven't tried any wide angles so I can't comment on that. But the point is that you do compromise function in some ways to get the ability to use other lenses.

I hope this is helpful. I don't know the specific adapter needed for Mamiya lenses you mentioned but, if one is made, you can do a Google search and find it.

 

[Dk79]

First of all many thanks for your informative post.
I was aware of the manual focusing issue which is not a real problem for me since I mostly shoot inanimate scenes so I can take my time!
But I was wondering since I have some lenses that have aperture controls on the lens
(like the nikon AF 50mmf/1.8D) I won't be having the shooting wide open problem, right?

 

[Dogman]

If the lens has aperture control, you should be able to use it normally to control the aperture. It would be lenses without manual aperture controls, such as my Canon EF lenses, that are only useable with a fixed aperture.

 

[Dk79]

Thanks man!
Already bought a adapter. Can't wait for it to come!