Leica R to Nikon F

[Abdul2202]

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Does anyone have experience adapting a Leica R zoom lens to a Nikon F? I have the Nikon F mount and I’m looking to adapt it to the 35-70mm F4. Just need steps. Any info is appreciated

[andybarton]

Very easy to do - I converted most of my R lenses to Nikon F mount years ago.

Search for "Leitax" - they can sell you the replacement mounts, which are easy to change.

[Aram Langhans]

I also converted many of my R lenses to Nikon F using a generic Leitax replacement mount.  You can find them on Ebay and they work well for a whole lot less money.  Not sure if genuine Leitax mounts are better but i never had a problem with the knockoff mounts I bought.  Only issue was for my 100/2.8 APO that has I think a more screw mounts, so I had to drill a few holes and counter sink them for the screws, but that was easy and worked just fine.  I think I had ot also grind off a big of the screw heads for clearance.  Sorry, I am not at home right now to look at that lens.  I did not bring it as I am using the Q3 for this trip.

[andybarton]

The genuine ones are excellent quality and not expensive. The guy making them has been doing so for years. 

The eBay ones are of an unknown origin. I once bought a replacement M mount from eBay so that I could code a lens. It went straight in the bin it was so poor. 

[Aram Langhans]

53 minutes ago, andybarton said:

The genuine ones are excellent quality and not expensive. The guy making them has been doing so for years. 

The eBay ones are of an unknown origin. I once bought a replacement M mount from eBay so that I could code a lens. It went straight in the bin it was so poor. 

While that is probably true, I have bought them at three separate occasions and never had any issues with the mount being too loose, too tight or not focusing to infinity properly.  The Laitex ones were 4-5 times more expensive at the time I bought them.  No idea of prices now.  I can only speak from my experience and the cheap ones never failed me and I have been using them since I bought my Nikon D7000 years ago, and through the D600 and D750.  That is quite a bit of flawless use.  But the OP can decide to spend the money on whatever he wants.  

I should add an additional issue in the conversion process itself and that is if you have any ROM lenses.  I have the ROM 35-70/4 and had to do a bit of grinding on the lens body to make clearance for the electric cable, but that is the case for the genuine Leitax mount as well, as I was following the instructions on the Leitax website. 

Whatever way you choose to go, you will enjoy the R lenses on the Nikon F.  I found them to be far superior to the Nikon branded lenses for the ones I had. Manual focusing is an issue with the Nikon F viewfinders for me, but hopefully not for you.   I have now switched over to Nikon Z and the new Z lenses will give the R glass a run for the money. 

[masjah]

I second Aram's post. There may be complications with the conversion of R ROM zooms. See also the post about seven down on this page entitled "R 28-90 asph elmar....".

 

[Abdul2202]

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56 minutes ago, Aram Langhans said:

While that is probably true, I have bought them at three separate occasions and never had any issues with the mount being too loose, too tight or not focusing to infinity properly.  The Laitex ones were 4-5 times more expensive at the time I bought them.  No idea of prices now.  I can only speak from my experience and the cheap ones never failed me and I have been using them since I bought my Nikon D7000 years ago, and through the D600 and D750.  That is quite a bit of flawless use.  But the OP can decide to spend the money on whatever he wants.  

I should add an additional issue in the conversion process itself and that is if you have any ROM lenses.  I have the ROM 35-70/4 and had to do a bit of grinding on the lens body to make clearance for the electric cable, but that is the case for the genuine Leitax mount as well, as I was following the instructions on the Leitax website. 

Whatever way you choose to go, you will enjoy the R lenses on the Nikon F.  I found them to be far superior to the Nikon branded lenses for the ones I had. Manual focusing is an issue with the Nikon F viewfinders for me, but hopefully not for you.   I have now switched over to Nikon Z and the new Z lenses will give the R glass a run for the money. 

Thank you Aram (and others) for your response. You’re the first person I’ve seen that have adapted their 35-70 F4. 
 

I can only find steps to convert the 35-70 f 3.5 on the leitax website. If you don’t mind, could you send the link to the manual you used? The only other manual I found is to convert to Pentax cameras.

[Aram Langhans]

6 hours ago, Abdul2202 said:

Thank you Aram (and others) for your response. You’re the first person I’ve seen that have adapted their 35-70 F4. 
 

I can only find steps to convert the 35-70 f 3.5 on the leitax website. If you don’t mind, could you send the link to the manual you used? The only other manual I found is to convert to Pentax cameras.

I just did a search for Leitax Leica 35-70 f4 and found this:

Vario-Elmar-R 1:4/35-70mm

Hope that is what you wanted.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Aram Langhans

[250swb]

At the cheaper end of the scale but still very good quality are the adapters that Urth market

https://uk.urth.co/collections/lens-adapters/products/leica-r-lens-mount-to-nikon-f-camera-mount

I don't know about the 35-70 f/4 but it's a very easy job to convert R primes, just don't loose the ball bearing. I used my R primes lenses 50, 35, 24, on my Nikon bodies for a few years and to be honest I found the opposite of what Aram found and picking out the best Nikon primes to compare with the R primes I found no appreciable difference in quality. However when I got the 21-35 and 35-70 I switched them all back to Leica R mount and bought an R9 body to use as my main camera. I think at f/4 max aperture you may need a Nikon body known for a bright screen, so an F3 HP or FM3a, as a slow wide angle on an F or F2 isn't great indoors or in dull weather trying to focus on detail.

[Aram Langhans]

10 hours ago, 250swb said:

At the cheaper end of the scale but still very good quality are the adapters that Urth market

https://uk.urth.co/collections/lens-adapters/products/leica-r-lens-mount-to-nikon-f-camera-mount

I don't know about the 35-70 f/4 but it's a very easy job to convert R primes, just don't loose the ball bearing. I used my R primes lenses 50o., 35, 24, on my Nikon bodies for a few years and to be honest I found the opposite of what Aram found and picking out the best Nikon primes to compare with the R primes I found no appreciable difference in quality. However when I got the 21-35 and 35-70 I switched them all back to Leica R mount and bought an R9 body to use as my main camera. I think at f/4 max aperture you may need a Nikon body known for a bright screen, so an F3 HP or FM3a, as a slow wide angle on an F or F2 isn't great indoors or in dull weather trying to focus on detail.

How did you use the 24?  I did not want to grind away some of the rear of the lens to allow for mirror clearance.

The R lenses I used were the 50/2, the 35-70/4, the 35/2, the 180/4 and the magical 100/2.8 APO.  The comparisons to my Nikon glass were the 50/1.8, 28/1.8, 24-70/2.8, 70-200/4, and 100/2.8 Macro.  None of these lenses were better than my R glass.  If I zoomed in using Lightroom I could immediately see the difference. Well, maybe not the 180/4 as much.  The Nikon 70-200 was pretty good and of course the 180/4 R is not the best 180 but I loved the size and weight. Funny that your link shows the Urth adapter with the 180/4.  Mostly I could see it at bright edges where the R glass showed much less CA than the Nikon lenses.  The 100 APO was just bloody sharp edge to edge even wide open compared to the Nikon 105 macro.  I think the 105 had a fair amount of field curvature so the edges suffered until you got to F11 or so then diffraction started to show it's softening effect.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Aram Langhans

[250swb]

1 hour ago, Aram Langhans said:

How did you use the 24?  I did not want to grind away some of the rear of the lens to allow for mirror clearance.

The R lenses I used were the 50/2, the 35-70/4, the 35/2, the 180/4 and the magical 100/2.8 APO.  The comparisons to my Nikon glass were the 50/1.8, 28/1.8, 24-70/2.8, 70-200/4, and 100/2.8 Macro.  None of these lenses were better than my R glass.  If I zoomed in using Lightroom I could immediately see the difference. Well, maybe not the 180/4 as much.  The Nikon 70-200 was pretty good and of course the 180/4 R is not the best 180 but I loved the size and weight. Funny that your link shows the Urth adapter with the 180/4.  Mostly I could see it at bright edges where the R glass showed much less CA than the Nikon lenses.  The 100 APO was just bloody sharp edge to edge even wide open compared to the Nikon 105 macro.  I think the 105 had a fair amount of field curvature so the edges suffered until you got to F11 or so then diffraction started to show it's softening effect.

I think I have accidentally pricked your ego, I’m very sorry, I’ll leave you with that.

[Aram Langhans]

1 hour ago, 250swb said:

I think I have accidentally pricked your ego, I’m very sorry, I’ll leave you with that.

On the contrary.  Sorry if I came on too strong.  I was just stating my experiences perhaps with my own prejudices.  I am curious as to how you got the 24mm to work on a Nikon.  Everything I had read said the mirror would hit the back of the lens unless you ground off some of the metal around the rear element, which I was not brave enough to do.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Aram Langhans

[RicardoJ]

On 12/28/2024 at 12:41 PM, Aram Langhans said:

I have the ROM 35-70/4 and had to do a bit of grinding on the lens body to make clearance for the electric cable, but that is the case for the genuine Leitax mount as well, as I was following the instructions on the Leitax website. 

How hard is the grinding process for both the cable as well as the R cam? The instructions also mentioned a possible use of sandpaper on the actual mount replacement, did you have to do this too?

[andybarton]

The ROM unit does nothing when mounted onto a Nikon. I removed the one from my 28 Elmarit-R when I changed the mount. 

[Aram Langhans]

2 hours ago, RicardoJ said:

How hard is the grinding process for both the cable as well as the R cam? The instructions also mentioned a possible use of sandpaper on the actual mount replacement, did you have to do this too?

Been a while but I think I used a small file to make the clearance. Just be sure to stuff something down the lens to catch the metal shavings when you file. Did not have to grind the cable at all.  I just left the cable hanging behind the mount.  If I were home, I could take a picture of it to show you.  I guess you could also remove it as Andy said he did on the 28mm.  Not sure how to do that.  If the change were to be permanent, I guess you could always just cut it off, but I did not even think of that nor would I consider that. The 35-70 is the only ROM lens I have.  

This is taxing my memory as I did this maybe 12 years ago or more.  Ha.

[Abdul2202]

23 hours ago, Aram Langhans said:

Been a while but I think I used a small file to make the clearance. Just be sure to stuff something down the lens to catch the metal shavings when you file. Did not have to grind the cable at all.  I just left the cable hanging behind the mount.  If I were home, I could take a picture of it to show you.  I guess you could also remove it as Andy said he did on the 28mm.  Not sure how to do that.  If the change were to be permanent, I guess you could always just cut it off, but I did not even think of that nor would I consider that. The 35-70 is the only ROM lens I have.  

This is taxing my memory as I did this maybe 12 years ago or more.  Ha.

Was that the only grinding you had to do? The manual you sent earlier- thanks by the way- includes grinding off some of the small lever next to the R cam. Thanks again for your input 

Edited December 30, 2024 by Abdul2202

[Abdul2202]

On 12/29/2024 at 3:18 AM, 250swb said:

At the cheaper end of the scale but still very good quality are the adapters that Urth market

https://uk.urth.co/collections/lens-adapters/products/leica-r-lens-mount-to-nikon-f-camera-mount

I don't know about the 35-70 f/4 but it's a very easy job to convert R primes, just don't loose the ball bearing. I used my R primes lenses 50, 35, 24, on my Nikon bodies for a few years and to be honest I found the opposite of what Aram found and picking out the best Nikon primes to compare with the R primes I found no appreciable difference in quality. However when I got the 21-35 and 35-70 I switched them all back to Leica R mount and bought an R9 body to use as my main camera. I think at f/4 max aperture you may need a Nikon body known for a bright screen, so an F3 HP or FM3a, as a slow wide angle on an F or F2 isn't great indoors or in dull weather trying to focus on detail.

This is the adapter I picked up. Looks the same 

[Aram Langhans]

1 hour ago, Abdul2202 said:

Was that the only grinding you had to do? The manual you sent earlier- thanks by the way- includes grinding off some of the small lever next to the R cam. Thanks again for your input 

To be honest, I don't really remember doing the second grind.  I may have.  Sorry I can't remember.  But whatever I did it worked well for many years.  Since I have sold my Nikon F body and now have the Z body, I am thinking of converting them all back to R so I can use them the few times I get the urge to shoot my R8.  The only unconverted lenses I have are my 24 and 90.  Then all I would need is the R to Z adapter for my Nikon instead of an F to Z also.

Good luck with your conversions.

Edited December 31, 2024 by Aram Langhans

[RicardoJ]

Do any of you guys know what size screwdrivers are needed for the mount, the dust shroud, and the R cam?

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[mauriziobozzi]

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