Vintage lens adapter. Zeiss Contessa to EF.

thingiverse

History Contessa cameras are sold for very little money and I have been willing to test those F2.8 Zeiss lenses on a mirrorless camera for a long time. The particular reason I wanted so much this lens is its compactness. With the EF adapter, it's still more compact than any vintage full-frame pancake lenses available. Finally, I got a specimen with a 50mm F2.8 lens in mint conditions and managed to dismount it from the camera. The process was easier than I expected. There have been many iterations both for testing it on different cameras and then to find the perfect flang distance in order to have the infinity focus at the right place. I tested this Tessar lens on 1inch sensors and on apsc. Using a smaller sensor the image definition was not high and finally, I decided to make an EF version as I have an EF to Nex speed booster. This means using almost the full coverage that the lens offers and the results were surprisingly good! Also the 50mm focal length is very useful and easy to use. The same result is expected to be achieved with a full-frame camera too. Finally, I decided to share this EF version of the adapter as it's easy to further adapt to other systems. I can't guarantee that this adapter works for all the variants of the Zeiss Contessa, but just for the version that I used. I created a version for FMD printers with a flat base. For me, PETG worked very well as it's more resilient than PLA and it holds the shape better. Mounting advice Dismount the lens from the body and keep the spacer rings, as it's very useful to reuse them for fine-tuning the flange distance, to compensate for the differences in the 3D printing process. (More details might be added later on). The leaf shutter system needs to be removed as it's not used on the adapted cameras. This is all until I find another camera to make a better tutorial. Extras Together with the camera, I received a set of macro lenses and it turned out to be a super fun set to use in combo with this lens.