Yashica AF and Minolta AF

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rogprov
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Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by rogprov »

Digging through my old lenses I found one from when I had a Yashica AF230 many years ago. Looking at the mount I was surprised to see just how very similar it is to the MA mount. It is so close that I feel there must have been some collaboration between the companies over the design. Does anyone know the history?
Roger
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by PhotoTraveler »

They were basically rebadges with the aperture lever moved.

Peter Ganzel did a write up a while back on his Pbase.
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

Pentax and Nikon both used very similar systems and so did Olympus - Minolta was the first, but until Canon devised in-lens focus motors, all AF systems used a motor in the body and a coupling drive to the lens.

The design of the coupling is based on the Hasselblad shutter-iris actuator or lens cocking connection. It's almost identical. That dates from the early 1950s. All Minolta did was to take a method for linking a drive shaft in a lens to a drive shaft in the body, which already existed in an unpatented or out of patent Hasselblad mechanism, and convert it for AF use. Since they did not invent this type of coupling, others then used it. I believe it had also appeared in a 35mm camera with focus control on a wheel on the body. The last new design ever to use the same method was the Contax G1, which used it for autofous and manual focus coupling. I'm not sure about the Hasselblad XPan and a few other specialist cameras.

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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by PhotoTraveler »

In this case though it's not just similar design, but an actual modified A mount variant.

http://www.pbase.com/pganzel/image/82047034" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
rogprov
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by rogprov »

PhotoTraveler wrote:In this case though it's not just similar design, but an actual modified A mount variant.
Yes that was my point, they are so similar but not interchangeable . Nice comparison photo.
Roger
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

The Yashica 230AF looks very like a rebadged Minolta 7000/5000AF, but the mount is not so much more different than any other three-flanger bayonet (there are only so many choices, change the orientation, change the flange lengths, change the pitch of the electronic contacts, position of iris actuation etc). What I do not know is whether the flange to film distance was within the apparent range reported for the Minolta AF mount - nominally 44.6mm but measured by various people within 1mm either way, which is an excessive variation.

Since the camera was unconnected with the Yashica/Contax system and had a very short life, it's likely that Minolta had a hand in it - but that would not make sense given the plans they had for the AF system at the time. More likely, a third party contractor was involved, possibly the Chinon factory, in both systems. When the Club visited Japan in 1986, we were shown lens production at Sakai, but not shown camera production. Why? You would imagine camera production would be the main thing. Perhaps the 7000 and 5000 were actually assembled, even co-designed, with a third party plant.

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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by PhotoTraveler »

I was trying to find a write up pete did before, I think he found the ROM protocol/pinout was in fact the same, and they would physically mount, it was just the aperture re-location messing things up, and the registration was the same.
rogprov
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by rogprov »

There was a series of Yashica AF cameras with this mount. AF200, AF230, AF270 and AF300 made between 1987 and 1994. There were slightly different names in various world markets. They were not re-badged from any another make. There were about a dozen lenses including independents.

Also a clever AF Converter 1.6x was made which enabled the use of Contax/Yashica manual focus lenses - and focussed many of them automatically. I think this would be interesting to some Minolta/Sony users if it could be modified to work with the MAF mount. Think of all those older Zeiss Contax fit lenses, Planar, Sonnar, Distagon, Tessar ….
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

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rogprov wrote:Also a clever AF Converter 1.6x was made which enabled the use of Contax/Yashica manual focus lenses - and focussed many of them automatically. I think this would be interesting to some Minolta/Sony users if it could be modified to work with the MAF mount. Think of all those older Zeiss Contax fit lenses, Planar, Sonnar, Distagon, Tessar ….
There's a similar converter available for the Minolta MC/MD lenses that will mount it on A-mount bodies. The problem is you have a less quality optical element that degrades the quality overall, costs you an f stop and blows your focal length! Your fast 21mm 2.8 just became a 31.5mm 4.0, and if you use it on APS-C, it's not a 47mm lens. If I could get my hands on a cheap MD mount 200 or 300mm 2.8 MD lens, then I could accept the quality and speed loss to get L-O-N-G focal length fairly cheap.

In optics, there's just no free lunch.

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rogprov
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by rogprov »

There's a similar converter available for the Minolta MC/MD lenses that will mount it on A-mount bodies.
Dusty

Yes there are plenty of adapters available to fit various lenses to the MAF ... but the uniqueness of this Yashica one is that it auto-focusses manual focus Zeiss lenses ... must be interesting at the very least. :D
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by Dusty »

Granted, Roger, that auto focusing manual lenses is unique, but you're still stuck with the bad side-effects. I wish there was a way to just take my MD lenses and remove the MD mount and replace it with an Alpha mount. I could get some nice glass back, and wouldn't care that I had to manually focus.

Dusty
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rogprov
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by rogprov »

Dusty wrote:Granted, Roger, that auto focusing manual lenses is unique, but you're still stuck with the bad side-effects. I wish there was a way to just take my MD lenses and remove the MD mount and replace it with an Alpha mount. I could get some nice glass back, and wouldn't care that I had to manually focus.

Dusty

There is :) ... have a look at this

http://www.pbase.com/pganzel/modificati ... f12_rokkor


Also have a peek at eBay item 150323882751
Roger
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by 01af »

rogprov wrote:
Dusty wrote:There's a similar converter available for the Minolta MC/MD lenses that will mount it on A-mount bodies.
Yes, there are plenty of adapters available to fit various lenses to the Minolta A mount ... but the uniqueness of this Yashica one is that it auto-focusses manual focus Zeiss lenses ... must be interesting at the very least.
That's not unique. The same auto-focusing 1.6× tele converter for manual-focus lenses also exists in a Minolta version. It auto-focuses Rokkor lenses on A-mount bodies, and also enables full-aperture metering with most MC and MD lenses. It's made by Sigma, and optical quality is pretty good---much unlike the dreadful 1.25× MD/AF adapters. Unfortunately (and notoriously Sigma) the auto-focus feature only works on the first-generation Minolta AF camera bodies, i. e. 5000, 7000, and 9000.

-- Olaf
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Dusty
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by Dusty »

Forget the AF, just give me a good optical quality with a low multiplication factor adapter. Something like a 1.1x and 1/2 f stop loss. Of course, the time for this is long past. If was going to happen, it would have right after the switch to AF in the late 80s.

Dusty
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Re: Yashica AF and Minolta AF

Unread post by rogprov »

01af wrote: That's not unique. The same auto-focusing 1.6× tele converter for manual-focus lenses also exists in a Minolta version. It auto-focuses Rokkor lenses on A-mount bodies, and also enables full-aperture metering with most MC and MD lenses. It's made by Sigma, and optical quality is pretty good---much unlike the dreadful 1.25× MD/AF adapters. Unfortunately (and notoriously Sigma) the auto-focus feature only works on the first-generation Minolta AF camera bodies, i. e. 5000, 7000, and 9000.

-- Olaf

I'd forgotten that one ... but as you say only works on pre-Dynax.

Not that want any of them ... jut interested in the history behind it all :D
Roger
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