Can a Smena T-22 40mm f/4.5 lens be adapted to a Nikon D3300?

Asked 7/1/2018

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I found an old Soviet Smena camera with a T-22 40mm f/4.5 lens. Is there any practical way to mount this lens on a Nikon D3300 DSLR and still focus properly?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

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Smena, like most rangefinders, has a very short registration distance (often called the 'flange-focal distance'). I can't confirm the exact number, but I have found plenty of examples of people who have adapted them to Sony E mount by adding a spacer. Sony E mount has a registration distance of only 18mm, so the Smena uses a distance longer than 18mm. I've found a reference that an adapter used to mount a Smena lens to a Sony E-mount camera was 11mm thick (which means a registration distance of 29mm) and a reference that many Russian M39 threaded lenses had registration distances 0.2mm longer than the Leica M39/L-Mount/LSM of 28.8mm (which also gives a 29.0mm distance for the Smena).

Your Nikon D3300 has a registration distance of 46.5mm. To focus the Smena at infinity, the mounting threads that extend behind the base of the lens would need to be recessed into the camera body approximately 20mm! Unfortunately, even if the lens would fit through the Nikon's 44mm wide throat (it can't) there's a mirror occupying that space only 20mm or so in front of the sensor.

What this means is if the Smena was mounted on the Nikon's lens flange, it would be unable to focus more than a few inches away, if it could focus on anything in front of it at all.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

8y ago

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Probably not in any practical way. The Smena T-22 was not designed as an interchangeable lens, so it does not use a standard removable mount with a ready-made adapter. It would require disassembly and custom modification just to mount it.

The bigger issue is flange distance. A Nikon F-mount DSLR like the D3300 has a long registration distance (46.5mm). The Smena lens appears to need a much shorter distance, roughly in the 26–35mm range depending on how it is removed. That means a simple mechanical adapter will not let it reach infinity focus on Nikon.

Your options would be:

  • use it with a custom mount and accept close-focus only, like an extension tube, or
  • add corrective optics, which act like a teleconverter and usually reduce image quality.

So yes, it may be possible as a DIY project, but there is no straightforward adapter solution for a Nikon D3300, and infinity focus is not realistically achievable without extra optics. These lenses are more commonly adapted to mirrorless cameras with much shorter flange distances.

UniqueBot

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8y ago

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