FotodioX Pro TLT ROKR Tilt-Shift Lens Mount Adapter for Minolta MD-Mount Lens to Micro Four Thirds Mount Camera

Badly designed, limited usability, great build quality

I own the incredibly rare Minolta CA Shift 35mm lens. It only shifts (up/down or left/right, not both), it cannot tilt. So I was interested if I could use my other Minolta lenses with this adapter and get some more flexibility. The first thing I noticed after unpacking it is how well build and crafted it was. Everything turns smoothly with a reassuring certainty. Now to the bad part: it is of limited use. The control knobs and size do not allow you to mount this adapter (even without a lens attached) to cameras such as the OMD E-M1 Mark III or any other camera that has a viewfinder bump extending forward above the lens mount. So I doubt it will fit ANY of the OMDs (I tried on the E-M1 Mark I and Mark III) or any of the Panasonic bodies with a viewfinder box on top of the lens mount. Unfortunately, that rules out any MFT camera body that supports the 80MP high res mode. I ended up mounting it on an Olympus Pen F. Not on a tripod, you can mount it, attach a lens and operate it freely into all directions. With the adapter mounted on the Pen F, the camera does not attach to any tripod head as there is not enough room to attach a tripod base plate. With larger lenses, that is a common problem on the Pen F as the tripod screw sits too close to the lens mount on the body. I have a grip adapter, which partially solves this problem. The grip creates almost a centimeter of additional space between the lens mount and the tripod base plate. With that setup, the adapter can be operated mostly, there are still some limitations and operation is tight, when rotating the adapter, the rotate release button hardly can be reached anymore when it's at the 6 o'clock position. Also, the tilt movement would no extend downwards fully, as the tripod mount is in the way. You will need to find a way to create more space between the lens mount and the tripod mount. I tried two lenses. Typically, when using tilt/shift you would try to use a lens with a short focal length and a wide field of view. Most tilt/shift lenses are typically somewhere in the 24mm to 35mm focal length range (for full frame). All tilt/shift lenses are rectangular lenses concerning their image projection, they cannot have a fish-eye like distortion. That limits your Minolta MC/MD lens choices greatly if you want to go wide. I tried the RMC Tokina 17mm f3.5 - this is a fish-eye lens with massive distortion towards the edge of the image circle. When you shift the lens so the edge of the image circle moves over the sensor image circle, the distortion makes the image unusable. So no, you cannot copy the full frame results of the Minolta CA Shift 35mm with a 17mm lens and this adapter on Micro Four Thirds. I also tried the Minolta MD 24-35mm zoom lens. At the 24mm setting that equates to a 48mm field of view on Micro Four Thirds. I think the widest rectangular Minolta lens is an MD 20mm f/2.8, so that would get you a perfect normal focal length with tilt/shift. Unfortunately, I do not own that lens. Would I recommend buying this adapter? It depends. For what it is, it's too niche, without enough usability. You can't use it on the better MFT bodies. There are no usable wide angle lens options, so you won't really use it for architecture work unless it's a REALLY tall building and you can afford to move away further from it with a longer focal length. Mounting it on a tripod (required for tilt/shift work) requires specialized tripod mount contraptions to create enough space between the tripod mount and the lens mount so you can operate the adapter freely. So what is it for then? Longer focal length panoramas (with shift) with perfect alignment of the stitched frames. That's the only thing I can think of. On the Pen F, I'll use the 50MP high res shot mode for each frame in the panorama and that'll render me some hopefully nice wide, VERY high res shots. I am struggling on how many stars to give it. Do I like it? No. I want to though. It's well made mechanically. But it's just not practical by design. Is it OK? Kind of? But not really. I'd give it 2.5 stars if I could, but unfortunately I am leaning more towards 2 than 3 stars based on of how little use this design actually is - regardless of how well made it is.