Minolta lens and Telescope Eyepiece

Somewhere, I remember seeing an eyepiece to convert lenses to telescopes. It was not an adaptor for telescope eyepieces, but had those optics built in, then attached to the rear of a telephoto lens to make a small telescope. I expect that's about as close as you'll come. I'm thinking this gadget had the optics set up to make the image upright as well.

I find that the thing I'm thinking of is called a "Monocular Convertor", if that helps- and evidently, they were made to some extent by the camera companies themselves.

It might be worth you contacting http://www.srbfilm.co.uk/

They make all sorts of adaptors so they might have what you are looking for.

Minolta did make a lens monocular convertor - but only for the old manual focus system as far as I am aware. Perhaps you could adapt a lens rear cap to accept your eyepiece? I think the Minolta cap has a catch which opens the aperture when you fit it to the lens.

Minolta did make that, that's for certain. I got outbid on one on Ebay about 2 weeks ago. You hardly ever see them.

It will need a little work but it should be easy.

a. Get a Minolta AF to T-mount adapter. Steve at webcaddy has them for $45. He is a good guy to work with. These are adapter that used for astronomy CCD. Get one for Starlight or SBig. Those are T-mount CCD. http://www.webcaddy.com.au/astro/

b. Get a 1-1/4" eyepieces adapter. These are common (Steve have them too). If you have two left hand like I do, get a cheaper plastic one as you may need to cut them shorter. Plastic is easier to work with. Minolta's flange to image plane is only 43.5mm.

c. Put it together and match it with the eye pieces that you want. BTW. You can have right side up image by using a sky-watcher erecting eye-pieces.

I put one together for my Canon EOS. Here is how it will look. Have fun with yours.

More info. The "eyepieces adapter" I refered above is a T-mount to scope eyepieces adapter.

There is also an alternative way. If you do a seach in photo net, there is a fellow who cut a 3rd party Minolta MD (not AF) scope adapter and a SLR body cap in half and glue the two seperate opposite halves together. This method will work as well. The limitation is the eyepieces will be limited to the one in the adapter ( 3 elements, short eye relief and no diopter adjustment).

Here is how a 3rd party Minolta MD Scope adapter looks like. I used this one with my Rokkors. Tokina, Spiratone and others made them once. Today, I could be wrong but I think pro-optics still produce them. You can find them on their website or buy one used at ebay. There are no AF version of these type of adapter however.

There are aftermarket/third party monocular converters with direct Minolta 'A' mount; one was just ending at eB*y this morning.

The Minolta SR monocular converter works very well for me. Used mine for 300/4.5 spotting scope trying for Schwassmann-Wachmann a couple of mornings ago (at oh-dark-thirty 3:30-to-4:30am local); worked well enough for that even after transposing to 800/11 (sorry, didn't try shooting fragments, still not long enough, or open enough, lens for this). Would recommend this SR monocular converter even if meant going to get some older Minolta MF lenses to be able to use it.

Believe Minolta itself never pursued this neat converter in 'A' mount was because of their lack of really long teles in 'A'. SR teles went out to 800mm & 1600mm RF's, 'A' teles just went out to 600/4. ...And then there's also the 'undoing' of lenses' AF capabilities.