The Tamron Adaptall System
Flynn Marr 18 March 2025
This is one of my AE-1 Program bodies
with a Tamron 70-200mm f/3.8-4 (46A) mounted on it with and Adaptall-2 C/FD mount adapter.
Over the years of my camera collecting I have many times come across a device called an Adaptall-2 lens mount adapter but I never took the time to learn what it was. These
were not Canon products and so they
did not register with me.
A few months ago I bought a Canon T5 camera on E-bay and it came with a
Tamron 70-200mm f/3.8-4 lens. The lens attached to the T5 using and Adaptall-2
lens adapter. I got to tinkering with it and then found myself needing to know more about these adapters.
What follows is a summary of what I was able to find out. My main source of information is a very detailed website called adaptall-2.com. If you want to learn more I highly recommend this site. And there are other sites with a wealth of information that you should look at. But let’s start at the beginning.
Taisei Optical Equipment Manufacturing Inc. was a Japanese company established in November of 1950 with a view to making lenses and other optical equipment. Later in October of 1952 it was formally incorporated. Seeing the rise of the Japanese camera industry the company immediately began establishing itself as a maker of inexpensive third party lenses for the cameras of other manufacturers.
A brochure from the early 1970’s explaining the Adapt-A-Matic system.
Taisei Optical had a a well known and highly respected optical engineer by the name of Mr. Uhyoue Tamura. He was very important to the company in its earliest days and in August of 1958 they registered “Tamron”, after Mr. Tamura, as a trademark. Then, in April of 1970 the company name was formally changed to Tamron Co., Ltd.
Tamron was one of the earliest makers of interchangeable lenses for the new SLR cameras. One of their accomplishments was the introduction in 1959 of a 95-205mm f/6.3 zoom lens at an affordable price for the budget minded.
In 1969 Tamron developed a system of lenses to allow users to mount their Tamron lenses on different camera bodies meaning that one set of lenses could function on different camera bodies with differing lens mounts. These were the Adapt-A-Matic lenses.
It was a brilliant idea. All Adapt-A-Matic lenses had the same mount but to mate the lens to a camera body you needed a small adapter for each type of mount. This meant that the same lens could be mounted on a Minolta, Nikon or Canon camera using a small inexpensive adapter.
Another Adapt-A-Matic brochure that illustrates some of the lenses available.
The Adapt-A-Matic system was produced from 1969 to 1973. Developments in the camera industry were proceeding so quickly that a serious upgrade was required. In 1969 SLR cameras were not integrating light meters into the camera bodies and so all that was required was an aperture that would stop down automatically when the shutter was pressed. This the Adapt-A-Matic could do.
The next development was through-the-lens (TTL) metering with the light meter integrated into the camera body. The first iteration of this required that the lens be stopped down momentarily for the light reading and then opened up to full aperture for focusing. Then when the shutter was pressed the lens stopped down again for the exposure. This is how the Canon FX, FP, Pellix, TL and FT cameras functioned.
Tamron’s answer was the Adaptall system introduced in 1973. The Adaptall lenses were not backward compatible with the Adapt-A-Matic adapters. However, the list of lens mounts accomodated was expanded to include Canon FD, Minolta MD, Konica AR, Contax/Yashica, OLympus OM, Nikon AI, M42 cameras, Pentax K, Fujica FT, Topcon RE, Mamiya SX, Rollei and Practika. It was, like, one lens to rule them all.
An AE-1 Program with its FD lens mount is shown with an Adaptall-2 lens adapter. With this adapter all Tamron Adaptall or Adaptall-2 lenses will mount on and function with an FD camera.
This is the Adaptall-2
lens without the adapter. All Adaptall
lenses have this mount. The secret is in having a Flange
Distance that is larger than the Flange Distanes on compatible camera bodies.
This is a brochure explaining the Adaptall and Adaptall-2 system and some of the lenses available for it.
This has been a very brief survey of the Tamron Adaptall adapters. There is a wealth of information on the adapters and the lenses on-line and I urge you to research further.The information here just scratches the surface, especially for Canon cameras.
The FD lens mount was one of the most complex systems and Tamron made several adapters for it. And not all later Adaptall-2 adapters work on the earlier camera FD or FL mounts. I know because the Adaptall-2 I have will not mount on my “F” Series cameras but is fine on the “A” and “T” Series. It is my intention to acquire more Adaptall and Adaptall-2 adapters and figure out which goes with which. But that is a subject for another post.
Here the Adaptall-2 adapter is shown with the Tamron 70-200mm f/3.8-4 zoom lens. To mount this lens on, say, a Minolta MD camera one must only buy the small adapter but the same lens will work.
By having a Flange Distance larger than that on a compatible body the adapters can be made without any additional lenses in them which keeps the cost low and image quality high. The Adaptall and Adaptall-2 Flange Distance is 50.7mm. Compare that to the Canon FD Flange Distance of 42mm.
The Adaptall system had to be used in stop-down-metering mode just like the Canon FL lens mount. However, the final development in light metering in SLR’s was the ability to take the light reading at full aperture which required the lens to tell the camera body what the full aperture of the lens was.
In 1979 Tamron indtroduced the Adaptall-2 system which was backward compatible with the Adaptall except that on the Adaptall-2 the maximum lens aperture was transmitted through the adapter to the camera body.
Adaptall-2 lenses were made from 1979 thru 2006 resulting in a wide range of these lenses available on the collector market. The performance of these economy lenses is beyond the scope of this short post but they are generally considered very good for the time and intended use.
Now if you think about it, once the FD adapter was on the Tamron lens it became an FD lens. This means that adapters for FD lenses allowing them to function on EOS or RF mount cameras could be used to adapt the Tamron lens to EOS and RF bodies. Of course this came with all of the stop down metering problems inherent in such adaptations.
Stacking multiple adapters is always problematic because it introduces potential problems from loose mountings or faulty alignment. However, companies such as Photodiox actually make Adaptall adapters that go direct from the Adaptall mount to the EOS or RF mount. This is true for other makes as well.
This is the camera side of the Adaptall-2 adapter that came on my T5 camera. At the top under the Adaptall name is the Positioning pin for the FD lens mount. On the left side is the aperture Signal Lever, at the 7:00 o’clock position is the Full Aperture Signal Pin, and at the bottom is the Automatic Aperture Lever. There is no provision to lock the aperture open.
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