FD Prime lenses and an EF adapter for my EF camera ??

[M@H]

Hi All,

Firstly I am sure this has been done before but the search is as much use as a chocolate teapot today so I can't find anything with it. Apologies if this is old ground.

So, on to the question.

I have a nice FF Canon camera and a few good and less good lenses - no specific "collection" or favourites (apart from that little plastic 50mm prime from Canon which is oh so sharp

Anyway, I want to get a decent set of nice sharp prime lenses together ranging from 20ish up to 80ish and have been wondering if I will get better value for money getting older better FD lenses and an adapter than paying £300+ a lens with EF - I mostly shoot landscape so setting aperture and getting focus are not something I need to do in a flash.

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Has lens manufacture marched on in the last 15 years and left FD lenses behind in the quality stakes? One of the reasons for going FD is that they were designed for 35mm so should suit my camera well. One other fear I do have is that to get focus to infinity I will need an adapter with glass in it, therefore if thats not of decent quality then I am wasting my time anyway.

Any and all thoughts/suggestions much appreciated.

Matt.

[LongQ]

I have a Kood adapter that came with an old FD mount 600mm I picked up a few years ago. You can remove the extra glass but lose focus to infinity. The previous owner used if for birding shots with the glass removed. I've used it for motor sport (mostly) with the Kood lens in place. Works well enough but can in certain specific conditions seem to produce a lot of p[urple fringeing. Not sure if this is inherent in the lens or. maybe, the compromise of the mount settings related to focal plane distances and so on. The angle of subject lighting is certainly a factor when the light is strong.

I recently bought an Ed Mika brass adapter. Thinner, no lens and comes with some ability to set up a lens for focus assist if the body supports it. Ed sells through eBay and has a few specialist variants of the adapter for different lenses and, in some cases, recommendations of how to tweak a lens to get focus to infinity (when the adapter does not quite work all the way to infinity on some examples.)

However he does point out that in the main the regualar adapters only work for longer focal lengths. Canon's won adapters, in their day, were only really intended to fill a gap in the range for there long and expensive telephoto lenses where owners (typically large media an news groups) had a lot of money invested in glass and might baulk at buying the new EOS bodies before heading to the competition in the future.

I have not tried the new adapter with small wide lenses but it works well with the longer stuff (70-210 zooms and upwards) on my 1D3. The Kood will work OK ish with a couple of 50mm lens variants I have. It doesn't seem to work with a 28mm. Or rather whatever is in focus is in a very very narrow plane nowhere near infinity.

Articles on canonrumours here for Ed Mika.

He also has some videos on YouTube and Google will turn up a number of hits.

You can get a number of cheaper adapters, some with chips to enable focus assistance. Apparently the quality varies a lot. Afaik all except the Ed Mika thin brass products have glass and not all allow the glass to be removed (though that would not be much help to you anyway for Landscapes).

They seem to be making the adapters in small batches which makes sense but does mean that you may not be able to order one for immediate delivery. He had a batch ready when I bought mine back in October and shipped very promptly.

I found it interesting and useful to read his articles, various comments in the stuff he adds to the eBay ads, the videos and so on. For example there are some subtle variations on the bayonet mounts over time and Ed offers useful guidance on those.

If you want to check out the 'normal' adapters there are usually a couple of vendors selling them at Focus in Imaging at the NEC which is only about 6 or 7 weeks away.

HTH.

[Killwilly]

Hello Matt and welcome to the forum. I have a collection of FD lenses which I do use on my EOS 450D, although the results aren't great using a cheap adapter from China purchased on eBay.

If you want to purchase cheap manual lens to use on your EOS camera, I would suggest going the M42 Pentax route. There are dozens of brilliant lenses on eBay going for very little money, Carl Zeiss 50mm can be had for £20. An M42-EOS adapter with focus confirm chip are less than £20.

For more info on using and buying manual lenses, I would suggest visiting the link below, a great bunch of people. If you take a look at eBay, just type "M42 Lens" into the search and you will find dozens. However, some of the old collectible lenses can fetch many hundreds of pounds, but be warned it can become very addictive.

http://forum.mflenses.com/index.php?sid=727225748c...

[M@H]

Hi both,

Many thanks for your comprehensive replies. As I want to be around the 20mm - 50mm range for most of the time I am somewhat put off the FD - EOS adapter by your thoughts LongQ as it sounds like I may well run into some clarity problems. Killwilly, I have never considered M42 Pentax lenses - are they really that good !?

To give a clue as to my level of pickyness I am going to sell my Sigma 24-60 F2.8 EX DG as its not sharp enough when fairly wide open.

Many thanks,
Matt.

[LongQ]

Out of interest I dug out my Canon FD 28mm and stuck it on the Ed Mika tele converter adapter (even though I know he says it won't work) and mounted it on my 1D3 (nearest I have to FF) and, as expected, the only sharp areas I could get were somewhere around 0 to 2cm in front of the lens depending on aperture.

Likewise a 70-210 f4 zoom can focus only at the closer end of its range and then varies with zoom level and aperture. However it works quite nicely in terms of results as a macro lens with a full set of extension tubes, albeit a tad dark for focusing!

So I think the conclusion is that you need the right adapter for the lens length - hence the specials for specific niche lenses that Mika develops.

As for adapters - I have a Nikon to EOS adapter that I bought last year intending to get a Samyang 14mm in Nikon fit to use with the Canons. In the end I bought a Canon fit Samyang noting that the Nikon fit seemed to have a smaller aperture adjustment ring that might be difficult to use on a Canon body. So as yet I have not tried Nikon or Nikon mount lenses on the Canons but may be tempted to do so at some point to see what happens. The older manual lenses would be desirable of course in order to obtain full control.

Doesn't help much if you wish to use your existing FD glass though.

Just doing a few quick tests with the Kood adapter on the 1D3 with the 28mm lens. Will update later.

[M@H]

Thank you again for the update - your practical tests are very valuable. Just to clear any confusion up, I don't have any FD glass (EF at present) but rather than persuing the EF lens range for sharpness (so £££) I was wondering if there was a "cheap" option using older tech. I guess if it was that simple then everyone would be doing it!

I may end up just getting a Sigma 10-20 and a decent 24 to 70/80/90 zoom both on EF, but I do like primes as they are lighter and (IMHumbleO) should offer better "value" in terms of picture quality as you are spending more % on the glass and less on the lens body tech (?)

[LongQ]

Well this is interesting.

The Kood (with glass) adapter and 28mm FD f2.8 give some rather good results on the 1D3 especially at ISO 100 and stopped down to around f8. It's not at all bad more open either.

Now that's very different to anything I have seen playing with the 400D (admittedly some time back now).

I'm not 100% sure if focus to infinity is spot on but detail resolution of pylons and powerlines about half a mile away seems strong and very well defined. I don't think the 1D3 will offer enough resolution to allow a more critical appraisal. Acceptable DoF from about 20 feet away as well. And the fiels have anoce 'look' to them, albeit I just struck lucky with a burst of sunshine!

I'm quite surprised to be honest. I may need to do a more controlled assessment.

[M@H]

very interesting

If half a mile is crisp then infinity cant be much different - achieved with glass too !

[Killwilly]

I have an FD 100mm f4 macro lens, which does work pretty well if I remove the optics from the adapter. Sadly I have had less success with lenses shorter than 100mm, maybe it would work better with a decent adapter. As I said in my previous post. I find the M42 lenses give better results when using an adapter. I only bought the FD-EOS adapter because I already have the FD lenses, which I use on my T90.

If you already had some FD lenses, I would have suggested getting a mirrorless camera, IE, Sony NEX, or similar, they give excellent results using an FD adapter, check the link in my first post.

[M@H]

Killwilly said:

I have an FD 100mm f4 macro lens, which does work pretty well if I remove the optics from the adapter. Sadly I have had less success with lenses shorter than 100mm,

Thats the impression I am getting elsewhere too

Killwilly said:

...
If you already had some FD lenses, I would have suggested getting a mirrorless camera, IE, Sony NEX, or similar, they give excellent results using an FD adapter, check the link in my first post.

The link is great, thanks. many very interesting posts there.

No FD lenses, and I am definately not changing my camera body (I have a 1DS II) - I am striving for decent picture sharpmenss and clarity at around 24mm though so I fear this may all be a non starter.

[LongQ]

M@H said:

No FD lenses, and I am definately not changing my camera body (I have a 1DS II) - I am striving for decent picture sharpmenss and clarity at around 24mm though so I fear this may all be a non starter.

Well, you can get adapters for just about any mount these days if they don't come in EOS fit. How much do you want to spend on a lens?

http://www.photozone.de/canon_eos_ff

http://www.photozone.de/canon_eos_ff/470-zeiss_zf_...

[M@H]

..under about £200 a go ideally.

[S47]

I use a 500mm F4.5 FD sigma lens on eos bodies, though to get it to focus at infinity I had to have the sigma 'adapted' [They moved the mount a few mm] at a local toolroom, cost was £93. Well worth it coz the Big Sigma is an awesome lens, and a fraction of the weight of the 500mm canon eos F4.
I can also fit the eos teleconvertors to the Sigma though it still remains a manual focus lens

[M@H]

Have been reading about the 44mm "Flange to Focal" distance! Something I have not considered until now is seemingly you get a x1.4 factor from the glass in an adapter - as I wan't to go wider rather than narrower this is going to affect my thinking again. Apparently this is not an issue with the Pentax M42 as it has a longer flange to focal distance..


This was a good intro / read: http://ferling.net/FDlenses.htm

[Killwilly]

M@H said:

This was a good intro / read: http://ferling.net/FDlenses.htm

Interesting read, many thanks.

[LongQ]

M@H said:

Have been reading about the 44mm "Flange to Focal" distance! Something I have not considered until now is seemingly you get a x1.4 factor from the glass in an adapter - as I wan't to go wider rather than narrower this is going to affect my thinking again. Apparently this is not an issue with the Pentax M42 as it has a longer flange to focal distance..


This was a good intro / read: http://ferling.net/FDlenses.htm

Not sure about 1.4 but using a 600mm with a 2x extender and the 'with glass' converter on a 1.6 crop body ..... certainly makes keeping the view steady something of a challenge!