FD lens VS EF

Joined: 16 Mar 2007 Posts: 16 Location: Essex, England

Hi

Being a relative newby to interchangable lenses I was wondering, as FD lenses are alot cheaper, if its worth getting a FD converter for £20 and getting a load of bargin baement FD lenses.

Thoughts please gentlemen!

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:04 pm

I was writing out my own reply to this, but a quick google turned up this page:

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/eosfaq/manual_focus_EOS.html

which seems to highlight all the issues with using manual focus lenses on EOS bodys.

The main ones relating to FD lenses seem to be

1. No automatic iris operation, so stop down metering only

2. No focus confirmation, so focus only using the ground glass screen

3. flange to film distance is shorter for FD cameras than EOS, so the adaptor must contain optics to allow focus to infinity. This makes the adaptors more expensive, degrades image quality and means that the adaptors end up functioning like a weak teleconverter.

On the whole I'd say FD lenses are not sensibly usable on a Canon EOS body, which is the main reason why they are so cheap. An alternative option which can provide some inexpensive and superb glass is an EOS-M42 screw adaptor.

You still don't get auto iris stop down, but a lot of M42 cameras didn't have that so the lenses are designed for manual stop down metering. I have seen such adaptors on ebay with contacts which fool the camera into allowing focus confirmation (though obviously not full autofocus), and the flange-film distance is long enough that no optics are required. There are some really great M42 lenses out there. I use a Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm F2.4 as my standard lens and it is the equal of any modern prime, but cost me less than £20.