[tiger12]

i have old canon FD lens for 135mm film. could it be used in new aps-c or ff camera like 60D 550D 7D 5DII.....

[bryan conner]

There are adaptors available to accomplish this, but from what I have read, the resulting image quality leaves a lot to be desired. Apparently, the flange to focus plane distance on EOS cameras is 44mm and the distance on FD mount cameras is 42mm. This difference causes the FD lens to not be able to focus to infinity when mounted on an EOS body. A corrective lens is needed to solve this problem, but, from what I have read, the lens contained in many of these adaptors is not of very high quality.



I would do a google search for "Canon FD lens on EOS body" and read as much as possible to make the smartest decision, or maybe someone on this forum has personal experience with this subject.

[genotypewriter]

[quote name='tiger12' timestamp='1288658652' post='3900']

i have old canon FD lens for 135mm film. could it be used in new aps-c or ff camera like 60D 550D 7D 5DII.....

[/quote]

Since you're asking this question and since you mentioned all those cameras, I'm guessing you have neither of them and you're looking to buy an APS-C camera on which you can use your FD lens... right? <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />



The answer is: Sony Nex... (two answers actually... Nex-3 or Nex-5). They have APS-C sensors and there are adapters on ebay that will allow you to mount Canon FD (and pretty much any lens) without degrading the quality. And by degrading the quality, I meant without having optics in the adapter like most FD-EOS adapters do.



GTW

[allanmb]

[quote name='tiger12' timestamp='1288658652' post='3900']

i have old canon FD lens for 135mm film. could it be used in new aps-c or ff camera like 60D 550D 7D 5DII.....

[/quote]



You will need to get one of two adapters:

1. one which has no optics but you lose infinity focus
   
   
2. or the other that has optics but acts as a small extender which will slow the lens down, change the effective focal length and degrade image quality somewhat.
   
   

The official Canon adapter is renowned for being very good but very rare and thus quite expensive (it has optical elements so lands in the latter category above).



Allan

[wim]

[quote name='allanmb' timestamp='1288862510' post='3959']

You will need to get one of two adapters:

1. one which has no optics but you lose infinity focus
2. or the other that has optics but acts as a small extender which will slow the lens down, change the effective focal length and degrade image quality somewhat.

The official Canon adapter is renowned for being very good but very rare and thus quite expensive (it has optical elements so lands in the latter category above).



Allan

[/quote]

Actually the Canon adapter is not all that good either, but better than the cheap stuff you can buy of eBay. I thas indeed an optical element, and essentially is a teleconverter with a small magnification factor. If you can find one it probably sells for around the $1000 mark. It is therefore likely a lot cheaper to get an FL or FD lens professionally converted to EOS-mount, which generally is fairly easy to do with the longer lenses. They still will be all manual lenses, however.



Kind regards, Wim

[Guest]

Vaguely I think some folks have removed the mount on the FD lens and added an EOS mount that does not require optics. If you google a bit I think you will find the instructions. I read the alt forums have at fredmiranda site quite a bit so I might be mixing this with some of the other old manual focus lenses where this approach has been taken; but I know that several of the better FD lenses (such as 85f1.2, 50f1.2) are popular with those folks (I think at least one just lives with the fact that they cannot focus to infinity).



Anyways if it is not a lens of high optical value I would not brother. Digital seems a bit more finicky with regards to the optics; but then again some of the older designs are quite good.



A bit of googling (well one search) and I found these instructions with comments on how to achieve infinity focus. Please note that some complex designs (such as those with floating elements) might be more difficult to convert; I did not read these instructions in detail and I'm not familiar with FD construction in general so am unsure if this is a potential issue (i.e, I know that this is an issue when converting contax c/y lenses to sony mount but this might or might not be relevant for FD to EOS):



http://www.camerahacker.com/Forums/DisplayComments.php?file=Lens/Adapter/Making_a_Canon_FD_Lens_to_a_Canon_EOS_Body_Adapter