Will my older Elan film camera lenses fit on a new DSLR body

[rick3390]

Will my older Elan film camera lenses fit on a new DSLR body

[TCampbell]

Yes.

In short... any Canon EOS "EF" lens will work on ANY Canon EOS camera (film or digital).

Canon does make "EF-S" lenses (they didn't start making these until they made digital cameras) which are designed to work with digital EOS cameras that have "APS-C" size sensors (this is a sensor which is roughly the same size as the old APS-C (Advanced Photo System - Class) size negatives which were a bit smaller than 35mm film. Those lenses will only work with Canon bodies that have APS-C bodies (with the exception of the Canon 10D... which had an APS-C sensor but EF-S lenses are not compatible).

As you have lenses from an EOS film camera (Canon EOS "EF" lenses), those will work with EVERY Canon EOS body (regardless of film vs digital and regardless of "full frame" sensor (full frame = digital sensors which are the same size as a 35mm film negative frame) or crop-sensor (APS-C or APS-H)..

[rick3390]

Thanks.  I have some really nice lenses and upgrading for VIDEO mostly, all EF lenses so I think a 60D with an outboard mic will work pretty well. Thanks for the info.

[jrhoffman75]

One thing to watch out for. Depending on the age of your film lenses they may not have ultrasonic focusing motors, but rather the older arc-form drive or micromoter lenses, which are noisy and the video recording may pickup the focusing noise.

[rick3390]

I have ultrasonic and 1 Sigma telephoto mostly static zoom for my application anyway. Any idea how the camera performs in video with telephoto?

[ebiggs1]

"Will my older Elan film camera lenses fit on a new DSLR body"

A better question would be "should" I use old film camera lenses on a new DSLR.  I have probably tried more old lenses and tried to modifiy old lenses to DSLR's as much as anybody around here and found, maybe, is the correct answer.

You will just have to try them.  I don't know which lenses you are talking about but some of them can be quite horribile on a DSLR.

[rick3390]

Great point, the 2 lens I would wish to use for video on the 60D would be an EF 28-80   1:3.5-5.6 Ultrasonic and a Sigma 75-300 4.5~5.6 AF APO.  Tripod mounted not expecting to use the zoom feature once set up.  Video of live performances on a stage usually from the sound booth.  I am planning on adding an external stereo mic a Rode Stereo Pro Mic.  Would appreciate your thoughts.  Thanks

[ebiggs1]

Using an external mic may make it work for you.  But I doubt seriously the quality will be anywhere near as good as even a DSLR STM kit lens.  But who knows until you try them.  How old is the Sigma?

[Carnac]

While all Canon EF and EF-S lenses will work on a 60D (an APS-C Canon DSLR), older Sigma lenses often will not auto-focus. When I went for film to digital (Canon EOS AE1 to a Canon 30D) all the Sigma lenses failed to auto-focus. At one point Sigma could re-chip some of their older lenses, but the ones I had were not upgradable.

Sold the Sigmas on e-bay and have only purchased Canon lenses since (and have been very happy).

Jim