film to digital

[daveh]

Hello, will my ef 75-3000mm 1:4-5.6 III lens that i used on my eos rebel film camera work on the eos t3i digital camera? i am planning to buy and i looked at bundles for 2 lens and noted one was efs 18-55 and the second lens was simply ef. thank you for helping

[cicopo]

Yes it will fit & work. The Canon EF-S mount accepts both EF-S & EF lenses but the full frame bodies are designed for EF only mount lenses.

[daveh]

Thank you,that helped me make my mind up, and I have purchased a new digital camera yesterday. My lenses work fine. Thank you again

[TCampbell]

You can effectively use _any_ EOS series lens that Canon offers in their lineup with the exception of the new EF-M mount lenses.  EF-M lenses are designed to work with Canon's new "mirrorless" EOS-M body (currently there are only two of these).

You can use any other lens in the lineup with your T3i -- Canon currently markets some 76 lenses that will work with that camera (and that's not counting the lenses they no longer offer but which are also compatible.)

You can use any EF, EF-S, TS-E, or MP-E lens -- just not the EF-M.

[Italian4215]

For the basics, there are several types of lenses:

EF

EF-S

EF-S STM

EF-S USM

EF-M

The EF lens will be you basic standard lens. It has low grade glass (not super high quality) and your focus is external. The EF-S is a step-up from the EF since it has a stablity mode and the auto-focus mode has a better motor for faster and quiter focusing; however, the glass is still the same and also has external focusing. The EF-S STM is excactly the same as the EF-S but it has a higher quality glass and has internal focusing opposed to external. The EF-S USM is pretty much top of the line. It has all the features of the other lenses but the quality of the glass is extramely high quality. And the EF-M lens as aforementioned above is used solely for Canons new mirrorless camera.

[cicopo]

The above information is NOT CORRECT. The most important error to point out is that EF-S lenses and their 3rd party equavelents are ONLY designed to work correctly on crop body cameras. They have a smaller light path than EF lenses. The S does not indicate they have a built in Stabilizer.

[Skirball]

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@cicopo wrote:

The above information is NOT CORRECT. The most important error to point out is that EF-S lenses and their 3rd party equavelents are ONLY designed to work correctly on crop body cameras. They have a smaller light path than EF lenses. The S does not indicate they have a built in Stabilizer.

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+1

And EF-M is even smaller for the mirrorless cameras. But to use EF or EF-S on a mirrorless you need an adapter.

STM and USM refer to the auto-focus motor.  USM is ultrasonic and very fast.  STM is geared towards video as it’s quiet, though still faster than traditional AF motors.

[TCampbell]

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@cicopo wrote:

The above information is NOT CORRECT. The most important error to point out is that EF-S lenses and their 3rd party equavelents are ONLY designed to work correctly on crop body cameras. They have a smaller light path than EF lenses. The S does not indicate they have a built in Stabilizer.

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+1

The "-S" suffix on EF-S stands for "Short back-focus".  

An EF lens projects an image circle into the camera body which is large enough to completely cover the size of a roughly 36x24mm sensor (or 35mm film negative frame).  

An APS-C crop-frame sensor camera (all Rebel Bodies, the 70D, 60D, 50D, etc. and the 7D) have a physically smaller sensor.  The sensor is the size of "Advanced Photo System - Class" size film negative frame.  

Since the sensor is smaller, it's not necessary to project such a large image circle into the camera body.  These crop-frame lenses are designed to project a smaller image circle and, in doing this, Canon places the rear-most element of the camera lens slightly behind the lens mounting flange -- which means the lens slightly protrudes into the camera body.  The distance from that rear-most lens element to the sensor plane is the "back focus" distance.  These short back-focus lenses project a circle large enough to completely cover the APS-C frame, but not large enough to fill a full-frame sensor (not with adequate qualiy anyway -- most lenses project a circle far larger) you wouldn't want to use an EF-S lens on a camera with a larger sensor.  But it can also create a physical problem (not just image quality problem).

Since a larger sensor requires a larger reflex mirror, the rear-most lens element on an EF-S lens would technically be back far enough that the mirror on a full-frame camera would hit it when it tries to swing clear to take the shot.  To protect against this, Canon designed a bit of shelf/ledge in the full-frame camera that prevents an EF-S from even being able to "seat" on a full-frame or APS-H camera.  So basically not only should you not attempt to use an EF-S lens on a full-frame body, Canon designed the mount to prevent you from doing that by mistake.

Canon's designation for lenses with image stabilization built-in is the letters "IS" in the name.

[Italian4215]

opps sorry for the misinformation, forgot a bought IS. Thanks for pointing that out and correcting me.