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Film manual focus lens use on DSLR

shorelog
Apprentice

I have a few Canon manual focus lenses for FTb film cameras. Has anyone had any luck adapting these to Canon DSLR?

Thanks.

1 REPLY 1

Daily_Llama
Contributor

In a quick word:  No.

 

There *are* adapters that will allow certain FD-type lenses to fit onto pre-EOS camera bodies - no features of the lenses or camera bodies function together - but all require an optical element in the design (the light path to the sensor) and that should just about "seal the deal" as to why you should simply move on with EOS-EF / EF-S lenses with your dSLRs - because even the "best" of these FD-to-EOS versions simply degrade the image to unacceptable levels.

 

I share your pain ... because some of the older FD / FD-SSC "film" lenses rivaled anything on the market!!!  I still have a 35mm f/2.0 FD-SSC that "got into a brawl" with a Zeiss T* on a friend's Contax RTS ... and in our unofficial basement tests, simply blew it away!  Resolution - at any aperture - contrast, distortion - it was simply no contest in lop-sided favour of the Canon.  Never got a chance to compare it with an R-series from the Leica SLRs of the day ... but several of my Kodachrome 25 / 64 slides at a former camera club were blue-ribbon winners.

 

Same spectacular lens on one of these FD adapters?  About 1/4 the quality.  Image looked as if it had been shot with grease smeared on the front element ...

 

So, again:  No.

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