FD macro lens

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ben_wtrs

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Ben
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I was out bug hunting with my daughter this weekend and fitted my manual extension tubes on my 50mm 1.8.
I had a whale of a time and my 3 year old daughter loved the photos we got. But I was not as happy with the results the depth of field is tiny even set at f11. So last night I was thinking would a macro lens be any easier to use. Then I saw the price. But whilst looking a saw a fd 100mm macro lens for a good price and saw the adaptors for about a tenner with focus chips in.
My question is!!!
Would this sort of setup produce good results because as far as I can make out all the adaptor will do is act like an extension tube. And do you get better depth of field with a macro lens.
Thanks
Ben
 
ben_wtrs said:
I was out bug hunting with my daughter this weekend and fitted my manual extension tubes on my 50mm 1.8.
I had a whale of a time and my 3 year old daughter loved the photos we got. But I was not as happy with the results the depth of field is tiny even set at f11. So last night I was thinking would a macro lens be any easier to use. Then I saw the price. But whilst looking a saw a fd 100mm macro lens for a good price and saw the adaptors for about a tenner with focus chips in.
My question is!!!
Would this sort of setup produce good results because as far as I can make out all the adaptor will do is act like an extension tube. And do you get better depth of field with a macro lens.
Thanks
Ben
Click to expand...

(assuming you're a canon user, since you didn't say, but 'focus chips' give it away)

If it's an adapter without optics, then you'll lose infinity focus, and yes, it'll act as a 2-3mm extension tube. Probably not a problem for macro use really.

DOF is same as any lens for a given distance from the focal plane. However, with a proper macro lens you'll be a lot further from where you'd likely be with a 50mm + extension tubes, so DOF will be deeper, just don't expect miracles :)

As to what the quality will be like? No idea, that's likely to be down to the optics of the macro lens. Macro lenses were generally a lot rarer than they are now back in those days, and when you did find one they tended to be expensive and pretty good quality, so chances are it'll be fairly good.
 
Brilliant thanks for that it is looking like quite a good cheap option for me.
Is there anywhere other than the usual places eBay, classifieds etc maybe somewhere that specialises in old lenses?
Thanks
Ben
 
NikkiA said:
DOF is same as any lens for a given distance from the focal plane. However, with a proper macro lens you'll be a lot further from where you'd likely be with a 50mm + extension tubes, so DOF will be deeper, just don't expect miracles :)
Click to expand...

The part highlighted in bold can be very misleading.

Irrespective of the type of lens, the DoF will be the same if the magnification and aperture are the same. A 180mm macro lens focussed at 1:1 will have identical DoF to a 50mm macro lens (or 50mm + tubes) focussed to give 1:1 ......(1:1 meaning the image on the sensor/film is lifesize)

Bob
 
I had an FD 100mm macro lens and it worked very well on an EOS body (40D) with a cheap Ebay FD-EOS adapter, without the optical element and no focus confirmation. I also used an old Canon macrophoto lens on FD bellows with this adapter to achieve 10x magnification, fun but very hard to use.
 
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