Old Lenses On New DSLRs

[Harlequin565]

Hi there,

I have a Canon 50D, and during my quest to raise some cash for an L lens I have been eBaying like mad.

Browsing some of the older camera equipment, I came across M42 lenses that could be adapted to modern DSLRs.

Risking a tenner, I bought an M42 adapter, and a Palinar 35mm f2.8 just to see what the quality was like. It only arrived yesterday, and I have to say that I'm impressed. The build quality seems excellent, and it's nice to have a physical manual control over the camera - rather than button pushing.

So I've started looking at other lenses to have a go with, but am getting hopelessly confused by all the different mounts and adapters. I've read that the Canon FD mount doesn't adapt well to Canon EF (even though you can get adapters).

Are there any websites/forums that explain more about this process? It's a cheap way of getting quality glass at the loss of automatic control, which is not a problem for me.

Or... Are there any other common mounts that adapt well to DSLRs?

Thanks in advance for any help. And yes - there have been a couple of threads recently on M42 mounted lenses which has prompted me to post this.

Cheers!

-H

 

[photon]

Some Canonistas butcher Pentax FA Limiteds to fit, but that's not a low cost route. You're more than likely to find all normal bases covered in M42, so then it's down to researching specific lenses and their foibles e.g. the yellowing of Pentax Takumars with "radioactive" glass.

You could also try a body from Nikon/Fuji or Pentax and use Tamron Adaptall-2 lenses as intended (rather than with an M42 mount and adapter for Canon). Pentax works better, allowing control of the aperture of "A" lenses via the command wheel on the camera body, and no need to tell the camera the max aperture of the lens.

I've no experience with Olympus or Sony/Minolta but I've read of Oly users using old lenses, too.

 

[Luke_]

I have a new Pentax K20D and that uses the Kaf2 mount.

Which is backwards compatible to all the other Pentax lens mounts.

I use old lenses on my DSLR and it saves me a shed load! The fact that my camera has built in Image Stabilisation means that all my old lenses are also Image Stabilised.

I know that the Sony cameras use the Alpha mount, which is backwards compatibale to the old Konica minolta mount.

 

[dalex_257]

Are there any websites/forums that explain more about this process? It's a cheap way of getting quality glass at the loss of automatic control, which is not a problem for me.

Or... Are there any other common mounts that adapt well to DSLRs?

Thanks in advance for any help. And yes - there have been a couple of threads recently on M42 mounted lenses which has prompted me to post this.

The lens for each system are designed so that their projected plane is expected to be at a certain distance from the rear of the lens (sometimes referred as lens register or flange focal distance FFD or back focal distance BFL). Each lens focused at infinity will basically have it's back set up at that distance, and focusing closer will just move optical assembly farther away from image plane (it's a bit more complicated but for simplicity consider it to be working like that). Each camera system of course has it's own FFD (Nikon F mount 46.50mm, Canon FD mount 42mm, Canon EF mount 44mm, M42 mounts 45.46mm and so on - large list here).

From all this and knowing about infinity focusing, you can see that it is possible to fully use the lens on any system that has smaller FFD then the one lens was designed for - the adapter then will have to compensate for the difference between FFDs. If however the lens FFD is larger then the system you try to mount it on, then you will not be able to focus at infinity. Depending on a lens and the difference, you will be able to use it and focus on some range of close distances but it will be limited. Sometimes you can see an adapters that try to compensate for this by adding some optical correcting element to the adapters but this generally degrades the optical quality of the lens.

So my answer (and conclusion to this all) is that check your lenses FFDs from the link I gave and if it is larger than your Canon (like M42s) then you can safely use it.

I find this to be a great and cheap way of getting excellent and sometimes prohibitively priced optical quality. Using the medium format lenses for example makes it even possible to have tilt/shift in your DSLR (pentacon six lenses and their tilt/shift adapters to Nikons/Canons). MF lenses also have an advantage of a much larger image circle and will hardly ever vignette on DSLRs.

 

[Harlequin565]

Thanks for all the replies, and especially to dalex for that comprehensive explanation.

That link is very helpful as well.

Much appreciated.

-H

 

[AndyWest]

I am on http://forum.mflenses.com/

Great site with many experts! I buy my adapters (M42 to Canon) from Amazon at £2.49 each.

Check out my Flickr or the manual lens forum for image eamples with different lenses. Also Flickr 'groups' is good. Search for the lens you want/have and there should be a group dedicated to that lens.