Old SLR lenses on DSLR?

Any old Canon lens from an EOS SLR (EF fitting) will work fine on a DSLR. For non EF/EF-S fittings you can buy an adapter, but you will lose auto focus. Some old third party lenses with EF fittings will work, but not all of them.
 
I have a few old lenses off film body EOS cameras, a couple of years back it was as cheap to buy a film body and lens combo as it was just a lens (off e-bay) but that seems to have dried up and only kit lenses seem to be out there and usually poor ones at that. The way to tell if an old lens is any good (generally) is to look for a metal mount and a distance scale around the lens body (which moves as the lens focuses, thereby indicating distance to object), they were generally the 2nd quality lenses after the much more expensive ones, they were well made and had very good optical qualities even by todays standards. They tended to be a little slow and noisy focusing but some were pretty ok. We have a 70/210 f3.5/4.5 (I think the aperture range is correct, it certainly varies with focal length) which is an absolute peach from yesteryear, almost as good and quick as my 70/200 F4 L lens but a lot less money and crucially for the Mrs a lot lighter.
As already stated even older lenses can be made to fit but you lose the electrical connectivity so stuff set by the camera wont work, aperture for instance.
Matt
 
Pre EF mount Canon lenses are about the only lenses you can't get an adaptor for to fit the EOS mount, it has a smaller throat the the old FD mount.

But Pentax k, M42, Nikon and Olympus lenses usually work in fully manual mode. You can even get adaptors that'll give focus confirmation.
 
Phil V said:
Pre EF mount Canon lenses are about the only lenses you can't get an adaptor for to fit the EOS mount, it has a smaller throat the the old FD mount.
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Incorrect. There are plenty of convertors out there for fitting FD lenses to EOS cameras.

There are a few things to consider when looking at which type to buy. With a basic convertor you will lose the ability to focus to infinity, due to the extra distance that the convertor adds between the lens and the sensor. Another type of convertor has a correction lens fitted in it to get around this problem, but the addition of the extra glass can lead to a slight fall off in image quality. Finally these adaptors can be had either with or without a focus confirm chip. All FD lenses will have to be used in full manual mode, for setting the aperture and for focussing, but the convertors with a focussing chip fitted will enable the focussing confirm red flash in the viewfinder.
 
Scarecrow said:
Incorrect. There are plenty of convertors out there for fitting FD lenses to EOS cameras.

There are a few things to consider when looking at which type to buy. With a basic convertor you will lose the ability to focus to infinity, due to the extra distance that the convertor adds between the lens and the sensor. Another type of convertor has a correction lens fitted in it to get around this problem, but the addition of the extra glass can lead to a slight fall off in image quality. Finally these adaptors can be had either with or without a focus confirm chip. All FD lenses will have to be used in full manual mode, for setting the aperture and for focussing, but the convertors with a focussing chip fitted will enable the focussing confirm red flash in the viewfinder.
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This is funny.
Whereas we can fit other mounts and they'll work optically perfectly ( what I believed to be the point of a lens) the FD adaptors either don't focus to infinity or they degrade the lenses quality.

Sure I was wrong, but for me the point of using old lenses is to get a great quality product at a good price. The FD adaptors don't fit into that, so oddly I'd stand by what I said. Most makes of old camera mounts will work well with EOS cameras but FD mount lenses won't.
 
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