Old lenses on new dSLR?

Padraig Mor

Hi,

As most of you know, the prices being charged by Canon, Nikon etc for their fancy pants lenses for digital cameras are horrendous. I'm wondering whether it's feasible to use old (like 20, 30.... yrs old) lenses on digital SLRs via mounting adaptors. I've a 400d and am thinking of picking up something like a Zeiss 200mm on eBay. You can get the adaptors there too, although I understand you're better off paying more for better ones. I know you have to set the focus and aperture manually but I'm sure you'd get used to it. What would the best adaptor to get be - the M42 mount seems to have a wide range of lenses.

Getting several lenses for the price of one seems to be a great deal - where's the catch?!

B0rG

manual focus though...
and small viewfinder on 400D makes it very difficult to focus correctly.
So yes, you can use old lenses via mount, but only for certain tasks - like you will not be able to shoot wild life, as it moves faster than you can focus manually. My advice to go for shorter range MF lenses, as this is different style of shooting.

Padraig Mor

B0rG wrote:

manual focus though...
and small viewfinder on 400D makes it very difficult to focus correctly.
So yes, you can use old lenses via mount, but only for certain tasks - like you will not be able to shoot wild life, as it moves faster than you can focus manually. My advice to go for shorter range MF lenses, as this is different style of shooting.

Yeah, I suppose you wouldn't be chasing any animals aroud alright! You have a point about focussing on the samll 400d screen as well. However, I see some sellers on eBay are now providing mount adapters that 'fool' the camera into triggering the focus confirmation signal. Could be useful.

B0rG

Padraig Mor wrote:

Yeah, I suppose you wouldn't be chasing any animals aroud alright! You have a point about focussing on the samll 400d screen as well. However, I see some sellers on eBay are now providing mount adapters that 'fool' the camera into triggering the focus confirmation signal. Could be useful.

Jeez, Padraig, ...
you still have to focus manually, don't you?


And you will have to have some sort of device to override camera's focus confirmation, good adaptors usually do that. I'm gonna be buying meself some Russian manual focus fisheye over xmas when I get back home, so I'd be able to tell you more how it works. Or may be go for some Canon manual fisheye haven't decided yet. And I don't wanna spend more than 100 for such a toy.

Zillah

Whats wrong with manual focus? I find it works fine. Just don't have the aperture wide open and it'll be fairly forgiving.

B0rG

depends what you're shooting of course...

I was shooting a face portrait 50 @ 1.4 (paper thin dof), not enuff ligth, AF just gave up, tried to focus manually on 350D - missed all 10 shots. And on the next day just ordered flash in B&H.