Are there pros of using lens designed for digital FF on 35mm bodies?

neilt3 said:

I think rather than an adapter, if there was a lens of a different mount to what you usually use you'd just pick up a compatible body and use it with that .
The only modern dSLR lens that can really be adapted would be on a Canon EOS body .
But as most modern F mount lenses don't have an aperture ring you wouldn't be able to alter the aperture.
Cameras like Nikon F80 , Minolta Dynax 5 , Canon EOS 500n etc bodies are cheap to buy and readily available.

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Paul Howell said:

You can include Sony full frame A mount, the 5 and 8 pin lens without micro motors will work on Minolta A bodies and SSM lens will work on Minolta 5, 7 a few 9 bodies that were factory modified will also work with SSM lens. The question is, are Sony lens in this category digital lens, for the most part updated Minolta designs still made by Konica Minolta.

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When I referred to adapting lenses it was in reply to using adapters .
I mean using non native lenses on other mounts . For example using Nikon F mount lenses on Canon EOS bodies , an adapter is needed .

Using Sony A mount lenses on Minolta A mount bodies , film or digital is not adapting because they are native A mount lenses .
I use the Sony carl Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8 and Sony 70-400mm mkii G lenses amongst others on my Dynax 7 and SSM upgraded Dynax 9 frequently . I use some other lenses that were designed for digital cameras on my Minoltas as well , including some Tamron lenses .
They work well . Certainly the ZA lens had nothing to do with Minolta .
All my canon lenses apart from 60mm macro , 24mm f/2.8 and 40mm f/2.8 are film era lenses .
The 40mm certainly works well on a small film body such as the EOS 500n that works well to carry in a coat pocket .

neilt3 said:

When I referred to adapting lenses it was in reply to using adapters .
I mean using non native lenses on other mounts . For example using Nikon F mount lenses on Canon EOS bodies , an adapter is needed .

Using Sony A mount lenses on Minolta A mount bodies , film or digital is not adapting because they are native A mount lenses .
I use the Sony carl Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8 and Sony 70-400mm mkii G lenses amongst others on my Dynax 7 and SSM upgraded Dynax 9 frequently . I use some other lenses that were designed for digital cameras on my Minoltas as well , including some Tamron lenses .
They work well . Certainly the ZA lens had nothing to do with Minolta .
All my canon lenses apart from 60mm macro , 24mm f/2.8 and 40mm f/2.8 are film era lenses .
The 40mm certainly works well on a small film body such as the EOS 500n that works well to carry in a coat pocket .

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I think Sony A mount lenses started after Minolta Dynax 7D era which means they are all made for digital sensor. So maybe using Sony A lens on Minolta film body could use the digital design advantage?

MFstooges said:

I think Sony A mount lenses started after Minolta Dynax 7D era which means they are all made for digital sensor.

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This is not correct. The A mount was introduced with the Minolta Maxxum/Alpha 7000 autofocus SLR camera in 1985. It is a film-era legacy mount.

EDIT: Sorry, to address your point more properly: Many of the Sony-branded A-mount lenses were carried over from film-era Minolta designs. There were indeed a few late-introduced ones with newer designs, particularly among the zooms, and some of these will have performance advantages in the same way that late-model Canon EF or Nikon F mount lenses will. However, IIRC the SSM-type AF motor in most of these late lenses is compatible with only a few of the most recent Maxxum/Alpha film SLR bodies.

Oren Grad said:

This is not correct. The A mount was introduced with the Minolta Maxxum/Alpha 7000 autofocus SLR camera in 1985. It is a film-era legacy mount.

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Not sure why it is not correct. Sony bought the A mount from Minolta. Meaning any production of Sony A mount has to be after the purchase of Konica Minolta company by Sony.

MFstooges said:

I think Sony A mount lenses started after Minolta Dynax 7D era which means they are all made for digital sensor. So maybe using Sony A lens on Minolta film body could use the digital design advantage?

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That's not true .
I've been shooting Minolta A mount gear since the early 90's so am very familiar with them .
I bought Sony's first DSLR, the a100 to continue using my Minolta lenses .
I still shoot my Minolta lenses on my Minolta film SLRs, an a99ii and a77ii as well as my a7Riv via an adapter from 8mm to 500mm .
When Sony bought the Minolta imaging department they continued the lenses that Minolta made just rebranding them Sony .
Initially only a few new lenses were released .
Most of the rebranded lenses were from the film era anyway .
Some were just updated in 2000 or thereabouts to include the distance encoding chips for use with ADI flash with the Dynax 7 film SLR .
It wasn't until 2003 when the released the Dynax 7d ( dSLR ) .

Lenses such as the Sony/Minolta 50mm f/1.4 , 28mm F/2.8 etc were all the same optics that came out in 1985 .
Body styling and coatings changed several times over the years film and digital era .

MFstooges said:

Not sure why it is not correct. Sony bought the A mount from Minolta. Meaning any production of Sony A mount has to be after the purchase of Konica Minolta company by Sony.

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Sorry, my bad for reading and reacting too quickly - but see my edited post above with more detail.

MFstooges said:

Not sure why it is not correct. Sony bought the A mount from Minolta. Meaning any production of Sony A mount has to be after the purchase of Konica Minolta company by Sony.

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When Sony bought the Minolta imaging department they didn't scrap all their lenses and start again , they just rebadged them .
When Minolta brought out the Dynax 7d they didn't discontinue their film era lenses either .
A lot of the lenses sold by Sony were still just rebadged Minolta film era lenses until they dropped A mount in favour of E mount .

neilt3 said:

When Sony bought the Minolta imaging department they didn't scrap all their lenses and start again , they just rebadged them .
When Minolta brought out the Dynax 7d they didn't discontinue their film era lenses either .
A lot of the lenses sold by Sony were still just rebadged Minolta film era lenses until they dropped A mount in favour of E mount .

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I see. So which are the lens in A mount that were designed specifically for digital sensor and can still be used on Minolta film bodies? Or are those designs can only be found in E mount?

MFstooges said:

I see. So which are the lens in A mount that were designed specifically for digital sensor and can still be used on Minolta film bodies? Or are those designs can only be found in E mount?

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There's a comprehensive searchable lens database at Dyxum.com:

https://www.dyxum.com/lenses/

A quick search right now for Sony-branded full-frame A-mount lenses reminds me that most of the new-design lenses introduced after Sony took over in 2006 were either long telephotos or telephoto zooms, using the SSM-type AF motor that is not compatible with most A-mount film bodies. But search the database for yourself - there's plenty of information there about both Minolta/Sony and third-party A-mount lenses.

Oren Grad said:

There's a comprehensive searchable lens database at Dyxum.com:

https://www.dyxum.com/lenses/

A quick search right now for Sony-branded full-frame A-mount lenses reminds me that most of the new-design lenses introduced after Sony took over in 2006 were either long telephotos or telephoto zooms, using the SSM-type AF motor that is not compatible with most A-mount film bodies. But search the database for yourself - there's plenty of information there about both Minolta/Sony and third-party A-mount lenses.

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One original Sony SSM telephoto zoom predate Minolta's digital camera .
They were released for the Dynax 7 film camera .
It's quite possible Minolta was already developing the other telephoto lenses before the takeover .
Such as the 70-300mm G and 70-400mm G .
So it's never going to be clear if a lens was designed specifically for digital cameras or just with with digital in mind .
Certainly most of the original lineup predated the DSLRs by up to fifteen years .
But then you need to look at how far the Minolta engineers were looking when designing new optics .
In 2000 they released the Dimage RD-3000 , a Vectis V mount dSLR based on their APS mount lenses .
In 1995 they'd brought out the Dimage RD-175 , an A mount dSLR .
In the early 90's they had the ( IIRC) MVC-1000 digital camera plus they had still backs for the 1980's 7000AF and 9000AF .
These units all used video chips to do the imaging and we're technically analogue rather than digital, but certainly weren't film as the image was captured electronically.
So while young folk of today think digital ( or non film imaging ) is new , it's been going on fifty or so plus years .
When did Kodak develop the first imaging chip ?
I think it's older than me .

Also remember regards Sony lenses , when they bought the Minolta imaging department, the technicians , research and development came with it .
Some lenses were in early development which were carried on , these would have been for film and digital .
But Sony had no interest in film cameras , but weren't just designed specifically for digital .

As Sony had been using Zeiss lenses for a number of years , they had them come up with a few models to bring into production early , while these were new to Sony like the ZA 24-70mm and ZA 16-35mm they were designed with Zeiss knowledge going back decades , plus a bit of modern computing .

Hopefully it's a bit clearer to the OP that not everything released after digital became mainstream was designed specifically for digital .
There's a bit more to it than that .
Other marque's lenses still had to work correctly with film cameras that were being sold at the time .

Lenses designed for mirrorless cameras are a different case as they don't need to be backwards compatible with film , so they have a free run to make software rather than optical corrections for what would be serious flaws on a film cameras lens , sigh as CA , vignetting, distortion etc .
Only really the mirrorless lenses are truly designed only for digital.

And by mirrorless, I'm not including such as Leica M mount etc , before someone picks up on that one !

Edited for clarity .

MFstooges said:

I see. So which are the lens in A mount that were designed specifically for digital sensor and can still be used on Minolta film bodies? Or are those designs can only be found in E mount?

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All Sony and Minolta A mount lenses can be used on all A mount bodies both film and digital.
A few restrictions will apply .

1: lenses designed to cover only an APSC sensor will not cover the full frame if film at some or all focal lengths .

2: lenses that use SSM or SAM lens based AF motors will not auto focus on film cameras made before the Dynax 7 in 2000 , with the exception of some Dynax 9's that have the SSM and ADI flash metering upgrade .

3: the Zoom xi and Power Zoom lenses that Minolta made for the Xi range of cameras in the early 90's will only work correctly with with with camera bodies made after the first two series of bodies .
As the 5/7/9000AF and 3/5/7/8000i bodies only have five contacts on the bodies they lack the power supply for the power zoom function etc and are not fully compatible .
No great loss as apart from the 35-200mm zoom xi , there's nothing special about them anyway and weren't good to use .

Other brands such as Canon , all full frame EF mount lenses are backward compatible with all film and digital bodies .
The crop frame lenses ( EF-S) do not fit on full frame bodies.
Mirrorless lenses ( EF-M and EF-R ) obviously don't fit either .

Nikon F lenses fit all F mount film and digital bodies .
Lenses with motors in them don't autofocus with all cameras though , I/S doesn't work with all cameras ( though it'll happily drain their batteries !) , and lenses with an electronic aperture can't control the aperture on any film body or older digital .
Look at Ken Rockwell's site for the full list of compatibility nightmare that is Nikon !

At some point Pentax put AF drive motors in the lens as well and added a power supply connector to the body .
Bodies that predate this lose AF with these lenses .

But you need to understand that these changes weren't necessarily "made for digital" that prevents backwards compatibility, it's as technology moved on and things such as AF drive , moving to electronic apertures etc that restricts backward compatibility in the same way that film era camera lenses that came out in such as the 90's restrict there use on earlier camera , not the medium they were designed for .
Try sticking a 90's Nikon F G lens on your Nikon F3 and try altering the aperture !

Not as simple as digital v's film lens .
The designed for digital optics and coatings are still fine on film , it's just if the rest of the lens functions is the issue .


The only Sony Interchangeable lenses that can't be used on film cameras are the E mount lenses .
Nothing to do with the optics , they just don't fit !
You can mount any lens to a Sony E mount camera , but with the flange distance being so short and the lens being all electronic , you can't mount them on anything else .

neilt3 said:

So it's never going to be clear if a lens was designed specifically for digital cameras or just with with digital in mind....

Hopefully it's a bit clearer to the OP that not everything released after digital became mainstream was designed specifically for digital .
There's a bit more to it than that .
Other marque's lenses still had to work correctly with film cameras that were being sold at the time .

Lenses designed for mirrorless cameras are a different case as they don't need to be backwards compatible with film , so they have a free run to make software rather than optical corrections for what would be serious flaws on a film cameras lens , sigh as CA , vignetting, distortion etc .
Only really the mirrorless lenses are truly designed only for digital.

And by mirrorless, I'm not including such as Leica M mount etc , before someone picks up on that one !

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I agree with all of this. If you want a lens for use with a film SLR there's no benefit to getting hung up over "designed for digital". Newer lenses tended to take advantage of ongoing advances in design and production; that's enough in itself.

I've have one of Samyang's later APS-C Ultra wide angles on my film Pen FT via the aftermarket EOS to Pen FT mount adapter and the results were fine for what they were, it covered the image circle just fine, but the builtin lens hood meant the lens had to be turned so it wouldn't show up on the image circle. But a lot of Samyang's DSLR lenses were manual focus with no electronic contacts on them.

Lens makers can get sloppy with their designs now because all they have to do is make the camera compensate for it - as long as they're consistently bad. Cheaper to manufacture and a many of them cost a lot of money. Yep - $$$$.

I would trust Leica to make a good M lens because they also have to work on their film cameras.

I think Sigma Art level lens are well built and well controlled for distortion, the new 50 1.2 in L and E mount is 13 elements, not a cheap lens at all.

Paul Howell said:

I think Sigma Art level lens are well built and well controlled for distortion, the new 50 1.2 in L and E mount is 13 elements, not a cheap lens at all.

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Not all third party lenses can benefit from in camera correction, in which case they have to be designed correctly.
Especially expensive lenses such as a 50mm f/1.2 .
However, you'll not fit that lens on a film camera .

That is true, E mount only. I have a non arts late model Sigma 1.4 in Sigma SA mount, it works fine my Sigma Film bodies.

I wouldn't call it "designed correctly" vs incorrectly. Lenses meant for digital can be razor sharp from corner to corner wide open without being absolutely enormous by compromising on things that can be fixed in software like vignetting and distortion while saving the glass for things that *can't* be fixed in software like focal plane flatness and chromatic aberrations.

Panasonic MFT bodies are known to have CA correction , so yes it can be fixed.

there are a number of kinds of chromatic aberrations.

Medium format lenses have a larger image circle allowing swings and tilts, rise and falls, and shifts, when used with a moveable holder such as Cambo Actus attached to the FF camera.

See the bottom right of Clyde Butcher's technical page.

I have 2 Canon AF film bodies (K2, and T2) that I've tried with a few lenses. The issue I've seen hasn't been down to IQ/aberrations/etc, but rather focus accuracy. Especially with 3rd-party manufacturers, I feel like a lot of new lenses have been designed with AF microadjustment ability in mind, and that's obviously not something that the old film bodies can do (as far as I know, at least). The lenses I've used that haven't focused properly have been: Tamron 35 and 45/1.8 VC, Sigma 50/1.4 non-ART, and Canon EF 50/1.8 STM. It's a shame!

(And yes, I know Tamron has the tap-in console thingy, so solving the problem is likely possible...but I can't imagine it would be particularly fun!)

Axelwik said:

I would trust Leica to make a good M lens because they also have to work on their film cameras.

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Ironically, Leica had the most problems transitioning to digital as their lenses (and 3rd party M lenses too) performed horribly on their digital M cameras (light falloff and colour smearing on edges and corners). Their new lenses still depend on 6bit coding that enables the digital bodies to correct for that. Film doesn't have that problem and so far even the new Leica M lenses have been well corrected (or at least not noticeably worse than their "film" lenses) for distortion, but far from perfect. Leica does prioritise compactness and I guess something's got to give, for example Zeiss M lenses in general have less distortion, but are also (much) bigger than comparable Leica lenses.

Digital users do get the benefit of lens profiles that can further correct the residual distortion in Leica lenses.

brbo said:

Ironically, Leica had the most problems transitioning to digital as their lenses (and 3rd party M lenses too) performed horribly on their digital M cameras (light falloff and colour smearing on edges and corners). Their new lenses still depend on 6bit coding that enables the digital bodies to correct for that. Film doesn't have that problem and so far even the new Leica M lenses have been well corrected (or at least not noticeably worse than their "film" lenses) for distortion, but far from perfect. Leica does prioritise compactness and I guess something's got to give, for example Zeiss M lenses in general have less distortion, but are also (much) bigger than comparable Leica lenses.

Digital users do get the benefit of lens profiles that can further correct the residual distortion in Leica lenses.

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Yeah, maybe someday there will be a digital sensor that performs as well as film in that regard. Until then corrections will have to be made to account for sensor limitations.

Most to do with non-retrofocus wide angle lenses I suppose (the delightfully small wide lenses found on rangefinder cameras). Digital sensors seem incapable of properly recording an image too far from perpendicular, necessitating larger and heavier retrofocus lenses along with the optical gymnastics to make them work.