Canon EOS3 - lens compatibility

The Canon pancake lens produces only a slight amount of barrel distortion (0.6%) which is basically negligible. - photozone.de

May I ask which EOS line of camera is compact of all?

The most compact EOS film camera is one of the Rebel series. Most of them, however, have pentamirrors rather than pentaprisms, and thus have darker viewfinders.

A Rebel 2000/EOS 300 has a "pentaprism with roof mirror" (from the manual) with 90% coverage, is very compact, quite light, very functional and is ridiculously cheap.

Even with the accessory AA battery pack it is quite light and small.

There is now a 50mm 1.8 lens sitting on my desk, waiting to get used once the camera gets here.

Again, thank you all for your help in ironing out the details. I am somewhat tempted to upgrade to a 50mm 1.4 in the future. My somewhat failing eyes would appreciate the extra brightness I think.
Then the 85mm and 35mm will probably be added later down the road, if I decide I really like this camera.
I was originally going to get the higher end Pentax SLR, the MZ-S I belive it's called, so that I could use all of my Pentax lenses. Maybe that's where I end up eventually anyway; who knows?!

Not a bad price...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/870179-REG/Canon_40mm_f_2_8_EF_Pancake.html?sid=pricewatch

Dr Croubie said:

Doesn't look too bad to me, even Dead Link Removed than the Nifty Fifty...
(sorry, it's a digital review site link, but if you take a photo of a chequerboard on film it'll still look the same)

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Thanks for this.

I am not sure where I got my earlier information, but clearly it wasn't the best.

The 40mm lens does have one peculiarity that takes some getting used to. It has a "focus by wire" approach to manual focusing - it uses a stepping motor instead of responding mechanically to a turn of the focusing ring. The meter needs to be turned on for the motor to respond to your touch.

I prefer to shoot the FD bodies if I'm going to shoot lenses w/ adapters. The viewfinders are much brighter, and they have split prism focus screens (if you pick the right body). I had an inexpensive AE-1P that had one of the nicest viewfinders I've seen in a ling time, and would manually meter Nikon and Leica R lenses w/ a cheap $20 adapter. No glass elements needed and you got full infinity focus. It looked really neat w/ a non AI Nikon lens on it. W/ the Leica lens, you put a Leitax Chinese knock off Nikon adapter on the lens, then a Nikon to Canon FD adapter onto that. I also had an M42 to FD adapter that allowed you to use all manner of neat lenses on the AE-1P. Everything worked in stop down metering mode of course, but it did meter accurately.

I've been working with the 50mm f/1.8 borrowed lens for a couple of days now, and it's driving me nuts to focus manually with it.
Autofocus is not for me, because the camera cannot read my mind, and often times I focus on things in a scene that are not immediately obvious.

What recommendations can you give me on a 35mm or 50mm lens that fits the EOS3, that works with the EOS3, that is well built and doesn't break the bank. (I am far from able to purchase an L-series lens, so please don't go there).

Thanks.

EOS 3 may be a overkill for Samyang 35mm ;-)

Like I said earlier, Takumar 55mm f1.8 is a great lens. If you really are all in on this, I would also get a different focusing screen.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I've been working with the 50mm f/1.8 borrowed lens for a couple of days now, and it's driving me nuts to focus manually with it.
Autofocus is not for me, because the camera cannot read my mind, and often times I focus on things in a scene that are not immediately obvious.

What recommendations can you give me on a 35mm or 50mm lens that fits the EOS3, that works with the EOS3, that is well built and doesn't break the bank. (I am far from able to purchase an L-series lens, so please don't go there).

Thanks.

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Are you sure the lens is the problem?

If you can change the focusing screen, your solution may be there.

OK. I put up a lens test on Flickr. Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II versus Super Takumar 55mm f1.8 versus SMC Takumar 50mm f1.4
Note: I tried to mount the SMC Takumar 50mm 1.4 and it DOES NOT WORK. Will not focus to infinity. See the picture to see why.

Scroll through, there are seven photos, each lens wide open and at f8. Used f2 on the SMC Tak because I knew f1.4 would look terrible.
Focus is set on the EOS 3 label. Tripod and mirror lockup. Zoom in and make your own judgements. I think the results are fairly obvious.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22953190@N07/10157234036/in/photostream/

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I've been working with the 50mm f/1.8 borrowed lens for a couple of days now, and it's driving me nuts to focus manually with it.
Autofocus is not for me, because the camera cannot read my mind, and often times I focus on things in a scene that are not immediately obvious.

What recommendations can you give me on a 35mm or 50mm lens that fits the EOS3, that works with the EOS3, that is well built and doesn't break the bank. (I am far from able to purchase an L-series lens, so please don't go there).

Thanks.

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Your borrowed 50/1.8 II has the worst manual focus ring of any lens I have tried (matches the 75-300 piece of trash from about the same era) but IQ is very good for it's cost.

Canon EF 35/2.0 has a better focus ring than the EF 50mm f/1.8 II, but still requires a switch to be flipped to go from AF to MF. If you leave it in MF and MF only, it's fine. Build is fine, but not stunning and IQ is quite good. ~$200 used.

Canon EF 50/1.4 has full time manual focus (without throwing any switches) but the MF feel is compromised compared to a manual-focus-only lens like the Takumars or similar. ~$300 used.

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 is optimized for wide aperture use, has a better manual focus feel than the EF 50/1.4, but has a 77mm filter ring. That's not a problem for some, and it fits the feel of the EOS 3 quite well. I've been much happier with my copy of this lens than the EF 50/1.4 just due to the feel. I tend to use fast 50s near wide open, so the optimization towards that end is a large benefit for me. ~$400 used.

One last suggestion, if you are not afraid of slow aperture lenses and would be willing to tape the AF switch as has already been outlined, the SMC Takumar 50mm f/4.0 macro or Nikkor 55/3.5 are both stunning and will have no problems clearing the mirror. I have a friend who has used my Micro-Nikkor 55/3.5 to great results on EOS bodies film and digital. Here's an article for more info on the switch, although I don't agree with his recommendation to not lock lenses to the body for obvious reasons.


As for using AF, try converting it the camera via Custom Function #4 (link), to back button focus. This will allow you to do two things: 1) Pick one AF point, preferably the center point as it is the most sensitive; 2) Utilize AF only when you want to. This means you can point the center of the camera at whatever you want, focus on it, and it will not adjust focus when you go to set exposure via half-pressing the shutter.

I absolutely hate AF when it is set to default (half-press shutter to get AF activated and activate metering lock, if you are in an AE mode. I agree in that context that it is very hard to control, but if you give yourself some time using AF as I outlined above, you may have a change of heart as you can be very selective in it's application and sometimes the AF can do things your eye cannot.

Thank you for the info so far. I don't have much time today or tomorrow, but will review in the next few days.
I sincerely appreciate your kind help.

TheFlyingCamera said:

You need a 3rd party lensmount adapter. There are lots of these on eBay, but they are of varying quality. Go searching for reviews on m42-Canon EOS adapters to find which ones are best - some will not give you infinity focus because they're too thick, others may be likely to get stuck on your camera (I had that happen, frighteningly, on my Canon 5D with a Contax MM/Canon EOS adapter, and it bent part of the focusing screen retaining clip by the time I got it off). This is one thing NOT to cut corners on because solving the problem(s) a cheap one can cause may be far more costly than the better grade adapter.

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C/Y-EF on FF DSRL= Mirrorhitting-problem, google full of workarounds incl. mirror-shaving. Canon clearly obstructing C/Y-Zeiss-users to use their gems. But there is a workaround. with limits(no all lensesI and workaround there are all kind of Leitax-mounts(not adapters). the best adapter is K+F concept with Dandelion Lushnikov but only for APS-C and FF-SRLs. adapter meant. Rayqual could be of identical quality. glueing the chip must be learned since not that simple to position. optixpcb sent me crappy not centered chip-adapter or wobbling too much. and betrayed me twice. 100 chf gone. problem of this thin adapter(check google) is lkens locker blade. only K+F concept has the right thickness. anyway when removing too much from time to time rebending back is needed. so material must be of high quality. the only adapter which can be used to avoid mirror-hitting(=mirror-clearing) was gone thick DSLRExchange-adapter. it has as second advantage: its not using a blade but rather a grub screw second one is rotation-locker. have the last four of these concept my jorge Torralba. if someone could produce them again. DISADVANTAGE: no INFINITY. one day 2024 certain i can tell how far my 300mm can focus. or 200mm. have also C/Y-lens-adapters for other lenses or lenssystems til 600 plus converter. novoflex followfocus has option to adjust infinity. i wonder how good that will working with no infinity adapter. of course i can get infinity without that specific too thick adapter.. or maybe not. this is a different story we must discuss elsewhere. can test that also on APS-C since have no FF-DSRL in the near future.