Canon FD to EOS

[livemoa]

Hi, I have been offered an EOS body for next to nothing. I have lenses for my A1, is it possibile to get an adaptor to use these on the EOS body?

 

[Dirb9]

Yes and no. The film plane to lens mount distance for FD is about the shortest for any SLR. Thus, it can't really be easily adapted to any other camera. There are basically five options:
1. Get the uber-expensive genuine Canon adapter. (las on on ebay was $1000+) There's virtually no loss in optical quality, but it only works on lenses longer than 200mm and it acts like a TC, so you lose 2/3 of a stop.
2. Get a cheap adapter ring from like B&H There's no loss in optical quality, but you can't focus to infinity.
3. Get a cheap knockoff of the Canon adapter. It'll cost about $60, but there are the same problems as with the Canon adapter, plus the optical quality sucks.
4. Adapt the lenses permanently to EOS. It's possible, there was a guy who did a few lenses (including wide angles), but got sick and stopped doing conversions. There's no loss in optical quality, but metering is stopped down only. The lenses can never go back to FD mount. Nevertheless, this shows that it is at least possible.
5. Just use you FD lenses on your A-1, and likewise for the EF lenses!
I hope this helps.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

The above answer covers all the possibilities.

I actually have the Canon FD-EOS adapter and the similarly rare Tamron Adaptall EOS mount, so when I finally get around to getting an EF-mount camera, most of my lenses will still be usable, and I'll just continue using the unconvertable ones on my F-1N and my Super-8 camera with an FD-C-mount adapter.

If you want to find these EOS adapters, you just have to be on the lookout for them all the time, and when they show up, be ready to buy them.

 

[gordrob]

If you are lucky enough to get one of the original Canon FD-EOS adapters beware they are not designed to work with all the existing FD lenses only some of the longer telephoto lenses, mostsly the L glass lenses. Canon also made a macro version - the FD-EOS Macro Converter that would allow you to use your macro equipment - bellows and closeup equipment on your EOS camera -even digtal bodies.
Try these links for more info about manual lenses on EOS bodies
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http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-eos-to-fd-adapter.html
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Regards
Gord

 

[edwardkaraa]

B&H offers a Hama adapter which claims to allow infinity focusing. It has one optical element but I'm not sure if it has any effect on the focal length.

 

[kb244]

Probally won't affect the focal length other than the sensor size, but it'll likely be explained as above as affecting the optical quality. Probally very similar to the FD->EOS adapter we have here in the store for about 80$.

My solution to the problem was basically just sticking to a particular lens brand for most of the lens. For example I use a few Tamron Adaptall-2 lens, a 90mm f/2.8, 28mm f/2.5 etc. The idea was you just took off the lens mount and replaced it with what you wanted, in my case, take off the FD and put on the EF mount. Works quite well though I'm told tamron stopped making the EF Adaptall mounts a while back, but if you wanted lens that works on all of them and didn't mind the manual focusing, and didnt already have a bunch of lens, the adaptalls have a few great lens in the collection.

Otherwise you probally would be looking at either giving up infinity focus, giving up optical quality to get infinity, or giving up a hell of alot of money to acheive infinity without much loss of quality. The only other way I can think of that I havent seen anyone attempt is re-making the mount on the lens into an EF bayonet so that the back element registration was correct... but wouldnt let you use it on the FD anymore, and like I said not somehting I've seen before.