The Pitfall of Ultra Precise Lens Adapter

Back in the days when lens adapters were uncommon, they were well made and precise, but expensive. Today, most cheap adapters you can buy from eBay are mass produced in China; quality is acceptable, but precision is usually not a huge consideration.  In fact, nearly all of these adapters for mirrorless cameras allow the lens to focus past infinity, and this is intentional.  In the beginning, many users found that the adapters they bought could not focus their lenses to infinity, and they returned the adapters. Manufacturers then started to make the adapters slightly thinner than the official mount measurement; this would allow the majority of lenses to achieve infinity focus, but usually slightly pass it.

To me, this is acceptable.  After decades of use, most old lenses would deviate from the original specs and they may focus closer or further than they were designed to do. If you make an adapter that’s perfect, some lenses will be blurry when the lens is focused to infinity. All Canon auto focus lenses that use UltraSonic Motor (USM), allow the lens to focus pass infinity to compensate for parameters that could affect infinity focus, such as temperature variations and manufacturing tolerance.  But, manual focus lenses do not have this luxury.

I have two relatively expensive adapters; one Canon FD to M4/3 adapter made in Poland, bought right after the G1 came out, and the other, Leica-R to Canon EOS adapter, made by Elefoto of Japan.  For whatever reason, none of my Leica-R lenses would focus to infinity with the Elefoto adapter.  I tried the 28mm f2.8 Elmarit, 35mm, 50mm, and 90mm f2 Summicrons, and two 90mm f2.8 Elmarits.  I don’t know what lenses they used as a reference when the adapter was designed, or perhaps there is a defect in manufacturing.  The Polish adapter, on the other hand, worked perfectly with most of my FD lenses on the Panasonic G1, and when lens is set to infinity, everything is sharp and clear.  I started using this adapter on the E-M5 lately and so far, found that two of the lenses are just shy of infinity focus: FD 50mm f1.2 S.S.C, and FD 35mm f2 S.S.C.  If the aperture is set to f8 or smaller, sharpness becomes acceptable, but still not quite there.  A mere millimeter could mean in focus, or not.

For this reason, I usually just buy the cheap adapters, knowing that they would at least give me infinity focus.  The only thing that worries me is the flatness of the adapter, which could cause de-centring issues resulting in one side of the picture to be sharper than the other, if tolerance not kept in check.

Smoke Break - Canon FD 200mm f4 & Olympus E-M5.

The Downside of Cheap Adapters

My Leica-R 28mm f2.8 Emarit seems to perform differently on different cameras; very good on the Canon crop bodies, but it's horrible on the NEX-6, with basically the same size sensor as the Canon. I noticed it but didn't give it much thought, since I hardly ever use this lens. It is the least used Leica lens I have.  The edges on this lens is just terrible on the NEX-6. Then I put it on my 5D Mark II, and I was surprised to find that the edges are way better on it than on the NEX-6.

It didn't take long to realize that it was fault of the adapters; most of my adapters are cheap ones, and I am using two adapters for all my Leica-R lenses on the NEX-6. The reason is that I am trying to reduce the number of adapters to buy for different systems. Since I already have the adapters for Canon for most mount, I just bought a NEX-EOS mount, and then mount the Leica-R and other lenses onto the NEX-EOS adapter. Most cheap adapters don't have the precision as the more expensive ones, but most of the time we don't notice too much of it.  When stacking two adapters, the tolerance quickly fades and the errors in machining adds up. Most obvious sign is one side of image is less sharp than the other side.

I guess I am going to have to buy dedicated adapters for the NEX.

Colours! - Canon 5D Mark II & Leica-R 28mm f2.8 Emarit @ f4.5.

Rain drops - Canon 5D Mark II & Leica-R 28mm f2.8 Elmarit @ f2.8.

The Pain of Adapting Lenses on Canon Full Frame Cameras - Part I

For those of you who never had to use your manual focus lenses on DSLRs, especially Canon full frame DSLRs, consider yourself lucky. Before there was mirrorless cameras on the market, the Canon EOS mount was the most adaptable digital SLRs for manual focus lenses. It can take Nikon F-Mount, Pentax K-Mount/M42-Mount, Olympus OM-Mount, Leica R-Mount, Rollei QBM-Mount, Exakta EXA-Mount, Contax C/Y-Mount, most medium format mounts, and possibly others. In theory, all the lenses of these mounts should work without problems, but like everything else in life, there are exceptions.

The Canon EOS mount can take other lenses is due to its shorter lens to sensor flange distance at 44mm, which is shorter than all of the mounts listed above. For example, M42 mount has a flange distance of 45.46mm. This means that if an adapter with a thickness of 1.46mm or thinner, is used to mount the M42 lens to EOS mount, the lens can focus to infinity. Some mounts, like the Exakta and Rollei, have a flange distance of 44.7mm and 44.6mm respectively, which means the adapter must be less than 1mm in thickness. Most of the adapters on the market that claim you can focus your Extaka and Rollei lenses to infinity are lying; none of the ones I bought could do that, except one I just got yesterday, which I will get to later. An adapter that's thinner than 1mm has at least two limitations: 1) it's hard to make it strong enough, 2) very hard to mount it on the lens without it cutting your hand with it's sharp, thin edge.

Adapters are just one of the issues. Even if you manage to get your lens to focus to infinity, for some lenses, there is another problem: the dreaded mirror blockage. What happens is that the rear of some lenses goes deeper into the mirror chamber than others and the mirror would hit the lens, especially at infinity focus. The worse Canon camera bodies with this issue is the 5D classic and 5D mark II. 1-Series of bodies are better, and cropped sensor bodies are the most compatible with the least trouble on manual focus lenses. In order to use their favourite lenses, some people has gone as far as cutting part of the reflex mirrors on their 5D/5D II! If you want to see an example of this, check out this link and scroll down until you see the 5D with its mirror shaved. Or, just image search on Google for 5D Mirror Cut. Personally, I wouldn't go this extreme. The good news is that newer cameras with Live-View partly solve this problem, by flipping up the mirror and shoot like a mirrorless camera.

Next time we will look at some of the lenses that won't work with the full frame Canon 5D/5D II.

Bokeh - Canon 5D Mark II & Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 50mm f2 @ f2. Click for larger.

Current State of Lens Adapters

It has been almost eight years since I started using manual focus lenses on my digital SLRs; longer than most people.  Back then, adapters were expensive, even for a Canon EOS-M42, which cost around $50 to $60, and now can be had for under $5.  But I was happy to pay the price, because at least someone was willing to produce these adapters so that wonderful old lenses could have a second life.

With more companies getting into the lens adapter business, adapters are getting better and more sophisticated; they are getting smart too.  Old adapters were purely mechanical and there was no electronic linkage between adapter and camera, but that has changed.  First we had the EOS-NEX adapter by Metabones, that allows the NEX camera to control aperture of Canon EF lenses from the NEX camera.  Since then, various Chinese adapter makers introduced their own, with image stabilization and AF support.  They are also readying the Contax-G rangefinder to NEX adapter that allows auto focus.

The latest, and the best news, is the Metabones SpeedBooster adapters that makes full frame lenses behave the same on NEX or M4/3 cameras by angle reduction.  It behaves the opposite of lens extenders, with an added benefit of increasing the maximum aperture by one stop.  So, your EF 24mm f1.4 will have basically have the same angle of view on the NEX camera, but at f1.0 instead. The optical lens in the adapter was designed by the very well known Dr. Brian Caldwell.  So, all is well, right?  Yes and no.  The price is very steep.  Yup, $600 for the adapter.  Unlike mechanical adapters that can be copied/cloned, the optics in the adapter is pretty hard to copy without being sued.  So, don't expect the price of this great adapter to get cheaper any time soon.

Cherry Blossom in Infrared - Canon 20D IR & Pentax-M 20mm f4.

Adapting Manual Focus Lenses to Your Digital Camera - Part IV

Last time we talked about adapting lenses to the M4/3 and Sony E-Mount in Part III.  This time around I am going to share some of my experiences on how to start, where to get lenses, what to avoid when buying lenses and talk a bit about adapter, and finally, why bother with manual focus lenses.  This is a long article and I was debating whether to break it into two, but decided to just leave it as one.

I shot film from early 1980s to about 2001 with only two cameras, and not at the same time!  My first camera was a Pentax Program Plus with a 50mm f1.7, and I later added the 35-70mm f4, and a Sigma 70-210mm f4-5.6 cheap zoom.  Used this setup until 1995, when I got my first AF camera - the Canon Elan II with a EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5, which lasted until I got my first digital camera, the Canon Powershot G1.  As you can see, I did not have gear acquisition issues back then and was quite happy with what I had.  From the film camera experience, it's kind of natural for me to use manual lenses on digital SLRs.  But, many people who start using DSLRs have never touched a film camera before, so how to you start?

Getting Started

My suggestion is to start simple.  Manual focus lenses are not for everyone.  Some people get very frustrated with getting unsharp pictures from manual lenses due to focus problems, and some just like auto focus lenses more.  If I had to start today, I would buy three lenses to start with: Vivitar 28mm f2.8, Takumar 55mm f1.8 (version doesn't really matter), and a Takumar 135mm f3.5, all in M42 mount.  All these lenses should cost about $100 plus $15 for the mount of your camera.  If you don't like them, you can sell them later at little or no lost of money.  I would spend a lot of time with the Takumar 55mm f1.8, since it's one of the best manual focus lenses and it was built like a tank, and focuses like a dream, not to mention optically excellent.  Use these lenses for at least a couple of months, and see if you start to grow on them.  For people who started out using manual focus lenses with film camera, this is natural, but if you don't find yourself enjoy using them, auto focus lenses are probably a better choice for you.

Megan from 2006 - Canon 10D & SMC Takumar 55mm f1.8

Where to Buy

If you like using manual focus lenses, chances are you will not be happy with what you have for long, and the next thing you do is looking for better and more exotic lenses.   This could be both a good and a bad thing.  The good thing is that you can get some really good fast lenses for a lot less than the auto focus equivalent, and the bad thing is that you could get hooked and addicted.  But, where to get lenses?

For most people, eBay is probably the best place where you can get all kinds of lenses, but unfortunately, it's also one of the most expensive place to buy lenses.  Personally, I never bought a lens from eBay.  Just don't like competing with other people on the price.  My usual sources of lenses is Craigslist, Camera shows, Pawnshops or second hand camera stores, and occasionally, camera stores.  Some of my favourite lenses were bought from my local Craigslist, such as the JML 25mm and 50mm f0.95, Kinoptik 210mm f2.8, and the Kilfitt Makro Kilar 90mm f2.8 at very reasonable prices.  Check your local community or flee market for used camera shows.  Here in Toronto, there are three to five of these shows every year so lots of opportunities to check out some lenses you want to buy.  I occasionally get some good deals on lenses from Pawnshops and second hand stores.  If you live in a small community, unfortunately, you only choice might be eBay.  Just remember, you don't have to buy all the lenses you want in one shot.  Finding one of the lenses you want after a long hunt is a thrill and that's part of the fun.  Make it fun, but don't get addicted.

What to look out for when buying manual focus lenses
First thing first - make sure it's functional.  Aperture clicks and stops down, focusing action is smooth without choppiness.  Aperture and focusing are two most important things to look for, because if these two things don't work, you either can't focus, or shoot wide open all the time, or both.

Other areas of concern is fungus.  Be sure to check carefully there is no fungal growth inside the lens.  Very minor ones, if the lens is cheap enough, can be tolerated, especially if the growth is at the corners.  The worse kind is the one growing in the rear elements.  Generally, avoid lenses with fungus as they will continue to grow and get worse.

Scratches on glass elements.  I am not as concern about this as other people.  I have had lenses which are very scratched up and they produce beautiful pictures.  Minor scratches do not affect the performance of the lens, but heavy and fine scratches all over the lens will soften the lens, and make it more prone to flare.  So, a few minor scratches are ok, and they tend to be cheaper.  Avoid heavy scratches at the rear elements, especially when they are in the middle.

Dust Specks/Haze.  It's unavoidable.  Old lenses are generally not very well sealed and thus dust will get inside more easily.  Again, don't panic when you see a few specks of dust inside. Practically ALL my lenses have some degree of dust problems.  However, haze is a big issue.  Basically it's a layer of very fine dust settled over a long time.  This haze will reduce contrast of the lens, and makes the lens flare easily.  Avoid lenses with haze.

Oil inside glass/Aperture blades.  In many preset type lenses, oil on blade is normal and should not be overly concerned about them.  Some of them have oil on purpose to lubricate the blades.  But for auto aperture type, oil in them is not normal.  Eventually, more will leak out and the aperture blades will stick together and you won't be able to stop down any more.  If you see oil on non-Preset type lenses, it's the first sign that the aperture may stick in the near future.

De-centering issues.  Many old lenses have this issue, especially those that were repaired or opened before.  Generally, the problem is that one side is sharp, but the other side is blurry.  This could also be caused by a cheap adapter, so be sure you know that the problem lies.

Adapters

Many asked what brand of adapters they should buy.  I really don't know.  Personally, I buy cheap Chinese made adapters and they have been working well for me.  Occasionally, I would buy a few good ones, like those from Fotodiox (pro-series), and Metabones.  High quality adapters can cost hundreds of dollars each.  If you  are just starting out, I suggest getting the cheap ones to try.  Unless you have some very expensive lenses, like a collection of Leica M-Mount lenses, it might make more sense to get a good adapter to share amount your lenses.  Even though I buy mostly cheap adapters, I have spent more than $2,000 on adapters so far, because I have so many different lens mounts.  They used to be very expensive, even for an M42-EOS adapter, until the Chinese started making and selling them.  Generally, common mounts like M42, Nikon, Olympus, etc, are very cheap, because demands are higher and they can sell at lower price but at greater quantities.  More obscure mounts like Alpa, DKL, etc, are far more expensive because there aren't that many lenses out there and therefore demand for them are much lower.

The major difference between cheap and expensive adapters are precision and accuracy.  Cheap adapters usually are not very accurate, and they tend to focus past infinity or not reaching infinity.  Cheap ones are also less precisely made where flatness of the adapter is not guaranteed, resulting in uneven sharpness in the pictures.  But, buying an expensive adapter does not guarantee it would work flawlessly with your lens.  I have one quite expensive and name brand Leica to EOS adapter which would not allow any of my Leica-R lenses to focus to infinity.  Be sure you can return the adapter if they don't perform as advertised.

Now that you have some knowledge of what lenses you can use, and what adapter to buy to get the lens to work on your digital camera.  The final question you might be pondering remains: Why bother with manual focus lenses?


Manual Focus Lenses - the good


Value for the money:
Most consumer lenses that come with the camera these days are not very good.  For one thing, they are slow, Often with a maximum aperture of f5.6 at the long end.  If you need to shoot at low light, you will have to folk out a few hundred dollars for a faster auto focus prime.  On the other hand, there are some great manual focus lenses costing under $40, such as the Takumar 55mm f1.8, which has better quality, in terms of build and optical, than the kit zoom you have.  Yes, it's not fair to compare a zoom to a prime, but if you want low light shooting lenses, there is no other choice.  If you have never used a large aperture lens before, you will be surprised to find how wonderful it is to be able to shoot shallow depth of field.


In Control:
I don't know about others, but I feel a sense of control when using manual focus lenses.  Let's face it, the cameras we have today basically does everything for us.  Auto exposure, auto focus, auto white balance, auto ISO, etc.  I sometimes feel that it's the camera doing all the decision for me.  With manual focus lenses, I control the aperture or shutter speed and focusing.  If you are using manual lenses for video, you will know the focusing on manual focus lenses are light years better than auto focus equivalent.

A satisfying experience:
The feeling after looking at a beautiful photograph taken with a cheap lens gives me immense satisfaction.  True, many manual focus lenses are not cheap, and can be more expensive than AF version, but majority of them are cheaper, especially the common ones.

Variety:
There are thousands of old lenses out there, most of them are cheap.  You can try many of them without breaking the bank, not to mention the different type of lenses like Cine lens, Lomo effect lenses (Lomo/Lensbabies), Telescopes, microscopes and much more.  All these the original manufacturers do not make. Different lenses give you distinctive looks to your pictures.

Manual Focus Lenses - the bad

No Automation:
With very few exceptions, adapting manual focus lenses on your digital camera means you will lose all the automated features.  There will be no auto focus, no auto aperture control, and in some cases, no metering (for some Nikon consumer DSLRs).

Quality of lenses not guaranteed:
Since most manual focus lenses are old, some are decades old. Even the best kept lenses might have minor issues after so many years of use. Most of them do not look like new (if that bothers you).  Some might have aperture issues, others have focusing problems, etc.  Read the section on "What to look out for when buying a manual focus lens".

Flare Easily:
Old lenses (even many new AF ones) flare easily, as the coating on them (some don't even have coatings) are not as effective as modern coatings.  This problem can be partially avoided by using lens hoods, or not shooting into the light source.

Exposure Variance:
This is only for the Canon DSLRs shooting through the view finder.  Live-view has no problem with this.  Basically, as you stop down the lens, the exposure tend to be less accurate.  My experience shows that some lenses need to be dialed -1 in exposure compensation for each f-stop you stop down.  EVIL camera shooters do not have this problem, as what you see in exposure is what you get.  You will learn to compensate in no time at all, so this is really not a problem.

A word about exotic lenses

Eventually, you will get tired of your garden variety of common lenses you have in your possession, and start looking at more exotic lenses.  Names that you may never have heard before, like Alpa, Dallmeyer, Kinoptik, Angenieux, Som Berthiot, Boyer, Cooke, Kern, Hugo Meyer, Astro Berlin etc, will start to enter your horizon.  These optical wonders are like drugs and can get very addictive and expensive.  Some of these lenses costs thousands of dollars.  Unless you have lots of disposable income, buying these kind of lenses will put a lot of pressure on your finances.  Sometimes it's hard not to think about them.  The first time I saw pictures from Kinoptik 50mm f2 and Dallmeyer Super-Six, I couldn't believe pictures can be rendered and look so beautifully! Make sure you understand that manual focus lenses is for fun and you don't need to spent thousands to enjoy them, unless you can.

This last installment will conclude our "Adapting Manual Focus Lenses on Your Digital Camera" series.  Thanks for reading.  If you have any questions, please e-mail or leave comments.

Adapting Manual Focus Lenses on Your Digital Camera - Part III

After some initial mumble jumble, we talked about adapting manual focus lenses on the Canon EOS EF mount in Part II.  As you can see, there are lots of options for Canon shooters, but also a lot of limitations, due mostly to the reflex mirror clearance.  In Part III, we will talk about using manual focus lenses on the Micro 4/3 and Sony E-Mount, and to some extend, the Fuji X-Mount (not the AX mount on their old SLRs).

Without doubt, mirrorless cameras, except the Samsung NX series, with a flange focal distances of 25.50mm, are the most adaptable cameras to use on manual focus lenses.  The Samsung's 25.50mm thickness was just enough to shut out the use of adapting Leica-M lenses, which many have said as one of the biggest disappointments.  Leica M lenses are considered the pinnacle of 35mm lenses.  The build and optical quality is unequaled in the 35mm lens world.

So, what lenses can be used on Micro 4/3 and E-Mount cameras?

In a word, pretty much all lenses existed on the 35mm format, if anyone is willing to make the adapter for a particular lens mount.  The very short flange focal distance of the M4/3 (19.25mm), E-Mount (18mm), Fuji X (17.70mm) provide the opportunity to use a wide range of optical lenses, 35mm format, medium format, C-mount cine lenses, enlarging lenses, projection lenses, etc.  The possibilities are practically endless.  The only question is: is a mount adapter available?

The most popular lenses to use on M4/3 and E-Mount are Leica Thread Mount (LTM), Leica M mount and C-Mount.  The reason is that these lenses have very short flange focal distance and therefore adapters can be made very thin.  Adapted lenses would look very small, to complement the small M4/3 and NEX cameras.  The quality of lenses are also some of the best in these mounts (except c-mount, where there is a big variance).  To compare, the M mount adapter for NEX is roughly 10mm for the NEX, whereas the M42 to NEX adapter is almost 30mm thick.  Even a pancake Contax 45mm f2.8 lens will look like a 85mm SMC Takumar when mounted on the NEX.  Take a look at the comparison pictures below:

Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 & Contax 45mm f2.8 Pancake compared with and without adapter.

 

On adapters: C-Mount Switar 50mm f1.4, M-Mount Voigtlander 40mm f1.4, QBM 50mm f1.8

As you can see, the mount makes a big different on how large the lens will look when mounted on the camera.  Even a normal, small 50mm f1.8 QBM lens will look huge when mounted on the NEX, but the C-Mount and M Mount lenses look nice and small.

A note on c-mount lenses.  There are so many different lenses on this mount with different sizes.  Be very careful what you are looking for in c-mount lenses.  Some will not cover the image circle of the NEX or even M4/3 sensor, and some are too large to be used and be able to focus to infinity.  Even those that mount and focus to infinity with full image circle coverage, the image quality may not be what you are looking for.  The allure of c-mount lenses are their cinematic quality, or quirky characteristics, or weird bokeh or some combination of these or more.  Make sure you know what you want.  Some of these lenses costs thousands of dollars!

Another benefit of short flange focal distance of these mounts, is that the traditionally macro-only use of the enlarging lenses and projection lenses can be used like a normal lens; that is, be able to focus to infinity.  I have done quite a bit with both the enlarging and projection lenses.  If you do a search on my blog, you will see many examples.

In our next and final installment, Part IV, we will talk about buying manual focus lenses, what to look out for, why some lenses costs thousands and others almost nobody wants at give away prices, and the costs of different adapters.

Adapting Manual Focus Lenses to Your Digital Camera - Part II

We talked some mumble jumble about adapting manual focus lenses to digital cameras in general in Part I.  Now let's get to the meat and potato.  Now the $64000 dollar question: What lenses will work on your digital camera?  The answer is: that depends mostly on the flange focal distance of your camera and the lens you want to use.  Generally, the shorter the flange focal distance, the easier it is to adapt and use manual focus lenses.  If you take a look at the nice wiki entry, you will find that Canon EF (EOS) has a distance of 44mm; shorter than most mounts that are still in use today.

Yes.  We Canon shooters are blessed with a shorter flange focal distance of the EF mount with 44mm, while the people in the Dark Side (Nikon) has a distance of 46.50mm. For this reason, very few lenses can be adapted and used on the Nikon with infinity focus, except Leica R lenses with a mount replacement.  We should toss a glass of sake to the Canon engineers who came up with the relatively short mount distance.  If you use Sigma SD cameras, good for you, because the Sigma SA mount is basically a Canon mount slightly rotated.  In fact, Sigma uses the same protocals as Canon.  You can actually modify the Sigma SD cameras and put on a Canon mount, and most Canon EF lenses will work (except IS).

So, which lens mount can be used with Canon EF?  These are the ones I know and have used:

Nikon (F) -- Almost all Nikon lenses can be used without restriction except the weird fisheye lens from the 60s that you had to lockup the mirror to use.  For G lenses, you need a special mount adapter that lets you set apertures.

M42/Universal -- Most lenses can be used on Canon without restrictions, but there are some exceptions.  The one I know of is the Takumar SMC 50mm f1.4 on full frame, Myer Optik Primoplan 58mm f1.9 (on 5D), and may be a few others.  The 5D (and possibly the 5D II and 5D III) are the most problematic.

Leica-R -- Most Leica-R lenses can be used on the Canon, but please refer to this great blog for the compatibility chart.  In general, it's the wide angles that have issues.

Yashica/Contax (CY) -- Most are compatible, but few Contax lenses will hit the mirror on infinity.  Again, Pebble Place has a great database with the compatibility chart.

Olympus OM -- As far as I know, there are no compatibility issues.  All lenses can be used on the Canon. But then again, I don't have many OM lenses.

T/T2 Mount -- These lenses require a Canon EF to T/T2 mounts to use.  I would say all are compatible with Canon.  All T/T2 lenses do not have aperture automation, and always come with pre-set aperture.

Tamron Adaptall -- All Tamron Adaptall lenses should have no issues on the Canon when used with the proper adapter.  Please note, as with the T/T2 mount lenses, there are mount adapters for most major cameras, including Canon EF.

DKL/Kodak Retina -- There aren't that many lenses with this mount and DKL lenses do not have aperture control on the lens, and no DKL lens is fater than f1.9.  The adapter comes with aperture control.  As far as I know, all DKL lenses work on the Canon. Voigtlander and Schneider are two major lens makers for the DKL mount.

Exakta (EXA) -- All the EXA lenses I have used can not focus to infinity because the adapters are not thin enough (can not be made too thin as there is only 1mm to work with).  Avoid using Exakta lenses on the Canon unless you can find a seller who will guarantee infinity focus.

Rollei QBM (Quick Bayonet Mount) --  Like the Exakta, these adapters have trouble making the lenses focus to infinity on Canon.  Avoid them unless you don't need infinity focus or the seller can guarantee it.

I think that's all the different mounts that I know of can be used with Canon.  If you know of any others that I have left out, please let me know and I will update the list.  Pretty much all medium/large format lenses can be adapted to Canon and other systems, but I have no experience with any of them so I won't talk about it.

Note that no range finder lens mounts are listed above.  Range finder camera do not use mirrors that therefore the lenses can be pushed further into the mount without worry about the mirror, and this also means the flange focal distance is a lot shorter than SLRs.

If you use manual focus lenses mainly for video, those lenses (Leica, Contax, etc) that hit the mirror at infinity can still be used if you put the camera on Live-View, as this will flip up the mirror.  Make sure you focus the lens to the closes focus distance before mounting it on the camera, or the mirror will hit the lens when you engage Live-View.  Some brave souls will go as far as shaving part of the reflect mirror off in order to use their favourite lenses.  I wouldn't do it, but other have done it.

Next time, we will have a look at the Micro 4/3 and Sony E-Mount in Part III.

An OM Mount lens on the Canon 1Ds that I used before.

Adapting Manual Focus Lenses to Your Digital Camera - Part I

Another reader, Mathew, has asked me to do a guide to adapting manual focus lens to digital cameras.  I actually have had this idea for a while, but unfortunately, even though I use a lot of manual focus lenses, I am not an expert on this topic.  But, I think I will put out something for what I know, as I am sure there are quite a few people out there who are confused by all the different adapters and lens mounts.  I will only be discussing adapters for Canon EF (EOS), Micro 4/3 and Sony E-Mount, as these are the only cameras I have more experience with.

So, how do you use your grandfather's old manual focus lenses from the 1950s on your brand new 2012 digital interchangeable lens camera?

There are at least two ways to do this.  One is to modify the old lenses to have the new mount of your camera.   This is usually done when adapter is not available, or the even possible.  The other, more common way, is through the use of lens mount adapters.

A small sample of my adapter collection

We won't be talking about the drastic lens modification option, since this is usually non-reversible and are expensive, not to mention finding the right person to do the job.  Common lens mounts that get modified is Canon FD to the new Canon EF (EOS) mount, or Minolta MD to EOS, since these two mounts generally are not adaptable unless you use an adapter with glass elements.  Lens mount modification is actually the best way to use old lenses on new cameras, because the converted lenses will behave like native lens on your DSLR, minus the auto focus/aperture function, unless you go the very best conversion with Contax N lenses for Canon EOS from the great Canadian company Conurus.  The conversion itself will cost hundreds of dollars, so unless you have some really nice Contax N lenses, this is probably not worth it.  Even the new mount that allows aperture settings on EF lenses for the Sony E-Mount costs hundreds of dollars, and it won't auto focus.

So, we will then be concentrating on the non-destructive adapters, but we won't be talking about the ones with glass elements, as these adapters basically act like a teleconverters which increases the focal length of the lens, as well as decreasing the maximum aperture, and at the same time degrade the optical quality of the lens.

Enough mumble jumble.  Let's get on with it.

How do I know which lens will work with my camera?

We will discuss this in Part II.