Film SLR lenses

[Dan Cook]

Can you use film SLR lenses on a DSLR? The eBay drop off store where I'm working has a few Minolta lenses that they're unable to sell and I was thinking of testing them with my Rebel XT.

Thanks.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Some, but of course not all brands fit on all others. Canon EF lenses will obviously work on a film slr and a dslr. Not sure how many minoltas are made to work on canons.

 

[David Wolfson]

... As Mike said, it's not a question of digital vs. film but rather the lens mount and electrical contacts of the camera model. The same issues exist with film cameras over the years.

This gets to my "teach someone to fish" analogy.... Digital may supplant film as an imaging technology, but nobody has repealed the laws of optics yet. A good lens is a good lens regardless of what happens inside the camera.

 

[John Wetter]

This gets to my "teach someone to fish" analogy.... Digital may supplant film as an imaging technology, but nobody has repealed the laws of optics yet. A good lens is a good lens regardless of what happens inside the camera.

This is true in cases of using traditional lenses on Film cameras, but be careful if you buy the 'DX' lenses. They can't go back to film cameras, or, at least won't project a proper image onto the full frame size.

-John

 

[David Wolfson]

That's a good argument for sticking with the more standard mounts. EOS-EF isn't going away any time soon. And there're boatloads of classic M42 lenses that will adapt to many other bodies so long as you don't need the automatic functions. The bumping-into-the-film-plane issue is a standard problem for mounting view camera lenses onto 4x5 press bodies like the Graflex.

Kind of like the question why there are so many different kinds of oil filters for cars. Existential pain-in-the-butt.

 

[Dan Cook]

Would you use something like this to use film lenses?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/522370-REG/Bower_ABEOS_Lens_Adapter_FD.html

 

[Greg Campbell]

Would you use something like this to use film lenses?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/522370-REG/Bower_ABEOS_Lens_Adapter_FD.html

Yea. Canon screwed FD users big time when they switched to EF. The AF mount is about 2mm further out from the film plane, so FD lenses can't reach infinity focus. The only solution is a focal length extender like the one you found. AFAIK, most the 3rd party adapters work as advertised but hurt image quality. Canon made a few; they are optically excellent, but are also rare and spendy. With any such adapter, the camera and lens are not communicating, so most of the metering and automatic functions (stop down, etc.) are broken.

http://bobatkins.com/photography/eosfaq/manual_focus_EOS.html

If the evil bastards (Canon) would make a DSLR (preferably a full-frame, so my 17mm stays a 17) that worked properly with all my FD lenses, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

-Greg