Canon 50mm 1.4 Lens issue?

S

semajha

Well-known member
I just bought a used Canon 50mm 1.4 lens today and was wondering about the focusing wheel. Is it normal for the wheel to feel kind of... gritty? When compared to the old Canon FD 50mm, the FD lens' focus wheel is soooo smooth. I just want to know if this is a normal or not, I'm guessing most lenses today with AF will have a kinda gritty feeling type of feel to them?


btw the GH1 Kit lens focus was extremely smooth too..
 
Yes, I've tried that.. I can still get smooth zoom but it just feels so flimsy compared the Canon FD Lens.
 
semajha said:
I just bought a used Canon 50mm 1.4 lens today and was wondering about the focusing wheel. Is it normal for the wheel to feel kind of... gritty? When compared to the old Canon FD 50mm, the FD lens' focus wheel is soooo smooth. I just want to know if this is a normal or not, I'm guessing most lenses today with AF will have a kinda gritty feeling type of feel to them?


btw the GH1 Kit lens focus was extremely smooth too..
Click to expand...

Canon EF lenses are going to be significantly "grittier" feeling when manually focusing than any lens designed to be manually focused - with a Canon EF lens, when you turn the focusing ring, you're really turning a gear which then focuses the lens rather than having direct control over the focusing mechanism itself - I believe when you switch to MF it just disengages the clutch on the motor, so you've sort of got some mechanics "in between" you and the lens, if that makes sense. Some EF lenses (I think most, if not all of the ones that have USM motors) have a focus "by wire" setup, so the focusing ring is very smooth because it's really just working as an input device to tell the computer how to turn the motor, but if you got an early generation 50mm f/1.4, it may not have an ultrasonic motor.
 
thisisapacolypse, that was a great explanation. I thought I might have had a defective model at first.. And the model I own does use an ultrasonic motor.
 
if you miss the function and feel of the old canon fd, look into a contax zeiss 50 1.4 or 1.7 very similar but better built and... zeiss.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top