Canon FD-EOS Adapters! I need help fellow geeks...

B

BowiesInSpace

Member
I didn't realize it was going to be so complicated picking out an adapter to put my FD lenses on my 7D.

Which is the best one to get? Am I going to lose sharpness and focus abilities regardless?

Someone save me from 1980's lens hell!
 
Short answer is yes, either way you dice it you'll loose sharpness. It's weird, I've tested quite a few FD lenses on my Bower adapter (there's a glass magnifier in all the adapters because of the flange distance) However, some lenses do actually get pretty sharp when you stop them down a bit (for example my 17mm Vivitar)
 
you can buy camera cap and make hole in it then use it as mount for your FD lens.I modified like that 2 lenses ,its easy and cheap,and if you wouldnt like it then you can rip off glued body cap and reassemble lens back.
 
the focal flange distance is 2mm shorter on canon-FD than on canon-EOS, so...

about bwwd's solution... I'm not sure it'll work, you'd have to put the FD lens two millimeters INSIDE the camera body

apart from that, you can go "optical adapter" and loose optical quality because of the additional glass, or go "mechanical adapter" and loose ability to focus at infinity (if you can't find a mechanical adapter, just get an optical one and kick the additional glass out)

I've got a lens that, once adapted, only allows me to focus up to around 15m; for a landscape shot, I have to stop it down to f/7 or so in order to get the hiperfocal distance below 15m; it's a pain in the ass because it means I can't use this beautiful lens as a general-purpose main lens, but it works; for portraits and most narrative content, it's a "good enough" solution

what I don't know is what 2mm means in terms of your particular lens, and therefore how far your lens will focus with a mechanical adapter...
 
I just checked again on my "non-infinity-focus" lens: it can onlly focus properly at up to 10m, and that's just because it can't get half a mm closer to the sensor; 2mm would mean maximum focus is around 60cm, and thus practically useless; it's a totally lens-dependent thing, though, so check your lens and see how much 2mm-shorter means in terms of focusing distance
 
BowiesInSpace said:
I didn't realize it was going to be so complicated picking out an adapter to put my FD lenses on my 7D.

Which is the best one to get? Am I going to lose sharpness and focus abilities regardless?

Someone save me from 1980's lens hell!
Click to expand...

I bought the $50 Bower FD-EOS adapter from B&H and it didn't work on my lenses - it should turn and lock into place on the rear of the lens, but it kept getting stuck, engaging the breech pin only enough to stop the lens down to f4 or so. And this happened on all six of my FD lenses.

I bought the Zykkor adapter instead for $35 and it works like a charm. Some of my lenses are very, very soft - particularly the zooms - but my 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 200mm are tack sharp at f5.6 and smaller. Maybe not as sharp as my EF 28-135mm at f5.6, but the look is so much more filmic to my eyes, especially the bokeh of these lenses.
 
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