LENS QUESTION: How can you tell what lense will work on certain cameras?

C

commercialguy

Member
Dumb question, but I know Canon lenses will work on a Canon mount camera. But how do you know what a Tokina 11-16mm will work on? The obvious answer would be what kind of mount the Tokina has, some come in Canon or Nikon.

But I just read that someone is selling his Tokina 11-16mm lens because he upgraded to full frame and it doesn't work on it or something. So my concern is if I start investing in lenses, I want them to be able to carry forward if I upgrade to a 35mm sensor. The Tokina 11-16mm looks great on a BMCC and T3i but apparently you might not be able to use it on a BMCC 35mm camera or an FS100/FS700?

I'm assuming it's safe to say that all Canon lenses should work on a Canon mount? If I buy a Canon 24-105mm f/4L, it should work on a T3i/BMCC 2.5k smaller sensor and a BMCC 4k camera with a 35mm mount? Just trying to be forward thinking.
 
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Google is your friend on this one. No, not all Canon lenses work on all Canon cameras. Nikon lenses always work on Nikon cameras, but I don't think any other company does that. Every lens has a mount, every camera has a mount, sometimes adapters can go in between them. You need to look at your camera and the lens to see if they match. This is a very easy thing to find information on with a little looking.
 
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Keep in mind that if you have a full frame camera, you have to check that the image projected by lens you want to use, is designed to cover the full frame of the sensor. check google for that, there are tons of places showing lens data and compatible cameras.
 
3 things need to be considered:

1) Physical mount: Check to see if the cameras have compatible mounts. All Nikon lenses and cameras have the F mount. Professional cameras use PL. If they aren't the same mount, look into adapters.

2) Image Circle. Its all about fitting a square peg into a round hole. If your lenses are over sized for your sensor, you get a Crop Factor. Crop Factors are not a big deal if you understand them, as they don't negatively effect the image, but can make getting wide angle shots difficult. Alternately, if your lenses are undersized (like using a 16mm lens on a 35mm, or a lens made for a 35mm sensor on a full frame sensor), you get vingetting, which is dark corners in the edges of the frame. Some adapters introduce vingetting on wide angle lenses.

3) Control. Some lenses, mostly stills lenses, rely on electronic control from the camera. If you are using an adapter you may not be able to control your lenses properly. The reason why I chose Nikon lenses for my FS100 is because the Nikons have iris controls in the lens, as opposed to Canon lenses which need a much more expensive system.

With regards to the 11-16 specifically, because the lens is so wide, you have to watch out for vignetting. But others have used the Nikon mounth 11-16 on the FS100 with no issues.
 
As a side note, the Tokina 11-16mm which is an APS-C lens will work on a full frame camera, but it will only fully cover the sensor when zoomed out to 15 & 16mm.
 
Oh, and the Tokina 11-16mm should look great on the S35mm BMCC. It's on full frame (135 stills format) cameras, as David mentions, that will vignette if zoomed past 15mm.
 
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