Old lenses and kit on a new camera

Keith's had a clear out and found quite a few old bits of camera equipment in various drawers and cupboards.

So, what's worth using and what's not?

Using old stuff

Over time, I'll put up some short articles about using old kit on our Canon 1Ds Mk3.

I'm not looking for the 'perfect lens', it's mostly 'for the fun of it' and partly to remind me that although I'm a professional photographer, it's still fun :-)

Many lenses are very easy to use with appropriate adapters, I've already got adapters for M42 screw fit and Olympus OM fit.

Both came at quite reasonable cost from eBay. A quick search for 'EF adapter' will find several.

You may hear people on the forums say that cheap adapters are to be avoided.

However I'm of the opinion that this frequently comes from those of the 'sharpness trumps all else' school of photography.

I know some people collect vast piles of old kit and use it just for the sake of it, well that's a fine hooby, but from my own POV, it ain't why I enjoy photography.

Many of our newer UK used photographic items come from MPB - check out their stock.

If you are looking for an adapter for a £2500 digital medium format lens, then it's probably worth spending a bit more on an adapter than for a lens that would have difficulty raising £5 at a photographic bring and buy sale.

Right, an OM2 mount Tamron 35-70 CF Macro on a 1Ds3 - Why??

I'm just doing this for an experiment - If I want real sharpness and image quality, I already have lenses costing an awful lot of money, but who knows what I might find?

Other DSLRs also take adapters, however some need an adapter with a lens in it to allow for infinity focusing (i.e. the lens will only focus short of infinity - not a problem for macro use).

I suspect that much of the stuff tested here may well find itself on eBay some time, since being a professional commercial photographer, I've got a fair collection of Canon 'L' series lenses, which are not only very good quality, but have working autofocus, something you won't get with old lenses.

Am I going to use this stuff 'for real' - I suspect not - if I wanted to make things purposely difficult and tedious, I might take a tripod with me everywhere and go back to film, say large format :-) Some types of photography just don't suit my temperament... YMMV! ;-)

That said, some of these lenses may well produce quite acceptable results and be of genuine use to someone wanting to experiment (particularly on a tight budget)

The Canon EF mount is a very flexible design - you can see how much bigger it is than the M42 screw mount to the right.

Note that there is no mechanical activation of the aperture stop-down for the lens.

You will have to manually adjust the aperture ring of the lens (and you will forget sometimes).

The lenses

I'll add items to the list as I find them.

These are not detailed lens tests, more aimed at giving a feeling for what the lens is like. I'll try and include a few comparative images.

The lenses sitting around... (link goes to article)

Zeiss Flektogon 20/2.8
Olympus Zuiko 24/2.8
Olympus Zuiko 50/1.2
Tamron 35-70/3.5 CF Macro
Tamron 70-210/3.8-4
Olympus TCON-08B, Olympus 0.8 Wide angle converter + several others
Helios 58/2
Sirius 28/2.8 used for x5 Macro
Tair 3PhS 300/4.5 - The Photosniper lens
Soligor 300/5.5
MTO1000A 1080/10
Paragon 500/8
Hanimar 135/3.5
Sigma 70-150/3.5
Mamiya Sekor C 35mm/3.5
Mamiya Sekor C 55mm/2.8
Mamiya Sekor C 80mm/2.8
Mamiya Sekor C 210mm/4

Other assorted items

MPP View camera
View camera with 55mm Mamiya reverse mounted
1Ds Pinhole adapter
Jessop slide duplicator

...and any more 'junk' I find in all the various boxes and cupboards here at Northlight.

Here's a few of those lenses...

More Info

Picture shows a 1Ds attached to a view camera

3rd party primes - Are they worth buying, or is it a big con?
Camera mounts and registration distances
The EF lens mount
Huge list of M42 lenses
M42 lens compatibility for 5D - lots of old lenses on a 5D
Identifying a lens mount
Tamron Adaptall-2 lenses
Olympus Zuiko Lenses
Alternative lenses - Forum on the Fred Miranda site with lots of info on using different lenses.
Difficulty of focus - Why an awful lot of people's tests of lenses are flawed. This is the sort of detailed testing that you'll just not find here... Sorry, but I get bored far too quickly :-)
16-9 An excellent site for the 3rd party lens quality junkie ;-)
Manual focus lenses - and FAQ list by Bob Atkins
Flickr - EOS manual focus group

You can search all the hundreds of articles on the site for more information

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