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DSLR and old lenses!
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Hi
Looking at buying a new DSLR and trying to find out what model work with older lenses. Any advice appreciated.
Paul
Older lenses are the same as new lenses………….they are made with a certain type of Mount. The main mounts are Canon, Nikon and Minolta, all of which are different. I assume Olympus and Pentax are different also.
So what I need to know, is what brand are your existing (old) lenses? If they are old Canon they will likely be FD lenses, and will not fit the new Canon EF cameras without an adapter, if at all. If they are Minolta, then you might be in luck – they will fit the new Sony Alpha DSLR as well as Konica Minolta DSLR’s (which arent made any more).
I am not sure whether Nikon has made any changes to its mount over the years, I suspect not but other s may be able to assist.Ross
Ross
I dont have any older lenses, I am just reviewing options to help me select a good camera. I have a Nikon 5400 ‘Prosumer’ and a full 67 outfit. I want to move to DSLR, but difficult to choose which is best.
Not to fond of Canon as I feel it is too light. My previous cameras have had a good balanced weight (T90, 167MT) My budget is 1200. My interests are – landscape, close-ups (Flora). The following factors are important to me in choosing a camera:
Lens quality.
Build.
The ability to use prime lensesWhat is recommended
Paul
All DSLR’s will work with prime lenses, just need to have the correct mount for the camera. Canon has the best range of lenses available, period. I like primes myself, and use 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and 100mm Canon primes.
I am very much a ‘Canonman’ lol. If you think they are light then you havent tried the likes of the 30D or 5D with a battery grip! :wink:
Building a Canon system :
http://www.photo.net/canon/#lense
Or building a DSLR system:
http://www.photo.net/equipment/building-a-digital-slr-system/
The Nikon D200 works with any Nikon prime and zoom lens made in the last fifty years or so which cannot be said for many other camera mounts! Its also weather proofed and extremely solid. Bit over your budget though.
The D50 definitely does not and I’m pretty sure the D70/D80 does not either. With the D70 you can fit very old manual lenses and focus manually as usual but the meter wont work so you have to set exposure manually. The new D40 will only work with lenses that have their own internal AF-S motor, it doesn’t have a scew to drive any non AF-S lens! Anything from the D200 up will I’m sure but there’s nothing below unfortunately. With the D200 you enter the F-stop range of the manual lens your using and the focal length so it can meter properly. Pretty clever :)
According to Nikon’s site for the D70s:
“Nikkor lenses: The D70s employs the Nikon F lens mount for seamless compatibility with the comprehensive lineup of high-quality AF and AF- S Nikkor lenses long favored by professionals around the world for their superb color, high contrast and razor-sharp images, as well as for outstanding autofocus. The increasing family of DX Nikkor lenses designed for use with Nikon digital SLR cameras make the options even richer, delivering a wider variety of picture angles, higher performance, and outstanding center-to-edge -to-corner image quality.”
You should have no problem with older F-mount AF lenses and newer, but you may run into some issues with non-AF (manual) lenses. This excerpt from this review gives you a quick rundown of which lenses you might have issues with:
“The D70 takes any Nikon F mount lens (well, lenses earlier than the AI manual focus Nikkors damage the mount if you try to put them on the D70, and a few specific lenses won’t work on the D70, usually because they have elements that stick into the mirror box and require mirror lock-up). Non-CPU lenses (AI and AI-S manual focus lenses) don’t allow metering and must be used in Manual exposure mode. When you mount a lens on the D70, the effective focal length is increased by about 1.5x (e.g., a 20mm lens shows roughly the same angle of view as a 30mm lens would on a 35mm body; note that the 1.5x is a rounded figure, the actual increase is slightly more).”
Apart from that you need the right lens mount (use adaptor if necessary) for the camera older lenses will work on new – digital – models. However in many cases you will loose the AF and other communication between lens and camera. With most digital cameras you also will have a focal length multiplier as the sensor is smaller than 35mm film – good for wildlife, bad for landscape. And finally most newer lenses have a special coating to maximise image quality with digital sensors.
Pentax digital SLRs work with autofocus lenses going back 20 years or more, and manual ones even older than that.
This is a definite boon when you can get top-quality prime lenses on Ebay for less than ?100 (?150). E.g. I bought a Pentax 50mm f/1.7 for about ?90 – condition excellent+, it looks almost unused. Makes a very sharp 70mm equivalent for my *ist DL2.
The Nikon F-mount hasn’t changed since the 1950’s so all Nikon lenses will fit all Nikon SLR’s. You may miss out on some of the functionality, i.e. the autofocus may not work, or the metering may not work, or the….. you get the idea. But put them on, stick them in manual and they should be fine. As you go up through the range, the Nikon bodies can be “programmed” to work with older lenses, but at the lower end like the D50 you’ll most likely have to operate the lens manually. If you go to http://support.nikontech.com under the lens sub category it will show you a compatibilty list of which lenses work with which bodies and which functions operate or not.
Or get it here: http://tinyurl.com/yjs49r
To me the auto-focus and others is nice to have, but it has never been that important to me especially that I like to shoot IR landscapes and close-up now, although in the past at a racing event I always wished that AF was available ecpecially for the decisive moment that slipped away. I must admit the first time I use AF was at the Ulster Grand Prix in 91, when I borrowed a friends Minolta when my T90 decided to stick it.
The brand families that I am reviewing are the Nikon D7080 and the Olympus E-400500. In the past I alway bought Contax or Canon in 35mm. Only in the past 3 years I bought a Nikon prosumer, which is fine except for the limitation of 28 – 90 lens.
How good are my options and should I be considering the Pentax or Canon?
PolMac wrote:
How good are my options and should I be considering the Pentax or Canon?
Absolutely! The range of choice in the DSLR market now is huge, so to decide prematurely on a particular brand (for what ever reason) seems ludicrous to me. Decide on how important it is for you to keep and use your existing lenses.. if that’s not the highest priority, then you have to consider all the contenders (Canon, Pentax, Sony etc). If it was me, unless you have some expensive 300 f2.8’s in your collection, I wouldn’t let me current equipment limit my choices going forward.
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