Canon 550d with old lenses. 30+years

[gu5t]

Hi there recently ordered a canon 550d body, i was planning to buy a couple lenses when i head to the states but have recently found 4 lenses of my mothers that she used to use with her Olympus OM1,

Lenses include. 2 x50mm primes, 28mm wide angel and a 80-200mm f4-5.6

So i also then bought a om1 adaptor so the lenses will fit on the 550d. So i would like your advice on things that may go wrong or whether these lenses are at all suitable considering their old age,

so overall just give me your thoughts on the coupling of this new camera with these ancient lenses.

cheers henry

[inkista]

Canon 50D. Olympus OM Zuiko MC Auto-S 50mm f/1.2+adapter ring. iso 100, f/1.2, 1/1250s.

'nuff said?

Your biggest stumbling blocks are likely to be manual focusing accuracy (liveview 10x doesn't necessarily help when you're handholding), the lack of wide-open metering, and the empty EXIF fields. Also the fact that you're stuck in M or Av. But other than that, Oly OMs totally rock on EOS. I've never heard of any of the full frame shooters having mirror clearance issues with OM, either (unlike Contax/Yashica and Leica-R lenses).

Biggest danger is that if you get a chipped adapter ring, that the chip could possibly short contacts or fall off and go into the body where it might damage things. I've never had either happen, and I use chipped rings on all my lenses, but you do need to be aware and careful. I do occasionally get Err01s from the chipped rings, but fixing it simply requires that I remount the lens. I get all my rings from either big_is, or happypageHK on eBay.

The chip can be useful for filling in EXIF information (my main reason for getting them), and for autofocus confirmation, but some people consider them useless. The AF confirm wasn't quite as useful for me as moving to a 50D and getting a Katzeye focus screen (there are chaper alternatives on eBay), but it did increase my manual focus accuracy. On my XT, swapping to a split-circle focus screen was impractical, as it didn't have an interchangeable screen, and I also go birding with an f/5.6 lens (a split circle's prism collar completely blacks out if the max. aperture is that small).

BTW, if one of those 50s is the 50/2 Macro? That is a VERY nice lens.

[gu5t]

thanks for the reply, stoked to hear it will work out good,
looks like school work will take a back seat for a few weeks then, damn my week will.

As for 50/2 lens, how would i go about knowing it was,

cheers for the advice

[inkista]

Look at what's printed on the front or around the edge of the lens. According to this page, it'll say "AUTO MACRO" if it's the 50/3.5 or 50/2 Macro. The 1:x means that the maximum aperture of the lens is f/x.

It's most likely that one of the 50s is a 50mm f/1.8--that was the old kit lens that came with the camera back in the day.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by inkista

On my XT, swapping to a split-circle focus screen was impractical, as it didn't have an interchangeable screen

The screen on the XT/350D is as interchangeable as on all of the other Canon DSLRs. It's just that Canon doesn't supply any automatic compensation for in-camera metering differences.

I've had a Haoda split-circle screen in my XT/350D for over four years.

I also go birding with an f/5.6 lens (a split circle's prism collar completely blacks out if the max. aperture is that small

Does that happen with the Katz Eye, too? They use a narrower angle for the split circle to push the blackout up toward f/11—at the expense of slightly less precise focusing—and I'd always assumed that the same was true of the microprism collar.

[inkista]

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

The screen on the XT/350D is as interchangeable as on all of the other Canon DSLRs.

All respect, but my experience is different. Popping a hinged door and popping in the focus screen and closing up the door on my 50D is worlds away from struggling with and swearing over the flimsy spring-bracket that holds the 350D's focus screen in place. I swap my focus screen frequently.

Yes, you can change the 350D's focus screen, and if you plan to leave it that way, you'll be fine, but it's not easily interchangeable for frequent swap-outs, as the 40D/50D/5D/1-series focus screen are. And, of course, the LCD overlay in the 7D's focus screen makes it completely non-changeable.

It's just that Canon doesn't supply any automatic compensation for in-camera metering differences.

Actually, on my 350D, stop-down metering worked just fine. Even if I stopped my lens down to f/8, the metering was completely accurate. But I suspect my new big_is EMF chips arefooling the 50D better into thinking it's doing wide-open metering, so I run into the compensation problem you mention. However, the EMF chip will actually let me compose and meter with the lens wide open, dial in the aperture I plan to use, set the exposure by the meter, and then stop down the lens, and it will be accurate; and the metering in liveview when stopped down is always dead-on. I also get the aperture setting I used in the EXIF as well. It works pretty well.

I've had a Haoda split-circle screen in my XT/350D for over four years.

But have you swapped it out, since? That's all I'm saying.

Does that happen with the Katz Eye, too? They use a narrower angle for the split circle to push the blackout up toward f/11—at the expense of slightly less precise focusing—and I'd always assumed that the same was true of the microprism collar.

Pretty much, yup. It was annoying enough with my 400 f/5.6L that I was very happy I could just swap back to the matte screen the camera came with in a few seconds.

[gu5t]

Hi again, ive noticed on the OMlenses that the apeture does not change until you press down the depth of field preview button, or obvioulsy when you take a picture.

So this may sound a stupid question but..... when i attach it to the 550d will i need to hold down the apeture preview button to take shots or will it somehow do it automatically when i take a shot.

thank you for your help.
henry

[inkista]

Originally Posted by gu5t

Hi again, ive noticed on the OMlenses that the apeture does not change until you press down the depth of field preview button, or obvioulsy when you take a picture. ... will i need to hold down the apeture preview button to take shots or will it somehow do it automatically when i take a shot.

Depends on your adapter ring. A lot of them come with a little screw/pin that holds the DoF preview lever "down", so that the lens will always be stopped down to the aperture set on the ring:



I've never had to hold down the DoF preview button with my OM lenses, since I use this type of ring.

Because the lens is stopped down to the set aperture at all times, the viewfinder will get dimmer the more you stop down the lens. Metering should still be accurate, if you don't have a chipped ring--all the Canon bodies can perform stop-down metering. But you may want to focus and compose before you stop the lens down since a dimmer viewfinder makes it harder to see what you're doing.