Lens and Speedlite Compatability with 60D?

[Perpster]

I'm a new 60D user. I recently found my old T90 body, Speedlite 300TL, FD 70-210 and Vivitar Series 1 28-90 lenses. Can the flash or lenses be used with the 60D? Are there any damaging compatability issues? What functionality is lost? Obviously there's no auto-focus with either lens, but are they otherwise useful. Will the flash work correctly and seamlessly with the 60D?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[inkista]

The flash can. The issue with flashes is sync voltage, but the 300TL is safe, at around 4V. TTL is unlikely to give you exactly what you want, though, and you'll be better off using it in M.

The lenses are going to require an adapter with a glass element in them to achieve focus to infinity. The FD mount is physically different, and the lenses were held closer to the image plane than in the EOS mount. So the adapter has to act like a teleconverter to counteract the "extension tube" effect that mounting them farther away from the image plane has.

If you're ok shooting through a tc with your lenses, then this solution could work for you. But you (obviously) won't have autofocus or aperture control from the camera body. You'll be limited to shooting in M or Av modes, and you'll be using stop-down metering where the viewfinder will get dimmer as you stop the lens down. But the metering should remain accurate.

Most people would tell you that this adapting isn't worth it (cheap adapter = cheap glass), but might be good as a transitional step until you can replace the lenses. The 28-90 isn't likely to be that useful on a crop body, because 28 is perilously close to not being wide angle at all on the smaller sensor.