Ebay and lenses

[DouglasRandall]

I'm looking at lenses for my Canon XS (1000D) on Ebay. A lot of the ones that I'm looking at say "digital-film" or just "digital" but I suspect that the people selling them may not know for sure. These lenses will fit my camera but will not function properly or at all on the XS. Is there a way of telling what will work on my camera? Some offer returns within a few days but it's a lot of bother to buy the lens and find out it won't work. The lens I'm looking for is 28 - 105 or so. Thanks

[ceremus]

Any Canon lens marked as an EOS system (autofocus) will work on any Canon EOS camera. Your camera is an APS-C crop sensor camera with an EF-S mount and will accept either EF or EF-S lenses, both of which are in the EOS system. EF lenses will mount to EOS 35mm film cameras, EOS full-frame sensor digital cameras, and EOS crop sensor digital cameras. EF-S lenses can only be mounted on EF-S crop-sensor digital cameras.

The other old Canon mount is the FD manual focus mount, which is incompatible with the autofocus EOS system.

[inkista]

If it's a Canon lens and says EF or EF-S on it (or in the name), you can use it on the 1000D. If it says FD or FL, you cannot. If the lens is for a rangefinder, rather than an dSLR, you cannot. Just having "Canon" on it does not guarantee you can use the lens.

If it's a third-party lens, like a Sigma, Tamron, or Tokina lens, you need to look up that individual lens to see whether or not it's compatible. All three of these manufacturers create lenses in different mount systems, so first check that it's for the Canon EOS mount. Then look up the lens to see if it's still current (i.e., that you could buy it new). If you cannot, then go and google that specific lens to see if it has any autofocus compatibility issues with the digital EOS mount.

If you don't tell us the specific lens you're looking at, that's about all the help we can give you.