FD mount lenses on EOS cameras

[Lightwriter]

Hi, all!
As I posted in the SYS forum I have a new camera, a Canon EOS Rebel T1i. I am interested in using an older FD mount macro lens. I know I will need an adapter. I have a couple questions for you. 1. Have any of you ever used FD mount lenses on your EOS camera? If so how was the quality, etc.? 2. I have seen two types of adapters. One has "distortion correction" glass and the other is just a plain adapter (no glass.) Is the distortion correction glass worth twice the price?
Thanks in advance!

[OsmosisStudios]

Heres the thing:
With FD lenses, to get full useability you need to have a converter with a glass element in it. Most of these are, quite frankly, crap. If you dont have a glass element in the adaptor, you wont be able to focus to infinity. With macro that may not be an issue, but with anything else it could very well be.

You can do some lens surgery and put an EOS mount onto an FD lens, but it isn't cheap and is a total pain.

[inkista]

It's not "distortion correction" the glass does--it's allowing the lens to focus to infinity (i.e., make use of the full focus range).

This is because the FD mount's film-to-lens mount distance was smaller than the EOS mount's. When you increase this distance, it's the same as using extension tubes: you lose the ability to focus farther away in order to gain the ability to focus closely.

So, as long as you ONLY plan to use the macro lens for macro, the glassless adapters should work OK, and won't screw up your image quality. But if you planned to, say, use the lens for portrait work as well, then you definitely want the ones with glass, and the good ones that won't screw up quality start in the $500 range, and probably aren't worth it, because you'd have to find a used one that's 20 years old in good condition. And it'll still be around $500. At which point you could afford to just get a new EOS-mount macro lens instead.