Is it possible to get prime lenses on the (really) cheap?

[Funkmon]

I've been digging through my girlfriend's stuff and I found some FD lenses and a few old Nikon ones, too. I found her old nifty fifty, a 28mm one, a 35mm one and another 50 from the Nikon.

I know these can all be mounted onto my EF-S Rebel, but I'm curious about the exposure, which, despite 4 days of painful searching on these forums and elsewhere, I've found no mention of. I've only got some slow lenses, the kit lens and the 55-250 introduced a year or two ago, and they're just killing me in low light, so I was looking at trying to use her old prime lenses at 1.8 aperture or something to let in more light.

I know that the FDs need corrective optics, and that makes things darker, right? But the Nikons should just need a mount, thereby preserving the fast nature? And I found a guy selling some Pentax ones for like $30, and I hear I can get a screw in mount for those, too.

Image quality is only moderately important! Having a fast lens could mean getting the shot or not. It's always better to have a crappy shot than to have none at all.

But anyway, I was wondering if, because I'm on a poor college student's budget, it would be possible to use these by buying a $20 adapter on the internet for the pentax lenses or the Nikon lenses and keeping them the same as they would be in their intended cameras.

(I AM actually too poor for the $75 Canon one. .)

[inkista]

Don't bother with the FD lenses. The optics in the adapters are not only going to make the lenses slower and longer, but they'll also reduce the sharpness.

For the Nikons and M42 (Pentax screwmount), you can just get simple adapter rings. Fotodiox rings have a relatively reliable fit, and are around $30 for the consumer grade ones. You can find cheaper ones on eBay, but the chances are good they'll be looser or may not be machined to the correct thickness so you may not have focus to infinity. The Fotodiox rings can also be purchased at Adorama and (I think) B&H. If you want a perfect fit, you'll need to spend closer to three figures. Also, it's better to have one ring per lens, than to try and share a ring among multiple lenses.

Using a manual focus lens like this on a Canon camera requires a lot of compromises. You must use a lens with an aperture ring or you'll have to shoot with the lens wide open. You will not have autofocus. And because the camera cannot control the aperture setting of the lens, you will be limited to shooting either in Av or M mode. You will not have wide-open metering. Stop-down metering will work (i.e., metering with the lens not wide open--the viewfinder goes darker from the smaller aperture), but it may not be as accurate as you'd want. And manual focusing can be tough with the standard matte focus screen, especially at wider apertures. Your EXIF will also be empty of focal length and aperture information.

The best bargains if you want to go super-cheap are going to be found in M42 Pentax Takumars and some of the Olympus OM-mount lenses. For example, it's common to find an Olympus OM 50mm f/1.8 for about $20 used. However, because of the age of the lenses we're talking about and your budget constraints, I wouldn't expect to find anything faster than f/1.8, and most of your choices will be more like f/2 or f/2.8 primes. I will say that f/2 is perfectly capable of achieving available light shooting handheld:


Canon XT (350D), adapted Leica Summicron-R 35 f/2. iso 400, f/2, 1/80s.

The mflenses.com forum is one good source of information, the Flickr Manual lenses on EOS group is another. I like the fredmiranda.com Alt. Gear forum, but most of the lenses discussed there tend to be rarities and very high quality, and tend to cost as much (or more) than new Canon EOS lenses.

I use a bunch of adapted manual focus lenses from Olympus OM, Contax-Yashica (Zeiss) and Leica-R mount, and I love them dearly. But then, I learned to shoot with film on an OM-10 with a manual focus 50/1.8 lens, so it's not particularly alien to me as a way of shooting.

[Funkmon]

Gosh, people on the internet sure are friendly! . Thanks for the information.

I'm looking mostly for cheap. I don't care if it's 1.4, or 2.8, or anything, as long as I'm getting more light...but I'm worried about some of those things. I don't think I'll have a problem with the manual focusing, or shooting mostly wide open, but is the guessing on the metering a big deal? I've been shooting some film lying around in an old AE-1, and it probably doesn't work, but I'm sort of getting used to this.

I've been looking for a little while now, and I see a couple of these Olympus lenses for only around $30, though I'll hold out for less money, I think, with $8 shipping, and a decent mount we're looking at a cost frightfully near what I can bag a used EF 50mm for.

How risky is it to buy a cheap mount?

And I know the cheap Canon is exactly that, cheap, but if I'm going to be spending only $20 or so less to buy a modified lens, and it's a hassle, is the optical quality better on going with one of the older Olympus lenses? Is there a benefit other than price?

I didn't know there was so much to this!

[inkista]

Originally Posted by Funkmon

... I don't think I'll have a problem with the manual focusing, or shooting mostly wide open, but is the guessing on the metering a big deal?

Actually, it's not. I have a PITA annoyance with the metering, but it's probably because I'm using AF-confirm chipped rings that fool the camera into thinking I have a lens mounted that's capable of wide-open metering. I didn't have this problem with my XT and older adapter rings, so it may not be something you'll ever see. But essentially, the more I stop down, the more the accurate is inaccurate. By the time I'm past f/8, I'm having to compensate by two stops--which is off the end of my meter's scale, so I'm working "blind".

If you're using $30 rings, this will probably never arise. But if it does, my liveview metering is still accurate, so there's a workaround.

And of course, if you're shooting between wide-open and f/8 (which is where I am about 85% of the time), I can use the meter again, albeit with a bit of mental compensating. We're definitely better off, though, than with Nikon entry-level bodies, which simply stop metering altogether.

I've been looking for a little while now, and I see a couple of these Olympus lenses for only around $30, though I'll hold out for less money, I think, with $8 shipping, and a decent mount we're looking at a cost frightfully near what I can bag a used EF 50mm for.

Yup.

How risky is it to buy a cheap mount?

Without a chip, probably not that risky. And if you're not planning on focusing at infinity and doing landscape shooting with the lens, it may not be such a big deal whether or not you can achieve infinity focus. And with OM mount, the distance is large enough that the machining accuracy doesn't have to be dead on, which is why it's a good first mount to try for EOS adapting.

If you're getting a chipped ring, though, a super-cheap ring might get you into trouble. The chip placement has to be exact, or the contacts may short. You could scramble the signals to the camera, get a lot of Err 1s or Err 99s, and if the chip falls off and into your camera body, there can be damage. So if you're considering a chipped ring, hunt about on the manual lens groups to see which eBay sellers are recommended.

And I know the cheap Canon is exactly that, cheap, but if I'm going to be spending only $20 or so less to buy a modified lens, and it's a hassle, is the optical quality better on going with one of the older Olympus lenses? Is there a benefit other than price?

Your biggest benefits in going with a Canon EF 50/1.8 II is that you'll have autofocus and you can use the camera in whatever mode you want, wide-open accurate metering, aperture control from the body, and full and accurate EXIF reporting.

But for manual focus work, it's a joke. If you get an old Olympus OM 50/1.8, you'll get a lens that was designed for manual focus with an incredibly long focus throw and a usable distance scale. So if you are into landscape photography and want to do things like use hyperfocal distance, it's actually possible, while the EF 50/1.8 II lacks a distance scale altogether. Also, the EF 50/1.8 is plastic with a plastic mount. The OM is smaller than the Canon (it's almost a pancake lens) and heavier and metal and feels like a precision machined piece of kit.

The optical quality of the OM, to me, is slightly better, but I may have just been trained into thinking it's so, since I shot with one as my only lens on a film SLR for over twenty years. To me it's not so much about better/sharper as it's simply a different flavor of glass. The virtue of OM lenses are that they're small and optically very good with completely different design goals than most other lenses. Olympus then and now still puts a premium on making their cameras and lenses small.

I first began adapting lenses to play with an f/1.2 lens. I got the OM-mount 50mm f/1.2 for roughly $1100 less than the Canon 50mm f/1.2 went for at the time. So, putting up with the PITA factor was worth it to me. In addition, the Canon EF 50/1.2L USM is a huge monster. The Oly 50/1.2, otoh, is the exact same size as the EF 50/1.8 II.

So, yeah, there are reasons other than the cost. But whether they matter to you is going to depend on what and how you shoot. You most definitely don't want to be using a MF lens if you're planning on shooting action photography.