Customer Reviews

Canon FD/FL Lens to Canon EOS EF Body Mount Adapter with Infinity Focus, made in Japan

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

FD (Manual Focus) Lens to Canon EOS (Auto Focus) Body Mount Adapter from 47th St. Camera

I ordered both adapters from Amazon.Com and recieved the CZFDEOSA from Adorama and a product marked Kipon FD-EOS from 47th ST Camera. The Kipon product is excellent. Unfortunately it can easily be mis-used for three reasons. 1) It is high precision and fits the EOS body very tight. It must be turned until it "clicks", which takes more than the expected force. 2) The adapter lens mount allows the adapter lens to be easily removed, and might be positioned out of range of focus. There is no lens stop, which is good since I can adjust to match the exact point of infinity on the lens. The position seems to be the same for all my FD lenses. 3) The product would benefit from some instructions even though they are obvious to many users. I made a number of disappointing shots until I got everything set right. I currently leave the adapter on my 50D body and I only use FD lenses.

I find I must check that the FD lens aperature ring is not set on A (automatic). We will be setting the aperature manually. The EOS camera is set to AE so only the shutter speed changes with metering. We manually adjust the aperature and ISO settings to get the depth of field and shutter speed we want.

My most common error is that the lens aperature is not stopping down because the adapter is not in the "Lock" position. All is well if I start mounting the lens with the adapter set to "Open", set the lens to manual wide open, mount the lens on the camera and then set the adapter to "Lock" position. I can check the aperature ring function by stopping down and looking into the view finder (not the LCD) to see the difference. No difference means the adapter is "open" and must be moved to "Lock". If the FD lens is still in automatic then the manual aperature ring might not move until I take the lens back off the adapter.

My opinion is that the glass in the adapter does not reduce the sharpness of the FD lenses I have. I got some great shots of the craters on the full moon with my FD 500mm which was previously very difficult to use on the Canon A1. I now set the ISO to 3200 on my 50D and get 1/1000th shutter speed at f8. No detectable shake. Same technique works using the Closeup Macro. I can see the pores on my skin. Creative photography is more than point and shoot for me. Automatic focus and image stabilization are luxuries I can trade off for more FD lenses I didn't used to consider.

Miles Letts

The brand I received was "Kipon". The adapter comes without instructions, but I found it easy to figure out (It just took about 30 seconds). One red dot was to line up with the eos camera mount, and the other red dot was to line up with the FD lens mount. The words "lock and open" are written on the adapter. You turn it counterclockwise (open) to mount the lens, after which you can leave it as is, or you can turn it clockwise (lock) to get the aperture blades to stop down. I'm not a camera expert but I did not find it that difficult to use.

As might be expected, the corrective lens is not high quality, but then again it doesn't claim to be. Quality of pictures is hit or miss. Some of them do come out soft (in some cases 'misty', or with a bright aura), but other times I can't tell the difference from those taken with an EF lens. I've taken a lot of good pictures with this adapter.

In the end, it's good for playing around with your old FD lenses, but probably not a replacement for EF-dedicated lenses.

I bought this adapter to take advantage of the great FD lens buys on Ebay. It works. However, I find it much more user demanding than EF and EF-S lens. It's a nice toy and good gear to go with your EOS camera if you have FD lenses or are thinking about getting any. Bottom line, it works.

I think a lot of people are expecting a little much out of a $30 adapter. If you mount this to an EOS body, the first two aperture stops on your FD/FL lenses are going to be fuzzy and blurred. For example, I have a 28mm 2.8 lens, so at 2.8 and the stop above it, I can easily see a little bit of soft blurryness on my 60D's live view, but if I stop it up to 4, it's clear as day. That's how all of my lenses work.

So, don't get this expecting tack sharp photos at your FD lens' widest apertures. Stop it up 2 or more times and your pictures will be as clear as any EF lens.

Tried two of these units, both were soft-focusing. Others seem to have varying degrees of success with them so YMMV. We tried them on an array of tack-sharp Canon FD lenses with a 60D, 7D and a 5D MkII. Then tried a no-name brand of lensed adapter and got razor sharp images. It was definitely the adapter, not the lenses/body combo. Anyway, might have just had two bad ones, but the other thing is that the company, Goshot Camera, NEVER answers their phones and NEVER, EVER returns any calls or messages (zero out of three messages left with them). So the one we bought from Amazon was the only one that we could return. The other we'll pitch in the trash and call it forty dollars wasted (adapter plus shipping) and no more buying ANYTHING from Goshot Camera.

There's really no substitute for the actual EOS lenses but for budget filmmakers such as myself, adapters are an affordable way to get your production off the ground. This adapter worked better with my FL Canon lenses from the 60's, but less well with my 3rd party lenses.

Don't know if this was the adapter or the lens, but I get this foggy dream like quality to a lot of my shots set against direct sunlight. I don't get this with my old Canon 35MM so I assume it's the adapter's lens compensating for the increased lens registry range.

Basically whether or not you get this product comes down to whether or not you want to spend $40 or so dollars to use the lenses you already have, or whether or not you want to drop $1,300 on one of those EOS bad boy lenses. Choose your path.

Bought this since i had 3 great FD lenses lying around. Why should i buy a new 300mm for 800 dollars when I can just re-use my old ones for 40 bucks?

Well packaging is minimal and there are no instructions, but its very intuitive to use, just remember to lock it once the lens is one. You can tell it is locked when the viewfinder darkens or brightens as you turn the aperture setting on your FD lens.

I was worried at first because some of the pictures i took looked "soft" and the light in my photos looked foggy as some people have mentioned here. HOWEVER, this is easily remedied by adjusting your settings! Since there's no AF (autofocus) on your old FD lenses, sometimes you can be a tad bit out of focus. Since it is difficult sometimes, to check for pure clarity on the viewfinder and the LCD screen preview, it can seem as if you are in focus when you really are not and that can cause the "soft" light effect. Sometimes, the solution is changing your aperture, lens speed, or iso. Depends on the case. After screwing around with my lenses, I have a pretty good sense of what needs to be adjusted.

That being said, the FD lenses aren't all that great at taking photos in low light situations. Since as of yet I have not been able to use the FD lenses on the original camera they were meant for and compare the photos, I cannot tell you if this deficiency is because of the adapter or the lenses themselves. Whatever the case, you really need to screw with your ISO in low light situations to get anything decent as the noise can be pretty bad.

All in all this is a great buy. If you can manage to score some FD lenses on ebay i would definitely suggest doing it. Still, is it worth it to invest in new lenses, DEFINITELY. But, if you can learn to use this adapter properly, then you can get some great photos. Good luck

Was excited to get this so I could use my FD lenses on my digital camera. It was easy to put on my lens and then I mounted it to my bellows for some macro work. It was probably a good thing that I read some of the reviews here. Putting the lens on seemed to be stiff before it locked down. I really liked how I could now control the depth of field by stopping down the f-stop. I wasn't able to do that before with the bellows it was sort of a guess and by gosh type of thing. I managed to take several photos that came out really good. Then I went to take my lens off of the bellows so I could put it on my camera.

Well guess what the adapter fell apart!! Yes I mean apart, pieces fell right into my hand, spacer ring, ball bearing all sorts of stuff! Then apparently it falling apart caused me to not be able to remove the adapter from my bellows. I'm certainly glad that I didn't have it on my camera when it came apart or I'd really be in trouble. I was able to put the pieces back together and get the adapter to work again but it wasn't my intention to use that lens for macro only.

So I guess now I'm stuck with this thing because I can't get it off to return it.

For what it's worth I really liked the photos I took using the adapter on my 50mm FD lens. I was excited to maybe be able to use that lens on my digital camera. I don't like the short focus throw on the nifty fifty and the FD lens seems that you can really fine tune the focus. Now that it is stuck on my bellows I still won't be able to use it very often.

Apparently you can't give zero stars for this product.

Can't really recommend this product to anyone. I don't think it was built to last. I was hoping that I'd be able to change my lens more than once. I'd be leery now to even put this on my camera for fear that I wouldn't be able to get it off again. Lesson learned.

I have some FD lenses left over from my Canon AE-1 days. They were essentially taking up space but I didn't care to toss them and they didn't seem to be selling for much either. I saw this adapter and took a chance on it. When it arrived I was happy to see and feel the quality construction. I put it on my 60D and set it to aperture priority and auto ISO and started to take pictures. NO PROBLEMS! This is better than expected. The downside? Well, manual focus et.al. But I don't really care about turning a ring. I learned on an old film Voightlander so auto focus is not critical. The unit I received was built by Zykkor and didn't seem to have any locking issues that others had experienced. Some reported their view finder as dark. That suggests you need to go to a lower f/ value on the lens to let more light in. Well off to have some fun with my old lenses.

I purchased this and a Fotodiox Adapter at the same time. The Fotodiox was $10 cheeper. I tried this one out on 2 telephoto lens. It worked Ok on a Canon 80-200mm lens, but did not let in enough light on a Vivitar 120-600mm lens. In all fairness it could be the lens its self, but just the same I tried the Fotodiox on a Canon 600mm lens and it worked great. I am going to buy another of the Fotodiox Adapters and keep this one for the 80-200mm lens.