Customer Reviews

Opteka Canon FD (Manual Focus) Lens to Canon EOS EF (Auto Focus) Body Mount Adapter with Optical Elements

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It took a lot of fiddling to figure out that the internal glass was threaded too deeply, not allowing for infinity focus. After tweaking the alignment, it works reasonably well. Resolution tests prove the two elements of glass really kills the contrast and the resolution of the FD lenses. I've got 15 good to great FD pieces I really wanted to use again. After testing, the loss of sharpness was a disappointment. Stopping down helps, but it's nowhere near what an EOS lens creates. Buy it for a specialty trick, but don't get your hopes up too high. Sigh, I really wanted this to be an answer. Someone needs to make a great lens insert for this product, then it would be a god-send!

I was very disappointed when i found out that my old lenses would not work on my new body. But this device rescued me from spend hundreds more on the lenses i already have. Defiantly worth the money.

I bought a new Canon XTi Digital SLR and was able to use all of my retro FD lenses from my Canon T50. very nice.
Old meets New and the picture quality is stellar

I was hoping to get some use out of my old FD lenses, so I tried this adapter. The problem with FD lenses on EOS cameras is that in order to use an adapter there has to be glass in it if it is going to focus to infinity (adapters without glass cannot focus to infinity and can only be used for macro shots). This has a slight magnification factor, which makes the 1.6 crop factor on my Canon 40D even tighter, which is not what I was looking for. This probably won't get much use from me. So some of the issues are due to limitations of the Canon lens system, not the product itself, but I can only say that it's OK for what it is, not good or great.

This little adapter allows you to mount your legacy Canon FD mount lenses on Canon EOS bodies, and retain the ability to focus to infinity. For the price, it is adequate. It does physically mount the lens and focus to infinity. But the cheap glass used in this adapter is not of highest quality. You will notice a loss of resolution and contrast. It will vignette with long lenses on a full frame body. Still, for the money it serves acceptably. If you want a special purpose or very expensive FD lens to mount on your EOS camera, this will work -- with the caveats noted. Many of us have fond memories of using high quality Canon FD lenses and for that purpose this can still be an enjoyable tool.

Background: When Canon went to autofocus, they built an adapter for their FD lenses like this one, but it was much superior optically and mechanically. There was a second macro version that Canon made, with no glass and hence no focus to infinity. They were only supplied to their Canon Professional Services members in limited volumes. These were both high quality Canon products. Unfortunately they are now rare and a collectors' items, quite expensive if you can find one.

Cheap clones of both versions are now widely available. This Opteka adapter is typical of the version with glass. There are also clones of the version without glass that serve well for FD macro lenses, when you probably don't need to focus to infinity. If you are using a full frame sensor camera with a long lens, it will probably vignette badly using the version with optics. It will not vignette but also not focus to infinity in the version without glass, so be aware of these limitations.

As a convenience, some of the clones also have a so-called "AF confirm" chip that allows you to use the camera's focus sensor to indicate (using the green dot in the viewfinder and the audible beep) when the image is in focus. Of course you focus manually using the viewfinder, but the camera's AF confirmation can be more accurate and for wide angle and fisheye lenses it is almost mandatory. The AF confirm feature is available for both versions of the adapter.

So be aware that there are many variations of this adapter. If you might want the AF confirm version, you will want to look for that elsewhere. If you are shooting macro only, the glassless version will not degrade your optics and is better for that use. Unfortunately all the clones with glass are just not up to the standards of Canon -- they are barely adequate.