Thursday, September 18, 2008

Old lenses on new cameras

Old lenses on new cameras, NYT article.
But like shooting with a manual lens, buying them can be complicated. For mechanical and optical reasons, some brands of D.S.L.R.’s work with a wider array of vintage lenses than others. Nikon D.S.L.R.’s can take scores of vintage Nikon lenses without adapters. But the Nikon cameras don’t work well, if at all, with the majority of vintage lenses from makers like Olympus, Pentax and Zeiss.
Canon cameras have the opposite characteristic. They are incompatible with most vintage Canon lenses, but with cheap adapters can mount dozens of brands of third-party vintage lenses.

1 comment:

Dibutil said...

4/3 and u4/3 also work with old lenses and may have focus confirmation just as Canon. It all comes to the register distance. Any SLR or EVIL camera with the smallest register will accept an adapter for longer registers. And yes, old lenses are worth keeping. None of the Canon lenses have matched so far my old Contax C/Y 28/2.8 in contrast or color.