Jonathan's blog

In 1987, Canon introduced their new autofocus-capable EF lens mount for their EOS series of cameras – including today’s digital SLRs. It was incompatible with the older manual focus FD lens mount. The flange focal distance of the newer EF lenses is slightly longer meaning that an adapter for mounting FD lenses on an EF body must contain an optic to allow infinity focusing. This immediately means the image quality will be affected by the adapter. But to what extent?

I bought a Kood adapter (although there are many, many brands available) to use my FD lenses on my EF-mount EOS 450D camera. For £15, I thought it would be a fun way of getting some extra use out of my FD lenses, even if the quality wasn’t great.

Kood FD-EF adapter

The competitors

I decided to do a side-by-side comparison of my Canon 50mm f/1.8 lenses – FD and EF mount respectively. I shot at ISO400, 1/60s, f/4 with flash. (Perhaps some other time I will think of this experiment when it’s not dark, and try it in daylight.) The camera was on a tripod.  I used autofocus and centre-weighted program exposure with the EF lens. I used the same shutter and aperture settings for the FD lens, and focused manually using live view, magnified to 10× in on the LCD.

Canon FD 50mm

Canon EF 50mm

Results

For a start, you might notice that the FD lens is slightly more zoomed-in than the EF lens. This is a side-effect of the correction optic to allow infinity focus. I’ll show both photos here, including 100% crops at 1024×768. Click the images to view them at this size. Other than cropping, no sharpening or any other editing has been done on these images.

EF lens	FD lens
EF lens	FD lens
EF lens (100% crop)	FD lens (100% crop)

I am honestly staggered by these results – the sharpness of the FD lens is much better than that of the EF lens. It’s possible that the autofocus didn’t do its job properly but it does prove that this third-party FD-EF mount adapter isn’t so terrible. I can only speak for mine – I’m sure there are terrible ones out there.

Pitfalls

There are some other things to be aware of though. Obviously the FD lenses don’t support autofocus, so you have to focus manually. This is no problem on a genuine manual focus SLR body, but autofocus SLRs lack the split-circle and microprisms on the focus screen, so it’s a lot harder to focus using the viewfinder. Using live view is a workaround, and it is also possible to swap out the focus screen for one with a split-circle, microprisms, or both.

While FD lenses do support an aperture controlled by an FD body, it won’t work using an adapter like this. You will need to take your meter reading using any appropriate method, and then set the aperture – this is stopped-down metering. The viewfinder will darken when the aperture is stopped down. This particular Kood adapter has a switch to flick between fully open and stopped down, which helps.

Summary

But if you are in the same position as me, with an EOS SLR and a load of FD lenses, I don’t think you’ll regret spending a few quid to be able to use them on your digital body. The quality, at least of this Kood adapter, is perfectly good – perhaps flawless.

Update

As promised, I have now added some outdoor photos taken from my window. I slightly cropped the zoomed-out version this time, to give a comparable field of view. I’ve taken a 100% crop of the unaltered original to test edge sharpness.

Both photos were taken at ISO100 and f/5.6, but the EF version was taken at 1/50 and the FD version at 1/40 as the darkness was coming in. Both are a little underexposed, I think, due to the pale sky. and the FD version is a little darker.

EF lens	FD lens
EF lens	FD lens
EF lens (100% crop)	FD lens (100% crop)

On this occasion, the autofocus seems to have got it spot-on and my manual focusing isn’t quite perfect. Image sharpness otherwise seems good, especially towards the edge of the photo where you might expect softness,  and I can’t see any chromatic aberration around the chimney.

The real test will probably be using this lens in strong sunlight – which I shall try to find the time to do at the weekend.

No, not handbags and shoes. I’m talking about accessories for my collection of film cameras.

My film cameras date from the late 1920s to the late 1990s, and between them they have a variety of different methods of controlling the focus and metering. Most of them don’t have any automation at all. This is fun, but can sometimes be a pain, and stand in the way of taking a great photo.

One of the great things about having an interest in photography that lags half a century behind everyone else is that it’s cheap. Provided you aren’t buying antique gear, you can generally get a lot of kit for your money – much more fun to be had for £100 than in the digital world.

So I bought a rangefinder, a light meter, and a power winder.

I took their photos with my DSLR and an LED ring flash. It worked really nicely for the rangefinder (about the size of a cigarette lighter), a bit worse for the light meter (the size of a pack of cigarettes, and flat and shiny) and really badly for the SLR (camera-sized and angular). I ended up cutting out the picture of the SLR, rather than over-exposing its background. Next time I’ll make the effort to set up some proper lighting!

Photopia rangefinder

My very crudest cameras have fixed-focus, and the most advanced have split-screen focussing. But there are some that have so-called “guess focussing“. My cameras that do this are a Braun Paxette Electromatic II, a Halina Paulette Electric, and a Voigtländer Bessa. You have no idea what the image will look like, as the viewfinder is totally separate from the main lens. These lenses do have a dial on them to help with setting the focus properly, but how do you know how to set it? That tree could be thirty feet, or forty. Or fifty.

Photopia rangefinder

Enter the rangefinder. This nifty device has two windows that point at your subject, and one viewfinder that the photographer looks through. You see two ghost images of your subject, and as you adjust the knob, the images move around. When the two images are perfectly aligned, you look at the dial and read off the distance. Then you just set the focus ring to this distance. Simple!

Photopia rangefinder

You can pick up 35mm rangefinder cameras cheaply from eBay, but I decided instead to buy a standalone rangefinder. This Photopia one will sit in the hot shoe (or sometimes “accessory shoe”) of any camera.

Realt light meter

Only three of my cameras have any sort of automatic metering. They range from full automatic (Canon EOS 300) to semi-automatic (Canon AE-1 Program) to a needle that waves around (Halina Paulette Electric). All the rest require the photographer to work out what the settings should be.

Of course, the sunny sixteen rule is a huge help here, but sometimes it’s no use. What if there’s a weather condition that’s not sunny, overcast or shade? What if you are taking a photo indoors? A light meter is the answer to your problems.

You can get all sorts of light meters, but I think the prettiest ones are the ones with needles that move around. I found a French Realt meter on eBay for a few quid, and bought it. It’s selenium-based, so not very accurate, but that’s half the fun.

Realt Photo light meter

The background scale behind the needle slides out, and you replace it with the relevant scale for the film speed you are using. Pretty neat. If you have a film for which there exists no scale (and since this dates back to 1949, that’s anything above 100 ASA) then you remove the scale altogether and read off the EV (exposure value) – which you can convert to real settings for your camera by looking them up in a table.

Canon power winder

This is one of things I bought just because I could, and because it was cheap. My Canon AE-1 Program has a lever to wind on the film. This makes a nice sound and feels satisfying, but can slow down the momentum of taking pictures rapidly. Often, I forget to wind on, and I don’t realise until after I’ve set up the next shot and then find the shutter won’t fire.

Canon AE-1 Program with Power Winder

As it was only a fiver, I bought a Canon Winder A. It does what it says on the tin – it winds on the film and can achieve a “few” frames per second. It doesn’t say how many, and I haven’t measured it. More to the point, it makes the camera look big and professional!

I quite enjoy macro photography. When I used to use my Fuji S9600 as my main camera, it had a super macro mode, which allowed me to focus on objects as close as 1cm. That was pretty handy for macro shots and the results were generally good – such as this disgusting pupa.

Since swapping the S9600 for a Canon EOS 450D DSLR, I don’t have a macro facility. The best I could get was my Tamron 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens which allowed 1:2 magnification at full zoom. But the subject had to be at least 1.5m from the camera and image quality wasn’t great, so it wasn’t really a solution.

I bought a set of EF mount macro extension tubes from eBay. These sort of replicated the behaviour of the S9600, by allowing the camera to focus closer. By spacing the lens further from the camera body, it’s possible to focus down to just a few millimetres away from the end of the lens, so tiny objects can fill the frame.

However, as EF lenses are electronically controlled, you lose autofocus and the ability to shoot with the aperture anything other than wide open. Naturally, the depth of field is then very shallow. Sometimes it works, like in this photo of a pound coin, but it’s quite frustrating not being able to stop down.

The other disadvantage of “cheating” at macro by focusing closer is that it’s hard to get light onto your subject, because the snout of the lens casts a shadow. When I use my macro LED ring flash, some of the objects I photograph have to be so close to the end of the camera that they are within the ring flash and hence get no light.

So I decided the only real solution would be to buy a proper macro lens with 1:1 magnification. I considered the Canon 60mm macro as the cheapest entry-level macro lens, but unfortunately it’s EF-S mount and can’t be used on 35mm SLRs, such as my EOS 300. If I’m going to shell out for a lens, I want it to work on all my cameras.

The next lens up in Canon’s range is the 100mm macro, which is EF mount, but is unfortunately quite a bit more expensive. I watched a few second hand lenses on eBay but the auctions always closed for prices significantly higher than I was willing to pay – especially as macro photography is only an occasional treat for me.

The two main rivals of the Canon 100mm are the Tamron 90mm and the Sigma 105mm. The Sigmas are rarer but there were plenty of Tamrons on eBay. The first few auctions for the 90mm finished at quite high prices but eventually I found one ending at an awkward time and won the auction for a bargain price. The lens is second hand but very new; mint condition and boxed in all original packaging.

The main disadvantage of the Tamron compared against the Canon is that the Canon has an ultrasonic autofocus motor, and full-time-manual focussing. As nice as those things are, they weren’t worth an extra £150 to me. The Tamron lens flips between manual and autofocus by sliding the whole focus ring back and forth, which is much nicer than fumbling for a small switch on the side of the lens barrel.

The Tamron 90mm feels solid compared with some of my other lenses – most of them budget ones. It’s reassuringly heavy and feels like an expensive lens. The autofocus is quite slow and quite loud, but this doesn’t matter. When I’m composing a macro scene, I can take all the time I like.

The main gripe is that the lens barrel extends by about two inches when focussing. You have to be careful not to bump into your subject if you are working at close range.

I’ve only owned the lens for a few hours, but I can see it’s a fantastic lens. The images are very sharp and almost completely free from any aberration. When I have some time to experiment with some small subjects, I’ll see what I can come up with. But for the time being, here’s a picture of a piece of Velcro.

Recently I bought a Canon EOS 450D from Jessops. They were running a bundle deal, and it came with a Canon 18-55mm lens and a Tamron 70-300mm lens.

The long zoom was quite an important aspect to me, since I had upgraded from a Fuji S9600, with a huge range in focal lengths.

I’ve now owned the camera for a couple of weeks and I’ve had a chance to play with it a bit. Of course a fortnight isn’t nearly enough time to fully understand everything about a complicated device such as a DSLR, but I’ve tried a few things with it.

This review in particular is about the Tamron lens.

Obviously you don’t expect wonders from the cheapest lens in its class, but I am still quite disappointed. The S9600 was a jack of all trades (and master of none) and showed weaknesses at both ends of its range of focal lengths. That said, the whole camera cost around £200 and can now be bought for significantly less than £200. I think that represents fantastic value for money. During my 23-month ownership of it, I’ve taken about 10,000 photos. On average, that’s more than one every two hours!

Given that the Tamron lens on its own costs almost as much as the entire Fuji camera, I had hoped for significantly better images. Never mind.

At the shorter focal lengths, it’s OK. Nothing to write home about, but it’s fine. I took these self portraits at a focal length of 70mm and they seem OK.

But when you start to zoom in, the problems get worse. Some of this should have been obvious from reading the box – its largest aperture at 300mm is f/5.6, which is pretty slow. To make matters worse, there is no image stabilisation. You can’t complain about this – it says it on the box and if you want a fast lens, you have to pay more for it.

But I wasn’t at all pleased with the optical quality at 300mm. Take, for example, this photo of some distant horses. The first photo is the full image, and the second one has been cropped to show detail. Neither photo has had any other editing.

Horses in Hartshill

Horses in Hartshill

The first thing you might see is that the focus is very soft. It wasn’t camera shake because the sun was out and I used a tripod. The autofocus just seems to struggle at long focal lengths.

But then look at the chromatic aberration around the white horses. It makes the image look pretty terrible.

I also tried taking some photos of the moon last night, also at 300mm. As before with the horses, it couldn’t autofocus properly. The low light conditions made it much worse and the image was so blurry that there was no definiton on the surface of the moon.

I flipped the lens into manual focus mode where I was able to hugely improve the focussing. Unfortunately it seems in manual focus, as you approach infinite focus, the moon becomes sharper, but for the last little bit of the travel the lens goes beyond infinite focus and makes a garbage image. Not good at all.

In the end, this is the best I could manage. Here I used manual focus, spot metering and I’ve cropped the image afterwards.

The moon

It’s OK, but I’ve managed a better photo of the moon with my S9600.

I’m not sure if my lens in particular is faulty, or if these lenses are all equally bad. But I am very unimpressed with the results, even for a budget lens. Given how much more the 450D and this lens cost than the S9600, there is no excuse.

Tamron’s own website says:

Perfect 2^nd lens for your DSLR kit

So they are certainly admitting that it shouldn’t be your primary lens. However I would also hesitate to say it’s “perfect” for anything.

My advice would be to avoid this lens, unless you’re on a particularly tight budget, or you don’t plan to use the higher end of the zoom range. Be prepared to switch off the autofocus, and focus manually if sharpness matters. Get a Canon telephoto lens if you can.

Update

I may have been a bit hasty in my critical review. As I said in my comment below, I had another go today at taking a few photos with the lens.

First here’s a chimney stack at full zoom, and a cropped version below.

Chimney stack at 300mm

Chimney stack at 300mm (crop)

As you can see, the focus is very sharp. There is a little aberration, but that’s expected from a cheap lens.

This photo of the seagull was also taken at full zoom. The autofocus can be pretty slow going from one end of the focus to the other, but if you focus on a similar object first, it’s much faster. In this case, fast enough to get a lock on a swooping seagull.

Seagull

Yes, it’s not perfect – but it’s acceptable for the price. I’m going to keep this lens and see what I can achieve with it

Today I was given a camera by a relative – an unwanted Canon AE-1P.

It’s my first SLR camera and I’m looking forward to having a play with it. My digital camera, a Fuji S9600 has many of the controls of an SLR without actually being one, so im familiar with the concepts.

But film is very different and I haven’t the first clue about it. I’ve never used a proper film camera. As a child my parents gave me disposable 35mm cameras and they were also fairly early adopters of digital photography (starting with a Fuji A201) so there were never 35mm cameras lying around for me to play with. I had to consult the user manual to figure out how to load film into the AE-1P!

After I’ve taken some photos with the AE-1P and had them developed (and begged, borrowed or stolen a film scanner) I’ll post the results on my photo blog if they are any good.