Hello all,

I'm looking into the idea of getting an adapter and sticking an old manual focus 50mm lens onto my Canon 5D- the Canon primes like the 50mm f/1.2 etc are super expensive, so I thought something a bit left of centre might save a ton of money, and give an interesting feel to the resulting pictures.. I'd heard the Yashica 50mm f/1.7 was good except for an impossibly stiff focus ring (?), and other people have suggested the Pentax SMC 50mm, but I'm not sure I like the idea of having a radioactive lens! Can anyone recommend a decent standard prime that might fit this bill? (And my Canon via an adapter..). The less expensive the better really.

Your thoughts are much appreciated. Cheers~ Ben

Canon 50mm 1.8 FD, run under a $100.

Try a Contax 50mm f1.4 - a number of manufacturers make adapter rings to allow lenses to be adapted from Contax/Yashica mount to Canon EOS. I have a Photodiox adapter that I use with my Contax 85mm f1.4 to put it on my EOS system camera. The trick with adapters is that you can only use the lenses in stop-down mode, essentially limiting you to manual or aperture preferred exposure modes. There MAY be a mount adapter to let you use FD lenses on EOS bodies, but I don't know if it will work - I think the flange-to-focal-plane distance on the FD cameras was less than on the EOS cameras, meaning that any adapter would put the lens even further away from the focal plane, turning them into close-focus-only lenses. Someone more knowledgeable about Canon FD gear than I can correct this if I'm wrong.

There are FD-EOS macro adapters that won't let the lens focus to infinity, optical FD-EOS adapters that aren't considered to be of good quality, and a rare high quality optical FD-EOS adapter made by Canon for lenses longer than 200mm.

There are some interesting Tamron SP lenses, but Tamron only made an Adaptall II mount for EOS briefly, so they can be hard to find and a bit expensive. I gather there's a Chinese knockoff for the mount that is cheaper and easier to find, and since it's just a solid metal bayonet mount adapter, there are no optics or mechanics to worry about.

Since the 5D aspect of this question isn't relevant to APUG, but there is potentially useful information for EOS mount film camera users, I'll retitle the thread.

I guess reading the above I would go for a 42mm to EOS adpator, Mamyia, Petri, Chinon, Pentex, Vivitar all made reasonably good 50 mm primes.

Here are a few images I just took for you .

30D M42 to EOS adapter with AF confirm. Yashica 50mm 1.7 smooth focus ring .

Focus rings that are stiff just need to be lubricated , I have six 50mm 1.7 and they are all fine . No I'm not in to Yashica , but they do make some good glass.

Image 1. shot at ISO 100 at f1.7
2. ------------------ f2.8
3. ------------------ f4
4. ------------------ f8 flashed
5. ------------------ f16 flashed
6. ------------------ f1.7 flashed

Hope this helps , Lots of good m42 glass out there.

Tom

thanks for your thoughts everyone! Cheers in particular to Tom for going to the trouble of taking those sample pictures.

Yes, a lot of good M42 lenses out there. I love look of the Pentax 50 1.4. I also like the Zuiko lenses, the 55 1.2 is a favorite.