I understand it's hard to find any brand new FD lens now. Is there any mount converter that will allow Eos lens to fit on A1 body? Haven't done any shopping for camera equipments for a long time, hope I'm not asking a stupid question.

-- Steve (mmtong@yahoo.com), August 25, 2001

Answers

Steve, there are a couple of converters that allow FD lenses to mount on an EOS, both of which have limitations. I'm not aware of anything that adapts an EOS lens to an FD body. Even if it did mount, it would be severely handicapped. FD lenses use mechanical linkages to interface with the camera. EOS lenses are completely electrical ("E"lectro "O"ptical "S"ystem). If you could mount one, you would have no aperture control, obviously no autofocus, and it probably would not focus to infinity because of the added thickness of an adapter.

As someone replied earlier, there are sometimes "like new in box" lenses for auction on eBay. They command high prices because mint- item collectors are buying them to collect, not use. For what it's worth, I'd suggest you investigate used FD lenses in "excellent+," "mint-," "like new-," or 9+ condition, either on eBay or from the multitude of camera stores on the Internet. KEH.com rates equipment very conservatively and offers a warranty and a 14 day return. Their "EX" grade is better than most of the EX+ or higher ratings in eBay. I bought an EX+ lens from them that looks like it was never touched except for tiny signs that it was mounted.

No such thing as a stupid question! Good luck.

-- Alan Swartz (swartz@tyler.net), August 25, 2001.

As Alan points out it will be difficult to put a Canon EOS lens on an FD body and have it work. They are just too incompatible. FWIW, Canon (and others) made adapters to put Nikon F mount lenses on FD bodies. They could focus to infinity but you had to stop the lenses down to meter. This was a consequence of the Nikon F lens needing about 46 mm and the FD body providing about 42 mm meaning that the adapter count be about 4 mm thick to make up the difference. EOS lenses need about 44 mm so to put them on an FD body requires an adapter about 2 mm thick - difficult but probably possible. Now, if we could only convert the mechanical lens control into electrical signals we could actually make an EOS lens work on an FD body. Hmmm... (probably easier & cheaper to buy an EOS 3 to replace a T90 but what can replace an F-1?)

Cheers,

Duane

-- Duane k (dkucheran@creo.com), August 26, 2001.