I thought I heard something a while back about a converter which allowed the use of FD lenses on Canon Rebel cameras. Was I hearing things? Or is this something I should look for considering the camera bodies with the FD lenses don't work?

-- Raman Santra (santra@neumedia.net), May 28, 2000

Answers

There were at least two FD to EOS adapters made, maybe more. Canon made a macro adapter that did not have any glass in it. It would allow you to attach the FD lens to the EOS camera, but you could not focus to infinity. The adapter acts as a short extension tube. The other version was actually a short tele-converter (1.27X or some such thing), causing your lens to grow in length and loose about a 1/2 stop of light, but it did allow infinity focus.

Neither of these options will control your aperture so you have to stop the lens down to meter and you only have manual focus (w/o focus confirmation either). The Rebel doesn't have the brightest viewfinder as it is so focusing will be difficult at best.

-- Jim Strutz (jimstrutz@juno.com), May 28, 2000.

If I'm not mistaken, the optical adapter (1.2x teleconverter) protrudes from the mount somewhat, limiting its use to longer lenses that have sufficient clearance. The target market for these was pro photographers with long, fast, expensive FD-L type lenses switching over to EOS. Given the expense of the adapter and the fact that you will lose most automatic features anyway, you are probably better off getting an FD-compatible body than trying to adapt FD lenses to an EOS.

-- David Goldfarb (dgoldfarb@barnard.edu), May 28, 2000.