EOS Adapters

Veijo Vilva

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Quite many lenses designed for other SLR camera systems can be used on EOS bodies with the help of a suitable adapter.
  • In some cases, the optical performance isn't degraded at all, i.e. when the registration distance of the lens is long enough and the lens mount diameter small enough so that a simple, fully mechanical adapter can be used to mount the lens at the correct registration distance to achieve infinity focus.
  • However, functional compromises may have to be made as one has to give up auto-focus and auto-aperture -- unless, of course, one is mainly interested in fully manual prime lenses.
There are two groups of foreign lenses which are especially interesting in this context:
  • Contax/Yashica mount Carl Zeiss lenses for the ultimate in quality, sometimes even at a reasonable price when bought second-hand.
  • various old lenses for the M42 screw mount (Praktica/Pentax/Zenith mount) for a quite respectable performance at a sometimes very much lower price level. Some of the better M42 lenses are quite competitive quality-wise even to-day.

Contax/Yashica Mount to EOS Adapter

These adapters aren't quite as handy as the M42 ones as these are locked to the lens so they must be unmounted from the EOS body in order to mount another Contax lens - the M42 adapters can be left on the body and just the lens unmounted. For me, it isn't a major problem as I usually carry with me only one lens in addition to a 1915 vintage Vest Pocket Kodak Meniscus Achromat lens, which has become to be my primary and in my opinion quite indispensable walkaround lens, remounted in a surplus M42 lens body.

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M42 Screw Mount to EOS Adapters

There are many makes of M42-to-EOS available -- some of them good, some not so.
I've acquired two types of adapters, the first type made of chromed bronze,
the second type made of elox aluminium.

  • my chromed bronze adapters are heavy and have two serious faults:

    1. lenses without an auto/manual switch do not work with these adapters as the adapters don't push the aperture pin in - the aluminium ones have an inner flange to catch the aperture pin, c.f. the photo.
    2. the registration distance is slightly too short which means that the distance scale on the lenses doesn't indicate a correct distance and cannot be used to accurately set the focus, and the lens can be focused past infinity, which is quite nasty if one is absent-minded or in a hurry and just turns the focusing ring until the infinity stop. BTW, this feature can be used to produce soft photos where everything is guaranteed to be at least slightly out of focus.

  • these elox aluminium adapters are light and work as expected. However, there are also other makes on the market, and some of them don't have the flange and some are either too thin or too thick.

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