Legacy Lenses

[Grendel]

I cant wait for the olympus adaptor to arrive, I have a 24mm, a 50mm and a 70-210 miranda zoom for that one.
grendel

[Grendel]

The Sigma 70-210 lens arrived yesterday, its as I thought not electronically compatible with the 20D, but a little tape over the contacts cured the error 99 and I could test it, its actually quite a nice lens, though with the contacts taped I dont get any aperture settings, but never mind for a cheap ebay purchase i am not dissatisfied.
Grendel

[Tracey]

Grendel, do you have any samples of photos taken with these lenses/adaptor?

Are the adapters the chipped ones? I'd seen those advertised on eBay, but didnt know whether to risk it. In the end the lens I bought came with an unchipped adaptor, so I'll make do with that until I get more experience

[Grendel]

Well the spider one earlier in this thread was taken with the 42mm threaded adaptor, and a 50mm zenit lens, I used the chipped adaptor and it flashes up the red lights when its focussed. apparently there are some adaptors you can set to a particular lens's focal length and f stop, via an input from the camera, but the one I got was preset at 50mm f2 for a small amount extra they can flash it to any f/l and f stop. all it really does is enable the focus lights and exif data for the picture, the site I got mine from also sell the chips seperately so you can fit them to your own lenses. The sigma lens I havent really tested in earnest yet, but thats an EF fit (originally for the film cameras), so the electronics isnt compatible, it may work on some settings aparently but for now I have taped the contacts and am using it manually.
Grendel

[Tracey]

I'm looking forward to seeing the Sigma tests the spider one looks good (I cant look at bug pictures for long )

[Grendel]

Finally got the Olympus adaptor yesterday (it took a couple of weeks to get here from China) but that said when I tried it last night the results were quite good using my old olympus lenses, the wide angle (24mm) enabled me to get a decent picture of one of our cats while it was sitting on my lap, and the 70-200 zoom was very good on a wooden plaque across the room, I still have to play some to get the best results, but the initial tests show some promise. the cat picture is just cropped a little (to hide the mess next to my chair) and the plaque is a crop out of the centre of the frame, also consider I didnt take a lot of time trying to get the focus perfect either on the plaque.

[Grendel]

the plaque was a crop out of this (resized) image.

[Tracey]

Theres some fine detail on that plaque

Are you enjoying using the lenses?

[Grendel]

Yes its great, I rarely used the camera on full automatic as it never really got just what I wanted, so I learned all the manual controls, so using it with legacy lenses makes that even easier, as they all have the aperture controls on the lens rather than electronically as they are on all the standard lenses, I have yet to figure how to change the aperture on the sigma lens, but other than that I am really enjoying playing with the settings to get a good result.
Grendel

[Tracey]

It sounds just like the "old style" photography, but without the expense of developing/processing win-win

[Grendel]

and on top of that you get to see your results and if they arent quite right you can go back and get that shot, just been playng with lenses during my lunch break, the sigma gets a good shot, but it isnt any better than my old 70-210 Miranda lens from my olympus, and the miranda lens has manual aperture, I am stuck with wide open on the sigma lens, great for taking outside and running around with, not so good when you want a good depth of field though.
Grendel

[Tracey]

I think when I have a bit of money spare I'll look into a longer legacy lens, I quite fancy getting back into the "old ways" (is that a sign of getting older )

[Grendel]

No its a sign of wisdom that comes with age, you recognise the fact that it will save you spending a fortune on new camera lenses if you learn to use your camera with the old ones. I have to say though that the AF enable chips that allow the red lights to flash when focus is achieved on my camera do help a lot, or I would be relying solely upon my judgement of whether a picture was in focus and would end up spending ages taking pictures and fiddleing with the dioptre adjustment on the viewfinder.
grendel