300d - usable lens?

[matt_f]

Hi I figure this has probably been answered alot but I try searching sites and forums about it and haven't hit a definitive answer.

I was wondering If I can use an older, full manual canon lens. No af, auto-f#, no metering.

Also I was wondering if I could use other lens from other manufactures.

Thanks
-Matt

[Michaelmjc]

The only lens you can use are the Canon EF lenses,if it says that on the lens you're good to go.
The canon EF-s lenses are lenses that will only work on 300D, 350D, 20D... not sure about any others.

[Andy_T]

Matt,

welcome to the forum :D

What Mike said, sums it up nicely ... you are supposed to use lenses designed for the Canon EF lensmount. These might come from Canon (of course), Sigma, Tokina, Tamron and some other manufacturers. Important ... it should say 'Canon EF (or EOS) lensmount)' on the box.

A word of caution, though ... some third-party lenses (those not made by Canon, but by Sigma, Tamron, Tokina) might not work on your digital body. The reason is that Canon normally does not license the detail plans and protocols to their lensmount (there were exceptions, e.g. to Kodak), so those manufacturers have to figure out themselves how the lens should communicate electronically with the body.

Now the communication on the older third-party lenses might no longer be compatible with the new digital bodies, as Canon changed some subtle things in order to improve performance, and they only paid attention to ensuring it is compatible with their own range of lenses. Should not be a problem for a lens you buy new today, but if it's a used third-party lens, you should check it out before buying. Sometimes, these lenses can be sent back to the manufacturer, who upgrades them, but there is no guarantee this is possible.

Also, if you don't mind to use your lenses without autofocus, there are adapters available that allow you to mount totally different lenses (e.g. Nikon lenses, medium format lenses, Pentax M42 lenses ... practically many of the lenses that were made since the 1950's) on your Canon EOS camera.

This also covers the old manual focus Canon FD lenses, BUT ... it doesn't work as easy for those as it works for Nikon, M42 and medium format lenses. Main reason is that the distance between lens and film ('flange focal distance') on the FD lens mount is shorter than on the EOS mount, and it is technically not possible to make an adapter out of negative space :wink:

This results in the lens not being able to focus to infinity (you might use it as a macro lens) unless the adapter has some kind of lens inside (basically it's a 1.2x teleconverter) and this can degrade image quality unless you are able to find one of the old, very rare (and thus expensive) Canon adapters specifically made when they changed the lens mount. The third-party adapters you find on eBay to mount FD lenses are sometimes not very good optically.

Take a look at this thread (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=57023)for more information considering this.

Best regards,
Andy