Film lenses value

I have a friend who has an old AE1 film camera with a bunch of lenses and he was wondering if they were worth anything. He has a 70-200mm and a couple primes but I don't know what focal lenght they are. He said he paid a lot of money for them back in 1985 and really never used them much.

I told him I would ask here and get back to him...anyone have any info on these?

Since all the lenses are FD mounts, their values are decreased somewhat. If he's still into photography, he can get a fd-ef adapter to use all his old lenses on new cameras. For pricing of fd mount lenses, you only need to turn to ebay. Btw, Canon never made a 70-200 fd lens. There's 80-200, 75-200, and 70-210. Check Canon's Camera Museum for all the stuff they ever made.

One thing to note, though, is the FD to ef adapters aren't like Zeiss or Leica to EOS adapters. The FD adapters have glass elements to correct the focus. As a result image quality usually suffers.

Roger Cicala wrote in post #2171007
One thing to note, though, is the FD to ef adapters aren't like Zeiss or Leica to EOS adapters. The FD adapters have glass elements to correct the focus. As a result image quality usually suffers.

And they are difficult to get !

Alb

Acc wrote in post #2171052
And they are difficult to get !

Alb

Not really. You can find them on ebay for $30+shipping. Though yes, the lens element in there will degrade IQ somewhat, but if you have a bunch of awesome FD lenses, you might as well invest in the adapter and save a few thousand bucks.

Montec wrote in post #2170770
I have a friend who has an old AE1 film camera with a bunch of lenses and he was wondering if they were worth anything. He has a 70-200mm and a couple primes but I don't know what focal lenght they are. He said he paid a lot of money for them back in 1985 and really never used them much.

I told him I would ask here and get back to him...anyone have any info on these?

do a search on ebay for prices.

ed rader

I think Acc was referring to the original canon FD-EF adapter. I saw one recently on ebay and it was up over $800 with a few days left. I've heard that Canon's FD-EF converter was very hard to get and that Canon did not make a lot of them, but instead only really put it out to help pros convert who had major $$$ invested in EF lenses. Because of this most of the Canon adapters are still in the hands of their original owners and Canon doesn't make it anymore. Is the quality better than the $30 adapter? I'm sure it was, but was it 25x better? ($800/$30)

Layston wrote in post #2176264
I think Acc was referring to the original canon FD-EF adapter. I saw one recently on ebay and it was up over $800 with a few days left. I've heard that Canon's FD-EF converter was very hard to get and that Canon did not make a lot of them, but instead only really put it out to help pros convert who had major $$$ invested in EF lenses. Because of this most of the Canon adapters are still in the hands of their original owners and Canon doesn't make it anymore. Is the quality better than the $30 adapter? I'm sure it was, but was it 25x better? ($800/$30)

Prices rise exponentially compared to the degree of improvement it gets. The IQ might be 10% better, but it might cost 5-6x the price. $800 adapter is better, but it certainly is not 25x better. I doubt it is even more than 2-3x better (each x = 1 sharpen on photoshop). Either way, as there is no real site that compares these things, one can only go with what they can afford and be satisfied with that.