M42 mount lens and XTI

Has anyone tried a M42 mount (threaded) lens on the XTI? I've been searching to see if anyones has and can't find any experiences. I know everything is done manually with this lens but I thought it could be a cheap alternative. Thanks.

Yes, its a common occurence. Take a look at these links

http://oomz.net/mf/
http://www.mflenses.co​m
http://m42.povlab.org/

The only lenses that I use now are M42 mounts; and the Zeiss-Jena 35mm f2.4 Flektogon is an excellent and inexpensive lens readily found on eBay…

Granted, I have the 350D (Rebel XT), but it's pretty much the same….

I've just god hold of 85/2 helios 9. Love it so far.

With russian photographic doctrine, the portrait lens needs to be low contrast wide open to hide the skin texture. At f/2 you can see that.

At f/4 though it beats any L zoom.

There's a lot of cheap glass if you like telephoto with good quality.

I sometimes use my Zeiss 135mm on my 5D with such a mount, works pretty well, I also have a 50mm f/1.8 which is M42 thread.

Yup, plenty of good old stuff around and can endorse from experience what Doc and sjones say about those specific lenses.

I have an 58mm Helios on M42 mount (very simple convertor required) and it works ok.

iwannabe wrote in post #4076831
Has anyone tried a M42 mount (threaded) lens on the XTI? I've been searching to see if anyones has and can't find any experiences. I know everything is done manually with this lens but I thought it could be a cheap alternative. Thanks.

You can buy a M42 > EOS mount which includes the electrical connections, you obviously cant autofocus as the lens is missing a major component (motor) but you can focus manually & still retain the AF confirmation in the viewfinder when focus has been achieved.

I use a simple converter without any AF confirmation, I find MF a lot easier now on the 5D but on the 400D which is pretty much the same as my old 350D I did find it hard to manually focus with any degree of accuracy, that was my only complain with this whole idea of using older lenses.

I have the 85mm Jupiter-9 M42 mount lens. Manual focus and aperture, of course, but no problems to speak of. The Jupiter-9 has a somewhat funky two-step mechanism for setting the aperture but it makes perfect sense once you work with it a bit and apparently wasn't an uncommon feature for certain manual lenses back in the day.

There are actually two types of EOS M42 adapters - one is just a simple metal ring and the other includes some electronics to enable the camera's focus confirmation feature.

Thanks everyone for your input. I figure for the money it might be worth a try.
Interested in something with some reach for now but I may have to give the Zeiss-Jena 35mm f2.4 Flektogon if it's as good and as inexpensive as sjones stated. Seems it may be too close to my Sigma 30 1.4 however.
What mount is recommended? With or without the confirmation?

You might want to invest in a split image focusing screen, it makes focusing so much easier.

iwannabe wrote in post #4078042
What mount is recommended? With or without the confirmation?

If you don't mind the extra cost, get the one with focus confirmation. Though these old lenses do seem to be much easier to manually focus than most modern lenses (Canon 50mm f1.8, I'm talkin' to you).

The AF-confirmation chips also allow you to choose separate focus points and the metering mode.

iwannabe wrote in post #4078042
Interested in something with some reach for now but I may have to give the Zeiss-Jena 35mm f2.4 Flektogon if it's as good and as inexpensive as sjones stated. Seems it may be too close to my Sigma 30 1.4 however.

I have had the Zeiss and the Sigma and both are very nice ... similar feel in many ways to the images. I wouldn't get the Zeiss is I already had the Sigma. For a longer lens then the Pentax 200mm f4 is a superb lens. I have one that I never use these days and have tried to sell it here a number of time with no luck. People don't trust you can get great results with an old lens and £50 These old prime lenses really teach you how to be a photographer. Great fun. I got some of my very best shots during a 6 month phase of just using a 350D and MF lenses. I did a paid indoor shoot about 6 months ago with just a 30D with split focus screen and a Zeiss 135mm - very nice.

I'd be interested to give this a go sometime early next year. Recently a CZJ Pancolar 50mm f/2 landed in my lap and I'm hoping to use it on my camera to see what results it'd yield. Currently I am still trying to finish a first roll of film to see how it fares.