Canon A1 lenses

[GerryS]

Hi

I have rediscovered in my loft my old Canon A1 along with all it's accessories which I put up there ages ago as I had purchased a digital camera and could not bring myself to sell it.

I have checked on various auctions sites and they do not appear to have any real resale value.

I have several lenses to fit the A1 and wondered if it is possible to fit these via an adaptor onto any of the Canon digital SLR bodies.

Many thanks in anticipation!
Gerry

 

[runnah]

There are adaptors but with being as how canon changed their mount the quality does suffer a bit. depending on what lenes you have it mostly likely isn't worth the effort.

 

[GerryS]

Hi

I have rediscovered in my loft my old Canon A1 along with all it's accessories which I put up there ages ago as I had purchased a digital camera and could not bring myself to sell it.

I have checked on various auctions sites and they do not appear to have any real resale value.

I have several lenses to fit the A1 and wondered if it is possible to fit these via an adaptor onto any of the Canon digital SLR bodies.

Many thanks in anticipation!
Gerry

Thanks for the reply
It might be worth a try if I can get hold of a decent body cheap enough as it seems such a waste not to try to use them

 

[TCampbell]

The general opinion of most Canon shooters I know is that while you *can* get them adapted to fit and use them... it's just not worth it.

They are manual focus lenses with a mechanical aperture control -- absolutely no electronics. This means the mechanical aperture lever has to go, you'll use the manual f-stop ring to set aperture, and you'll manually focus the lens.

But there's a downside to having a manually focused lens. On your A1 you would have had a nice big viewfinder and a split-prism focusing screen making it relatively easy to manually focus the lens accurately (regardless of whether you wear corrective lenses). Your DSLR assumes lenses are auto-focus and thus there's little point in a split-prism focus screen. If it's an APS-C sized sensor DSLR then the focusing screen is proportionately smaller (the sensor is smaller, the mirror is smaller, the viewfinder is smaller) and you're trying to accurately focus on a smaller screen and without the benefit of any focusing aid.

If you owned an absolutely phenomenal Canon FD lens, it might be worth it. But for most common lenses, the opinion of my Canon shooters I know is that it's not worth the trouble; the new lenses are better; and you'll be much happier with the modern glass.

I have an AE-1 with a few FD series lenses, but as I didn't own any particularly good glass back in those days, I quickly realized that the lenses are better off as-is. I suppose if I ever want to dust off the AE-1 just for nostalgia sake... I'll have a few lenses to go play with.

 

[GerryS]

The general opinion of most Canon shooters I know is that while you *can* get them adapted to fit and use them... it's just not worth it.

They are manual focus lenses with a mechanical aperture control -- absolutely no electronics. This means the mechanical aperture lever has to go, you'll use the manual f-stop ring to set aperture, and you'll manually focus the lens.

But there's a downside to having a manually focused lens. On your A1 you would have had a nice big viewfinder and a split-prism focusing screen making it relatively easy to manually focus the lens accurately (regardless of whether you wear corrective lenses). Your DSLR assumes lenses are auto-focus and thus there's little point in a split-prism focus screen. If it's an APS-C sized sensor DSLR then the focusing screen is proportionately smaller (the sensor is smaller, the mirror is smaller, the viewfinder is smaller) and you're trying to accurately focus on a smaller screen and without the benefit of any focusing aid.

If you owned an absolutely phenomenal Canon FD lens, it might be worth it. But for most common lenses, the opinion of my Canon shooters I know is that it's not worth the trouble; the new lenses are better; and you'll be much happier with the modern glass.

I have an AE-1 with a few FD series lenses, but as I didn't own any particularly good glass back in those days, I quickly realized that the lenses are better off as-is. I suppose if I ever want to dust off the AE-1 just for nostalgia sake... I'll have a few lenses to go play with.

Hi thanks for the replies
Still not sure what to do!! Probably keep the A1 and lenses for old times and get a new Canon instead!