Age of lens matter?

[king718]

Well I just got my camera. T3i. turns out my dad has some old EOS camera which he had a lens and flash for. Well the thing is im complete new to this photography world. The lense is called quantaray tech-10 CN AF. 70-300mm. I would assume it is about 10 years old. Maybe even older. I'm not sure. Maybe I'm wrong. He said he bought it in 1999. Anyways. Does this matter? I tried it on the t3i. It works fine but some times the pictures do get a little blurry. Maybe because of movement. Maybe I'm doing it wrong? But if it does give clear perfect shots as well. So I'm wondering if it matters how old the lens is? Can the same shots be achieved with this lens that you would see in a recent model?

 

[Big Mike]

Lenses made for the EOS system should work on any EOS camera, including your T3i.

There were some 'off brand' lenses that were designed for the old film cameras, and didn't have current technology to communicate with the newer cameras. Some people had these lenses 're-chipped'.

But if the lens will auto focus on your camera, and if the aperture can be controlled via the camera, then you shouldn't have any problems using it.

As for the photos being blurry, I'd guess that you're right and it's because of movement. Either the camera and/or the subjects. Keep in mind the rule of thumb for hand held shooting. You want at least 1/focal length as your shutter speed. Some say that you should take the 'crop factor' into acount (1.6 for Canon) and some say that it should be 2x the focal length.

So if you you're shooting that lens at 300mm, you will want a shutter speed of at least 1/300...1/460 being better and 1/600 being even better. Of course, being able to shoot with shutter speeds that fast, on a lens that doesn't have a large maximum aperture, will probably require you to be shooting in bright daylight and/or using a very high ISO.

So the lens is probably fine, but do keep an eye on the shutter speed and make sure that it's as fast as possible. Raise the ISO if need be.

To really test whether or not it's the lens. Mount the lens on a tripod (or stable surface) and take some shots without touching the camera (self timer).