SLR lenses on your digital video camera

posted Nov 25th 2007 10:26pm by Will O'Brien
filed under: digital cameras hacks, misc hacks

Considering all the attention we give digital cameras, I wanted to find an interesting hack for those old school analog SLR cameras. (I spent a fair share of time behind one; I’m fond of the classic Canon AE-1) [Joshua] mated his Sony VX-2000e video camera with a Canon FD lens mount and created this monster. With the new lens mount, he’s got a full selection of lenses without the huge investment of specialized lenses.

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Comments [7]

Reader Comments

Hmm… It’s been a while since I’ve used a 35-mm camera. Are digital cameras pushing the costs down on the older film-based camera lenses or does this create some expensive niche?

Posted at 12:34 am on Nov 26th, 2007 by Terry

Newer lens lines by Canon and Nikon have demolished the price of older manual focus lenses. You can get, high quality manual lenses for almost nothing. I use FD lenses on my rebel all the time, just wish the adapter was clearer. Just hit up eBay and you’ll see how cheap I mean.

Posted at 12:48 am on Nov 26th, 2007 by Super_chris

The problem with adapting FD-mount lenses to an EOS-mount camera like the Rebel is that the two are dimensionally incompatible. EOS-mount lenses sit closer to the film plane. FD-mount lenses on an adapter can’t focus to infinity unless the adapter contains extra optics, and of course that tends to lower the picture quality.

Posted at 2:39 am on Nov 26th, 2007 by Orv

Buy an old Canon Xl1 and call it done instead of trying to carry around a frankenstin that will fall apart.

Cripes you can get the Xl1 for $1500.00 anywhere and it kicks the crap out of even the current prosumer HD cameras still because it comes with a awesome lens!

I love how people cobble crap together instead of buying an older used item that does the same thing better.

and yes you CAN get a SLR lens adapter for the XL1. it’s mighty cheap right now as well.

Posted at 9:29 am on Nov 26th, 2007 by fartface

The benefit of mounting a 35mm lens on a small video camera is to obtain the same field of view and depth of field as a 35mm lens. From the looks of things, this particular hacker missed the boat by not including a ground glass or similar. There are many examples of DIY in this arena, and a number of them have become commercial products. Notably the Redrock M2 http://www.redrockmicro.com/micro35.html and the Cinevate Brevis 35 http://www.cinevate.com/website/index.php

Posted at 12:31 pm on Nov 26th, 2007 by tigeba

I believe it is a nicer idea to buy a Cannon pro cam, it can mount cannon camera lens

Posted at 12:44 pm on Nov 29th, 2007 by Christopher CHan

I’d like to know how to use an old 500 mm cat lens on my zoom digital (Kodak z612) for astrophotography. There must be some way to use an adapter tube, an adapter ring (I removed the Pentax bayonet mount ring from the lens) to do this. But how?

Posted at 8:06 pm on Jan 19th, 2008 by Steve Schaper