Testing old lenses.

[iliakoltsov]

I started a blog, on M4/3 and legacy lenses and I am doing tests of lenses mainly look and feel and how easy it is to handle and how it renders.

Ilia Koltsov - Micro 4/3 and legacy lenses

Hope it will be useful for someone

 

[BrianK]

Its very useful, thanks!

BK

 

[Spuff]

Yes, really useful, thanks.
Is the Canon nFD the same as the FD or are they different things?

 

[Luckypenguin]

The original FD lenses used a breech-lock mount where you positioned the lens against the camera body and rotated a breech (sliver ring in pic below) at the back of the lens to lock it in place.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/5285286522/" title="IMG_5992 by Lucky.penguin, on Flickr">

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"500" height="333" alt="IMG_5992" /></a>

The nFD or new FD mount used the same camera mount but the lenses were modified to a bayonet style where you had to rotate the entire lens to lock it into position. The breech was removed as shown below. The new FD lenses are easier to mount one-handed.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/5243299857/" title="IMG_5949 by Lucky.penguin, on Flickr">

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"500" height="333" alt="IMG_5949" /></a>

 

[Spuff]

Is the nFD/FD mounting procedure immaterial on a m43 body given that you would need to use an adaptor?

 

[addieleman]

Hope it will be useful for someone

Thanks for this. Any chance we can see the full-size pictures?

 

[RedNumber5]

Thanks for the testing and images.

 

[AceStar]

This is quite a helpful resource, thanks!

If you have more time, it would be good to get some more types of sample images for the lenses tested, such as portraits, landscapes, etc. Portraits would be nice, as the crop factor makes many normal adapted lenses into decent options for portrait lenses. Not that I'm not grateful for the samples you have!

 

[Luckypenguin]

Is the nFD/FD mounting procedure immaterial on a m43 body given that you would need to use an adaptor?

The same mounting procedure applies when using an adpater, but all FD adapters have an aperture lock ring (where lock and open are printed on the pictures above) which which activates the aperture stop-down lever on the back of the lens mount. Unlike other bayonet mounts the base of the FD and nFD lenses do not rotate during mounting so there is no way to automatically move the stop-down lever into position. This is true for the new FD lenses as well because even though you rotate the body of the lens to mount it, the base of the lens does not move. The lock ring must be moved back to the open position to remove the lens.

 

[iliakoltsov]

The main difference between nFD and FD consists on the mount that is not rotating the handling is very similar to a bayonet lens. You fix it the same way except the ring in order to fix it is the lens itself.

nFD no moving parts on the mount

FD moving ring for fixing the lens

Other than that adapter for FD lenses are compatible with nFD. So in order to use FD or nFD lenses the same adapter is needed on Micro 4/3 , no extra adapter is needed. this just to clarify.

Concerning larger pictures I will try to post some of them and I promise I will to vary a bit even though I love macro .

I forgot to add I use DarkTable with AmaZe demosaicing algorithm and AWB in GIMP. Basically except the WB the pictures are straight from camera. For older ones that you can find in my flickr i used rawtherapee but the same comment is applicable.