EF Lens adapter / EF Lenses / EOS Lens

[Larry Wood]

I've seen conflicting information about what functions of a Canon EF lens are passed to a XL1/Xl1S via the EF adapter XL. Can someone give me a definitive answer?
autofocus, iris, image stabilization, zoom?

Thanks.

Hi all,

finally looking at adding an EF lens adapter to our gear for extra-long lenses. Canon's site has a strange comment:

"The optional EF Adapter fits onto the XL1S allowing use of Canon EOS EF lenses for quality still imaging."

Am I missing something? Is this adapter ONLY for still images? Does anyone out there have any experience with it?

Thanx in advance,
Chris

NO you can shot video as you would with the the xl1 lens.

I am interested in purchasing the EF adapter and a telephoto lens for my XL1.

Has anyone out there had any experience with this? I would like to get the
75-300mm or 100-400mm. However, because of the 7.2 multiplication factor
on still lenses I was worried that the setup would shake so much it might not be usable. I would be using it for surf and wildlife videography.

Also, on the longer telephotos, the lense mounts to the tripod, seems like a lot of weight for the XL1 body to be hanging off the end of the lense.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Steve Nunez]

while on the subject.......can non-Canon EOS compatible lenses be used such as Sigma, Tamron, Tokina etc....and do they retain auto focus when used on the XL or strictly manual focus?

[Adrian Douglas]

Any SLR lens used with the XL1 and the relevent adapter will be manual focus only. As for sigma, tokina etc, I'm not aware of an adapter but they honestly don't have the quality of glass that would warrent using them. The standard XL lens is far better than any of those lenses. There is an adapter for Canon FD lenses which is a cheaper alternative to EF (EOS) lenses.

For surfing, I use a 70-200/f2.8L and it's fantastic. It gives and equalivant to about 500 - 1450mm and I find it more than ample for shooting surfing.

[Steve Nunez]

What are the differences between EF and FD lenses- are they both slr lenses for cameras?

As for Sigma, Tokina, Tamron- i'd have to disagree- some 3rd party upper end lenses have optics on par with the OEM (Canon, Nikkor) lenses- professionals today use them quite frequently- but of course the OEM brands are always more desireable, more expensive and retain their resale value- other than that 3rd party lenses work great.

I'm interested in finding out what a FD lens is and what they were used for....any words?

I'm interested in learning more about the value of using my existing Carl Zeiss 35mm SLR lenses on the XL1S (hope to get it later this month).

I understand the adapter marketed by ZGC.com costs about $6,500 (at least, I think it does). That's quite expensive.

These are my Zeiss lenses: 28 mm, 60mm macro, 85mm, 135mm, 180mm. Not really understanding what those lenses might bring to my pending XL1S setup, would it behoove me to really consider the 35mm lens adapter?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Zeiss lens are world class and some other manufacturers as well. I own a Contax 645 that uses Zeiss lens, its great for medium format.. the photos I get back oozes with definition, fidelity and eye popping colors..

My Canon lens are not match for it. I do own a few L lens and they are great, they are great to work with when you are on the run, its autofocus is blistering quick. In regards to Sigma/Tokina/Tamron lens, I own a 17-35mm Sigma EX and it performs just as good as the Canon equivalent costing twice as much. Only gripe I have about the Sigma is the lack of full time manual focus...

I'll be interested to see if the EF adaptor really works as well as my theory: Consider you will be using only 1/7th of the 35mm lens area, I dont think you will get any barrel or pincushioning distortion at all! Digital SLRs have multipliers of 1.3 - 1.6! Using smaller areas of the lens usually eliminates the problems of zoom lens. If you were to use a medium format lens, the division effect will be even greater! 50mm (in 35mm format) = 80mm (in 120 format)... Straight lines will be perfectly straight! Can anyone back up my theory?

Regards,

[Willard Hill]

I have used the Canon L2 (predecessor to the XL-1) since 1997 and have used the eos adapter with that camera extensively for wildlife videography. The L2 has a 5.4 multiplication factor. I ordinarily use a 35-350mm Canon L zoom which gives me an equivalent to a 35mm lens of 189mm-1,890mm ( Ihope my math is right). This is extremely usable when the camera is mounted on a sturdy tripod. Strong winds will cause problems with shake and one must be very careful to control breathing, etc . It requires experience and practice to get good results with this outfit, but it will open a new world to you. It is possible to capture footage that has smashing impact. I have also used the canon 2x extender with this rig and it too is usable but I prefer to avoid it if possible.
I have also used a Sigma 170-500 zoom and a Canon 75-300 IS zoom. The 75-300 is about the same size as the normal lens that came with the camera and is used by mounting the camera directly to the tripod. The big Sigma and the 35-350mm Canon are mounted directly to the tripod by means of the tripod ring and of course the camera hangs on the end of this. I have carried this type of outfit for five years now with no problems to the camera from hanging on the big telephotos, but one would no doubt damage it if they mounted the camera to the tripod ,and then put the lens on the camera, letting the telephotos weight pull down on the lens mount.
I always use manual focus with these lenses. In fact I usually use it with the normal lens. The XL-1s may be better in this area and I hope to find out as I intend to get one within a month or so. I hope you find this information helpful. This set-up may require some effort to master but in my mind the results you will obtain far outweigh any inconvienence
As a closing thought the 35-350 is not the sharpest of Canon's lenses but it is good. I picked it because it has a relaticely wide low-end and is a fairly powerful telephoto on the high end. It is sometimes difficult to find an animal or bird with the small field of view of the telephotos. I often zoom out to locate the subject and then zoom back in to my desired composition. I do find that with practice one can also use a75-300 or 100-400, but be aware that at least with my rig, that eos image stabalization lenses will consume a lot of eos adapter batteries while they last almost forever with non IS lenses.
Hope this helps!

[Steve Nunez]

thanks for that post- was just the info i was looking for-

a good Sigma or Tokina 70-300 or 400 should do the trick.

[Adrian Douglas]

The FD lens range is the predesessor to the current EF(EOS) range. The lenses are all manual focus but that's not a problem as when you hang any SLR lens of the XL1 it's only manual.

I'm not against 3rd party lenses, I've got a Sigma 90/f2.8 Macro that's a fantastic, but unless you really need huge focal lengths you won't gain anything as the XL lens is still a great piece of glass.

I shot surfing with it (on manual) for ages with great results before getting the EOS adapter and hanging my 70-200 of my XL1. The only reason I changed was for the better glass in the L series lens I already had.

Remember your multiplication factor, a 400mm will yeild an approx lenth of almost 3000mm. Do you plan to shoot the zits on young surfers faces in New Zealand?

Good luck, hope you get good waves.

I'd like to thank everyone for their posts to my questions on using the EF adapter on the XL1 with long telephotos.

I spoke to a Canon tech rep in new York who also gave me the following info: The EF lenses do work with Image Stablization but not as good as the video lens that comes with the camera. Their rule of thumb on mounting the lens and camera body to the tripod is... if it's a black lens mount the body to the tripod and if it's a white lens mount the lens to the tripod. Also don't leave the MA 100 or MA 200 on the back of the body as that adds extra stress on the adapter ring. Use a heavy tripod!

Thanks again to everyone.

Larry Olsen

[Rob Lohman]

sounds scary all this hanging things off eachother. I've
got no experience with such systems at all, but there
is much $$$ hanging off eachother :) ... I've read some-
where that they use some support system in the
"professional" film world to support both the lens
*and* the camera. I think I saw such a system too once
for the XL1 on one of chris' pages. Perhaps he can comment
some more on this. It might be an interesting option
for you (although I believe those systems tend to be
expensive)

Good luck!

the problem with manual lenses on the xl1 is that you must rely on the cheesy lcd viewfinder to set focus... which doesn't work because there isn't enuf resolution; it's a guessing game as to whether or not the focus is perfectly correct.

if you are shooting something like motorsports or even surfing, you'll need a lens that has the ability to hold focus thruout the entire zoom range... which the factory xl1 lense does not do well.

i would really like to know if the people using eos lenses and the like are able to set focus once, then zoom around with ease... does it hold focus, and is there a motorized zoom option with those still lenses?

thanks,

dan
oceanstreetvideo.com