Canon 350D with Olympus OM Lenses

[UniPol]

Hi everyone,

I have been collecting Olympus OM cameras and lenses for quite a number of years and they were the preferred choice for astrophotography back when. With the advent of digital and my purchase of a 300D and more recently a 350D, the OM gear just sits in the display cabinet looking a bit forlorn. A few months ago I saw adaptors for Canon EOS 300D/350D to Olympus OM lenses up for auction. They were from Shanghai and cost around $50 including delivery. It arrived in about a week, was superbly made and fitted perfectly. Of course you can only use the lenses manually however the metering is as normal and is spot on. I tried out all my OM lenses and they gave excellent results, although some lenses were a little hard to focus particularly the 28mm or less. The 50/1.2 was fantastic, giving razor sharp images, they were always a great lens. I have just ordered a camera piggy back attachment for my LX200 and I'm going to try them out on the night sky. It will be interesting to see the results. The price of used 35mm lenses has plummeted since digital and they can be picked up on ebay or camera fairs very cheaply. In my case, it is quite gratifying to be able to use the old lenses again.

I have attached a couple of pics of one of my Unitron refractors taken indoors with flash. The lens is the OM 200mm /f 1:5 set at f5 taken from about 3 metres. The good thing with digital is that if you botch up the focus just take some more pics till you get it right.

Cheers everybody, Steve

[Suzy_A]

Where did you get the adapter from? I also have a number of Olympus lenses and recently bought a Canon camera.

[sheeny (Al)]

Suzy,

Try a search on eBay for "Canon OM adapter". I too have a selection of OM lenses and I'd like to one day get a DSLR to use then on.

Al.

[acropolite (Phil)]

I bought a similar adapter for older style FD canon lenses to EF mount, works very nicely.

[Suzy_A]

Originally Posted by acropolite

I bought a similar adapter for older style FD canon lenses to EF mount, works very nicely.

Where did you get that from? Everything else that I have read says that this is not possible as the FD lenses cannot be made to focus to infinity as the space between the lens and the camera are not enough.

When I just held my FD 100 f2 lens up to my EOS - with the lens right up against the camera - it would only focus up to about 10 metres.

[acropolite (Phil)]

The unit had a lens in it to correct focus. Canon used to make them, mine is a copy supposedly made in Japan. Metering works fine but the aperture and focus are of course manual. You can read some more here. To find them on eBay do a search for Canon FD to EOS adapter. Around $30 to $40 US + postage to OZ, build quality on mine was excellent.

[Suzy_A]

Originally Posted by acropolite

do a search for Canon FD to EOS adapter.

Thanks for your post. I did a search and by the looks there are several available.