Why You Should Use Canon EF Lenses on Your EOS R Camera
You’re looking at the features and form of that fantastic new EOS R series from Canon and would like to justify the purchase of one or the other of these new models. But, you’ve been caught up in gear acquisition syndrome (GAS) before, and besides, you’ve got all of those Canon EF lenses already.
One of the best aspects of upgrading to a mirrorless camera as a DSLR user is that we don’t have to ditch all of the lenses we already have. Since the flange to film plane distance is almost always less in regards to our previous camera and lenses vs mirrorless, an adapter can usually be made to fit DSLR lenses on mirrorless bodies.
EF-RF Adapter
To cut to the chase for Canon users, with an EF-RF adapter you can use EF lenses on EOS R bodies. Besides the fine Canon brand adapters, various 3rd party manufacturers are making high quality EF-RF adapters.
Since Canon EOS R cameras are excellent video cameras as well as still cameras, one manufacturer to consider is Ikan Corp, designer and manufacturer of high quality and innovative videography and cinematography accessories and solutions.
Ikan designs and makes their own equipment meaning you can get amazingly high quality and fully capable gear for prices that are very reasonable. Their Commlite EF-RF Lens Adapter (CM-EF-EOS-R) adapts your existing Canon EF lenses to fit and function on EOS R bodies.
Adapts All Functions
Canon EF lenses were quite revolutionary when the EOS system was introduced in the 1980s as these were the first series of lenses for 35mm SLR photography that had 100% electronic communication between camera and lens.
The AF systems for Nikon and Minolta SLRs, a couple of the major players along with Canon, Pentax, and Olympus at that time, had lens mounts that were a hybrid of mechanical and electronic interaction. Instead of adapting AF and electronic information transfer to their FD lens mount, Canon decided to build an all-new system from the ground up.
All Canon EF lenses have a lens mount with no moving parts, no mechanical information transfer or actuations. It’s all electronic. Canon EF lenses have motors which adjust focusing and lens aperture or f-stop.
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Electronic Communication and Actuation
The actual settings are directed and communicated back and forth between camera and lens. So not only does the camera tell the lens what to do for focusing and aperture, but the lens tells the camera what is actually going on inside the lens, including what focal length it is, all of which allows for Canon’s superb automatic flash control.
As we moved into digital photography, this information told back to the camera became part of the EXIF information recorded along with the digital image which is also useful in post-processing. So, it really is a big deal to make sure that all communication still happens if we use EF lenses on EOS R cameras with an EF-RF adapter.
The Commlite EF-RF Lens Adapter from Ikan preserves all of these important functions and lens to camera electronic communication so it’s not much different from using Canon RF lenses on the EOS R cameras. It even continues support for Canon’s IS image stabilization functions.
Benefits of EF Lenses
We already mentioned not losing use of your existing lenses on an ESO R camera, but there are some other benefits of EF lenses on R bodies. The new Canon RF lenses are fantastic and we don’t want to discourage getting them, but there are still some focal lengths and lens types under-represented as of right now in the RF lens mount.
Some lens types in EF mount you will find very useful on an EOS R camera are fisheye lenses, cinema lenses, long telephoto zooms, and fast super telephoto primes. In addition to the Canon EF lenses, the Commlite EF-RF Lens Adapter will also adapt 3rd party lenses such as Tamron and Sigma EF mount lenses to the EOS R camera.
High Quality Adapter
You don't want to pair an inferior piece of equipment with your amazing new camera and your high quality Canon EF lenses, which you won’t have to worry about with the Commlite EF-RF Lens Adapter.
It is made of aluminum alloy, has gold plated electronic contacts, a standard lens release button, and has a ¼-20 thread machined in with a removable tripod mount adapter also included for mounting to camera cages, monopods, nodal mounts, and tripods.
Bottom line: go ahead and pick out your new Canon EOS R camera regardless of how many Canon EF lenses you already have. Your current lenses will fit and operate just fine on your new camera.
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