Canon 5DmkII and Bower FD-EOS adapter on Canon lenses
 

I thought some may find this interesting. I just got the adapter and dusted off some FL lenses from the 60's and 70's. And did a quick and dirty shoot in our office. No lighting, just natural light from a big window. The lenses are identified in the video.

The old lenses have very different look to them (from each other too). The 50mm has a nice silk effect, if I really clean the old dust and grime out I will probably loose that effect.

The Bower does add a 1.25 x to lenses. You get full manual control of the aperture and focus, on this shoot I did not use any ND's.

This does add a few more interesting looks to our arsenal, we mostly shoot XDHD. The bokeh is really cool even in the 24mm lens.

I had problems with Vimeo so I stuck it on my GoDaddy site.

Link: Testing Bower FD-EOS adapter on old lenses and Canon 5DmkII on Vimeo

The video link you've provided is not working at my end.

Looks alright. Some of the shots is bit soft. Do you notice any light loss with the FD lens?

There is about a 1 stop, maybe 2/3 stop loss.

Yes the 50mm is very soft. The lens has been sitting around for 30 years and has quite a bit of dust on the elements. I did not clean it just to get an the silk stocking look.

I like the 24mm wide but out of focus look, to blur bg even more focus a foot closer to camera than subject.

The 35mm has more contrast and saturation, and is pretty sharp.

I like the 135mm extreme blur.

This setup is definitely not super sharp as most modern L lenses that I have. But that is not always what you want.

I just had these lenses sitting on a shelf with a bunch of filters and a couple old FTb bodies, not used since the 80's. Now with this $50.00 adapter (B&H) I can use them for special effects in video, I love that.

Mostly we shoot video with an EX3. And now with the MKII we have a bunch more looks available. I shoot a lot with the 17-40 L and the 100-400 L.

I don't think the MKII is a great A-cam but a great special tool.

BTW.

The video posted is a .mov, you need QT to view it.

I gave up on Vimeo after uploads failed, it has worked fine in the past.

I will post some more samples from these lenses when I use them in a project.

I will also post some interesting shots in a dark roundhouse of a steam engine shot with the 17mm. I was very impressed by the lowlight capability of the MKII.

I tried 2 FD's today
 

I cannot focus them at all. I used a 24 2.8 and a 135 f2. The colors were good, but never in focus on stills, it seemed better in video. Not sure which brand of adapter I have but it does have the glass.