General Brand C-Mount Adapter for Canon FD Lens

I use this to adapt my 28-80mm Zoom and 500mm Canon FD lenses to a Hitachi VC370 NTSC video camera mounted to a 10 Meade LX200. C-mount side, screws on easily and the FD side has a bright white dot to indicate proper alignment of the lens. Simply attach and detach as you normally would your SLR lens.The drawbacks are that the unit is made of plastic, and seems like it could easily be overtightened (and subsequently stripped) when attaching a lens. It also does tend to unscrew slightly when removing a lens. Otherwise, the cost of this little adapter will save me hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars in replacement lenses for this little video camera.

This adapter allows to use old SRL camera lenses in CCTV cameras, avoiding to buy expensive CCTV zoom lenses. I use a 80-200 mm Canon FD lens with perfect results.

It works and there are no problems focusing to infinity or anything like that. The first lens I used with this adapter was a Canon 50mm f1.8. I put it on and it turned with increasing resistance until it just felt snug, and it came off by just unscrewing it. When I tried a different lens, I didn't realize it had snapped into place and when I went to remove it I found it was stuck. While trying to force the lens to turn, I accidentally snapped off the little knob on the side of the adapter. In hindsight it's obvious, but it was only after I snapped it off that I realized what the little knob was for: you have to push it to retract a little retention pin that prevents the lens from rotating back and falling off. It's like the button you push on a DSLR body to remove your lens. Now I have to use a separate implement to move the pin and remove my lenses. I tried this adapter with a variety of Canon lenses and found varying fits between my lenses and the adapter. I would expect all canon mount lenses to fit the same, but that's not what I found. Canon 50mm f1.8: Fits, but it does not snap into place (unless maybe you really force it). It just gets harder to turn until it feels snug. No need to pull the release to remove the lens, but it doesn't feel like it's going to fall off, either. Canon 50mm f1.2 L: Will not fit. I tried to turn it and it runs into a hard stop. Canon 35mm f1.4 L: Goes on smooth, snaps into place nicely Canon 24mm f1.4 L: Very snug fit, barely turns and I didn't try to turn it hard enough to make it snap into place. It was difficult to remove (took a lot of force) and for a minute I was afraid I wouldn't be able to remove the lens from the adapter. Canon 17-40mm f4 L: Good fit, snaps into place. Canon 28-135mm f3.5-5.6: Goes on smooth, snaps into place nicely. Canon 24-70 f2.8 L: Goes on smooth, snaps into place nicely. One inherent drawback of a dumb adapter like this is that there is no way to control the aperture of the lens. Normally the camera body communicates with the lens through the data pins to auto-focus and control the aperture. But there is a workaround. If you have a Canon DSLR with depth of field preview (Canon 5D, 5D Mk II, or 40D, for instance), you can set the aperture on those cameras and then transfer the lens to another camera. Just attach the lens to your Canon DSLR body, set the aperture to your desired level, and press and hold the DOF preview button while you remove the lens from the camera body. The aperture will stay in place and you can attach it to the C-mount to Canon adapter. It sure beats buying a new set of C-mount lenses if you've already got Canon lenses you can use.

CCTV zoom lenses are expensive (199.00 & up). This simple C-mount adapter fits older 35mm Canon SLR lens to a 1/3 C or CS-mount digital CCTV camera, saving money by fitting recycled lens barrels from 35mm cameras for the digital age. See my ... listings at StationNT5Bmedia.