Canon lenses on a Sony body?

corgi_monster

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jun 10, 2007
Those darn a7iii ads keep popping up on my browser - thank you, Google, for always giving me suggestions on how to part with my money :)

I already own or have access to (via family members who all shoot Canon) a wide range of Canon lenses and do not have the money to buy a whole line of Sony lenses. I've been looking into adapters that allow Canon lenses to be used on Sony cameras, EF-mount to E-mount to be specific. These adapters are pricey ($400) and there aren't too many helpful reviews out there. I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience with a Canon lens/Sony body setup. Is there a noticeable lag as the camera and lens "talk" to each other? How sharp is the focus?

Thank you in advance :)
 
Those darn a7iii ads keep popping up on my browser - thank you, Google, for always giving me suggestions on how to part with my money :)

I already own or have access to (via family members who all shoot Canon) a wide range of Canon lenses and do not have the money to buy a whole line of Sony lenses. I've been looking into adapters that allow Canon lenses to be used on Sony cameras, EF-mount to E-mount to be specific. These adapters are pricey ($400) and there aren't too many helpful reviews out there. I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience with a Canon lens/Sony body setup. Is there a noticeable lag as the camera and lens "talk" to each other? How sharp is the focus?
Thank you in advance :)

I don't use sony but there I've seen examples where the "metabones" adapter works fairly well with canon lens on a sony body
www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless
 
With the EOSR available, why would someone want to use Canon lenses on an Sony camera? I’ve used the MC-11 Sigma adapter on an a7II and thought it was just ok for single focus with the 50 and 85. The reviews on the EOSR with EF lenses via adapter are excellent.

My opinion would be to buy the EOSR if you want to shoot Canon lenses. From consumer reviews, the camera is excellent.
 
With the EOSR available, why would someone want to use Canon lenses on an Sony camera? I’ve used the MC-11 Sigma adapter on an a7II and thought it was just ok for single focus with the 50 and 85. The reviews on the EOSR with EF lenses via adapter are excellent.

My opinion would be to buy the EOSR if you want to shoot Canon lenses. From consumer reviews, the camera is excellent.

Bit more complicated than all that.

For the best experience of using Canon lenses -- They will definitely work better on the Canon EOS-R body. They will work seamlessly.

On a Sony body, they will work adequately. Long telephoto lenses may slow down a little. You can't always use the top burst speeds -- Though I'm not positive, with adapted lenses, you are limited to 3fps instead of the full 10 fps capability of the Sony A7iii. On the other hand, if you use the Canon lens on the EOS-R... with good continuous autofocus, you're also limited to 3 fps.

Comes down to this -- Sony A7iii + adapter is about the same price as the Canon EOS-R plus adapter.
The Canon lenses will work a little better on the Canon body. Sony has a full library of fantastic native lenses. Canon is just starting their mirrorless library.

For now, the Sony A7iii is mostly a much better camera than the Canon EOS-R. The question is whether those advantages are worth slightly poorer autofocus performance. The autofocus will be incredibly accurate adapted on to the Sony, but it may be a little slower and hunt more often.

First, let me start with the advantages of the EOS-R over the Sony A7iii: Better LCD and EVF. Better touch screen (Sony's touch screen functionality is limited). Fully flippy screen (Sony only has tilty screen). Slightly higher resolution (30mp vs 24mp). Potentially more comfortable to handhold with deeper grip. The smoothest video AF. (Very reliable smooth transitions).

Sony A7iii advantages over the EOS-R: Much faster autofocus, including much faster burst shooting (but the faster burst shooting requires native lenses). Better tracking autofocus. More dynamic range. Dual card slots. In-body-image stabilization (IBIS, stabilized all lenses, included adapted lenses). Better video quality (full sensor readout, not cropped). Better battery life. Better controls (bit subjective, but I think the consensus would be that the Canon has a better grip but Sony has the better controls, with more functional buttons and thumbstick). Better eye-detect AF (Tony Northrup has a good comparison -- very reliable on Sony, barely usable on Canon). Better silent shooting.

So the question is whether it's worth to take slightly less lens compatibility to get the Sony body advantages. Becomes partially a question of whether you would want to slowly change lenses over time, and therefore only be adapting lenses as a stopgap measure. Or if you're planning on sticking to the old dSLR lenses for a long future. Also on whether such a purchase is meant to last you 5-10 years.. or whether you'd be upgrading every 2-4 years (Certainly, within a few years, Canon will catch up to Sony in the ways they are currently behind).
 


Reviving this thread for anybody else looking for an a7iii

I switched to Sony November 2018 after 7 years shooting canon (hobbyist but Worked way up t2i/t3i/60d/70d/80d/6d/6dii, owned many L lenses and still do, 24-70 f2.8l II, 16-35 f2.8l iii , 50 1.2, 85 1.2, 70-200 f2.8l, 135 f2, 14 2.8l ii)

I am now adapting a few canon lenses to the a7iii with a mc-11 and have a few native lenses 24-70 g master, and 24mm g master

Here is my opinion.
-I don’t like canon. Their video sucks on their dslr’s and always has in my opinion (for handheld run and gun, and also now even using a crane 2 gimbal vs the Sony).
- the focus even on the 6dii is a joke vs the a7iii in my opinion (never had a 5d iv or 1d so cant compare)
- video quality - forget about it. Don’t even consider a canon in my opinion IBIS + eye Af + s&q setting in the a7iii makes it a no brainer in my opinion
- stills - forget about it. Eye af + silent shooting + edge to edge focus with continuous AF. A7iii all day long in my opinion
-glass - uuhh ya what is Sony thinking? $2600 for a 70-200? Get the heck out of here. I got lucky and stacked topcashback + Amex business to get 30% off a few lenses and the a7iii but without that - they are way too much $. It helps to adapt a few canon lenses because canon glass is awesome and cheap used.
- canon just Brand Gated on amazon. I used to be able to buy canon used and sell canon used on amazon, and either break even or loss -10% which gave me freedom to buy lenses and use for 3-6 months to try them out then sell them. Can’t do that anymore.
-check canon’s stock price. It has been going down for the last year. Seems like walk st agrees. I haven’t talked to a single local photographer who is still singing canon’s praises. Sony runs the show here.
 
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Reviving this thread for anybody else looking for an a7iii

I switched to Sony November 2018 after 7 years shooting canon (hobbyist but Worked way up t2i/t3i/60d/70d/80d/6d/6dii, owned many L lenses and still do, 24-70 f2.8l II, 16-35 f2.8l iii , 50 1.2, 85 1.2, 70-200 f2.8l, 135 f2, 14 2.8l ii)

I am now adapting a few canon lenses to the a7iii with a mc-11 and have a few native lenses 24-70 g master, and 24mm g master

Here is my opinion.
-I don’t like canon. Their video sucks on their dslr’s and always has in my opinion (for handheld run and gun, and also now even using a crane 2 gimbal vs the Sony).
- the focus even on the 6dii is a joke vs the a7iii in my opinion (never had a 5d iv or 1d so cant compare)
- video quality - forget about it. Don’t even consider a canon in my opinion IBIS + eye Af + s&q setting in the a7iii makes it a no brainer in my opinion
- stills - forget about it. Eye af + silent shooting + edge to edge focus with continuous AF. A7iii all day long in my opinion
-glass - uuhh ya what is Sony thinking? $2600 for a 70-200? Get the heck out of here. I got lucky and stacked topcashback + Amex business to get 30% off a few lenses and the a7iii but without that - they are way too much $. It helps to adapt a few canon lenses because canon glass is awesome and cheap used.
- canon just Brand Gated on amazon. I used to be able to buy canon used and sell canon used on amazon, and either break even or loss -10% which gave me freedom to buy lenses and use for 3-6 months to try them out then sell them. Can’t do that anymore.
-check canon’s stock price. It has been going down for the last year. Seems like walk st agrees. I haven’t talked to a single local photographer who is still singing canon’s praises. Sony runs the show here.


OK
"brand gated" by Amazon
video sucks on DSLR
Canon stock price is going down and the 'walk st' agrees (whatever happened to Nikon ?)
And increase your equity-line-of credit loan for lens purchases

got it

www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless
 
Last edited:


Reviving this thread for anybody else looking for an a7iii

I switched to Sony November 2018 after 7 years shooting canon (hobbyist but Worked way up t2i/t3i/60d/70d/80d/6d/6dii, owned many L lenses and still do, 24-70 f2.8l II, 16-35 f2.8l iii , 50 1.2, 85 1.2, 70-200 f2.8l, 135 f2, 14 2.8l ii)

I am now adapting a few canon lenses to the a7iii with a mc-11 and have a few native lenses 24-70 g master, and 24mm g master

Here is my opinion.
-I don’t like canon. Their video sucks on their dslr’s and always has in my opinion (for handheld run and gun, and also now even using a crane 2 gimbal vs the Sony).
- the focus even on the 6dii is a joke vs the a7iii in my opinion (never had a 5d iv or 1d so cant compare)
- video quality - forget about it. Don’t even consider a canon in my opinion IBIS + eye Af + s&q setting in the a7iii makes it a no brainer in my opinion
- stills - forget about it. Eye af + silent shooting + edge to edge focus with continuous AF. A7iii all day long in my opinion
-glass - uuhh ya what is Sony thinking? $2600 for a 70-200? Get the heck out of here. I got lucky and stacked topcashback + Amex business to get 30% off a few lenses and the a7iii but without that - they are way too much $. It helps to adapt a few canon lenses because canon glass is awesome and cheap used.
- canon just Brand Gated on amazon. I used to be able to buy canon used and sell canon used on amazon, and either break even or loss -10% which gave me freedom to buy lenses and use for 3-6 months to try them out then sell them. Can’t do that anymore.
-check canon’s stock price. It has been going down for the last year. Seems like walk st agrees. I haven’t talked to a single local photographer who is still singing canon’s praises. Sony runs the show here.
So something to understand here about the finances... first, Canon is an imaging company, and cameras and consumer lenses are only a tiny part of their overall business. Their cinema, broadcast, and more importantly document imaging are their bread and butter. It's not as bad as Ricoh where Pentax is so small that it's not even a footnote in their reports, but Canon is a big company, so looking at overall financial performance is a pretty meaningless. Nikon, on the other hand, is an optics company, with about half of their revenue coming from cameras and lenses, but they also have enormous sport optics, semiconductor fabrication and other optics lines. Still, at least with Nikon the camera component is enough to change the overall bottom line significantly - not so with the others.

Second, $2600 for a 70-200 f/2.8 is very reasonable by today's standards. I could argue that it's overpriced based on not performing at the level of the latest Nikkor, but the Nikon is $2800 and the now long in the tooth and needing an update Canon is $2100. Sorry you went with a system without much used glass yet, but their retail prices are quite reasonable and used glass is going to be a problem for a very long time on the native mirrorless mounts. Heck, even used Canon lenses are, on the whole, still pricier than older used Nikon because the Nikkor back catalog is so much larger. It's going to take decades to sort that out, and honestly probably at least a decade before Nikon and Canon have full Z and RF lineups leading to any lens refresh that drives used prices down, probably another 5-8 years for Sony, and another 3-5 for Fuji, based on their past lens outputs. And since the digital camera bubble popped, you're not going to see them driven down nearly as much as they are right now since production levels will be lower.

Finally, adapted lenses … yep, they're not perfect when you adapt out of a manufacturer's camera bodies, except on a few of the latest lenses designed with mirrorless in mind. There's a physics/technical reason for it too: DSLR focusing systems have higher discrimination, because the AF sensors after going through the mirrors are positioned optically behind the focal plane. This leads to capturing light that came through different parts of the lens, and leads to lens imperfections away from the center points being less of an issue (among other benefits). When you do PDAF through the sensor itself, you lose this advantage, and off center focus performance drops significantly unless the manufacturer has put in software corrections for the specific lenses; and even then, it's not perfect, if you remember the FT1 adapter you'll remember that it only worked with the center point, and that was with Nikon glass to boot!

Being a Nikon shooter, I can see the very clear delineation between F mount lenses designed to adapt to mirrorless and use on sensor PDAF, and ones not designed for it. Newer designs like the 16-80, 105 f/1.4E, and all of the AF-P lenses perform better even with CDAF on the outer frame areas compared to the center of the frame. This affects mostly the wide through mid range optics, and is much more pronounced on zooms than primes, but is present even on some of the older exotic telephoto glass (the AF-S 300 f/4D comes to mind). And of course, third party glass such as Sigma, Tamron or Tokina F mount going into an FTZ is a total crap shoot for focus performance.
 
So something to understand here about the finances... first, Canon is an imaging company, and cameras and consumer lenses are only a tiny part of their overall business. Their cinema, broadcast, and more importantly document imaging are their bread and butter. It's not as bad as Ricoh where Pentax is so small that it's not even a footnote in their reports, but Canon is a big company, so looking at overall financial
Second, $2600 for a 70-200 f/2.8 is very reasonable by today's standards. I could argue that it's overpriced based on not performing at the level of the latest Nikkor, but the Nikon is $2800 and the now long in the tooth and needing an update Canon is $2100. Sorry you went with a system without much used glass yet, but their retail prices are quite reasonable and used glass is going to be a problem for a very long time on the native mirrorless mounts. Heck, even used Canon lenses are, on the whole, still pricier than older used Nikon because the Nikkor back catalog is so much larger. It's going to take decades to sort that out, and honestly probably at least a decade before Nikon and Canon have full Z and RF lineups leading to any lens refresh that drives used prices down, probably another 5-8 years for Sony, and another 3-5 for Fuji, based on their past lens outputs. And since the digital camera bubble popped, you're not going to see them driven down nearly as much as they are right now since production levels will be lower.
Finally, adapted lenses … yep, they're not perfect when you adapt out of a manufacturer's camera bodies, except on a few of the latest lenses designed with mirrorless in mind. There's a physics/technical reason for it too: DSLR focusing systems have higher discrimination, because the AF sensors after going through the mirrors are positioned optically behind the focal plane. This leads to capturing light that came through different parts of the lens, and leads to lens imperfections away from the center points being less of an issue (among other benefits). When you do PDAF through the sensor itself, you lose this advantage, and off center focus performance drops significantly unless the manufacturer has put in software corrections for the specific lenses; and even then, it's not perfect, if you remember the FT1 adapter you'll remember that it only worked with the center point, and that was with Nikon glass to boot!
Being a Nikon shooter, I can see the very clear delineation between F mount lenses designed to adapt to mirrorless and use on sensor PDAF, and ones not designed for it. Newer designs like the 16-80, 105 f/1.4E, and all of the AF-P lenses perform better even with CDAF on the outer frame areas compared to the center of the frame. This affects mostly the wide through mid range optics, and is much more pronounced on zooms than primes, but is present even on some of the older exotic telephoto glass (the AF-S 300 f/4D comes to mind). And of course, third party glass such as Sigma, Tamron or Tokina F mount going into an FTZ is a total crap shoot for focus performance.


$2,600 for a 70-200
I'm still using a 20 year old 100-400
gotta get with the program

www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless
 
lol - y'all are more knowledgable on the technicals than I am - "walk st" - wall st
brand gated = no third party sellers (if you notice - all their used canon gear on amazon is now listed by businesses, or better yet - go try to list a used one yourself)
Nikon makes an amazing product IMO - almost went with them but was able to borrow an a7iii from a friend and was blown away
If y'all didn't notice - I am slightly bitter after my recent break up with canon
I do, however, love their glass still.
 
lol - y'all are more knowledgable on the technicals than I am - "walk st" - wall st
brand gated = no third party sellers (if you notice - all their used canon gear on amazon is now listed by businesses, or better yet - go try to list a used one yourself)
Nikon makes an amazing product IMO - almost went with them but was able to borrow an a7iii from a friend and was blown away
If y'all didn't notice - I am slightly bitter after my recent break up with canon
I do, however, love their glass still.

hear 'ya
it's now all about mirrorless
(I'm still blown away with my 20 year old 100-400)
www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless
 
hear 'ya
it's now all about mirrorless
(I'm still blown away with my 20 year old 100-400)
The 100-400 is an f/4.5-5.6 optic, not the f/2.8 of the 70-200's, but it's still a perfect case to point out how the used glass is going for mirrorless native: used for the original it's going for under $1k, and the Nikon 80-400 original for even less (the Canon is a better lens so this makes sense). The second generation ones are sitting at around $1200-$1500-ish used for good condition for both Canon and Nikon.

But for the new 100-400 with the same aperture range it's $2500, and it's still in short supply even new so used prices haven't come down, while the Canon 100-400 II is $2200 (again, older and probably needs a III version), while the Nikon 80-400 is a $2300 lens new. Both Canon and Nikon optics are older, and the EF and F mounts has a lot of other options to get to 400mm affordably with higher quality, including Canon's 400 f/5.6 and Nikon's 300 f/4E+TC1.4 prime, plus options like the 200-500 f/5.6E and a slew of third party super telephoto zoom choices that simply aren't available in the FE mount yet.

And, as a side note: both Nikon and Canon have 70-200/80-200 f/2.8 without VR that go for about half of what their newest optics go for. There are just tons of choices in EF and F (and even A and K) mounts that FE, R, and Z need to catch up with.

The good news is of course that for telephoto lenses, the LA-EA3, FTZ, and EF-EOS R adapters adapt the manufacturer glass extremely well, so Sony users can use the older A mount Sony and Minolta glass, and Canon/Nikon users can adopt their own glass as well. Since telephoto lenses aren't very particular about the flange focal distance or diameter and the light comes in nicely collimated to the sensor (unlike adopting the retrofocal glass with focal lengths of about 70mm or less), you only lose 10%-ish in focus accuracy (PDAF) or 20% in speed (CDAF) compared to running them on their native bodies - which given their high performance to begin with most people are unlikely to notice unless you're one of a very select group of working professionals. And with Sony's LA-EA4 adapter, you give up nothing at all by adapting the old Minolta glass since it even puts the pellicle mirror back in.

Third party F to FE or EOS to FE adapters are much more hit and miss, but generally at least OK for telephoto use, less so for wide to mid ranges.

Now Nikon and Canon just need to get their bodies performance up to snuff either with firmware or hardware or both, while Sony is already mostly there with solid prosumer (and for some users, professional) performance. On the other hand, Sony needs to fix its ergonomics to get it at least to the level of that the F5 and EOS 1 were at in the 1990's, let alone where we sit now, and take out some of the limitations in bodies like the A9's shutter modes with flash that are simply firmware issues and silly easy to fix.
 

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