Canon Cameras

Will my old Canon EOS 500 lense work on the Digital EOS 400D camera?

I want to buy a Canon EOS 400 digital SLR camera and i heard that Canon lenses are reverse compatible. I have 2 lenses that fit my EOS 500 35mm film camera and just wanted to know if they would work on the digital camera. I would also like some advise that IF they did work would they work as well as the one that would come with the camera. Thanks

Public Comments

1. Absolutely! EOS is EOS, that is the reason Canon dumped the old breach lock lens mount in the middle 80's
2. yes they are both Electronic Optical Systems (EOS) mount lenses. a
3. They should work slightly better on the 400D than they did on the film version. The restricted view of the APS snensor sized DLSRs means they do not use as much of the edges of the image coming through the lens. However, the outer edges of the lens is where distortion first appears. So be using more of the centre of the image you are using the best parts of the image.
4. All EF-mount lenses (like the ones from your old film Canon) will work as you would expect them on your 1.5x crop 400D, however the reverse is not true. EF-S lenses (designed for 1.5x crop APS-C size sensor digitals) will severely vignette on full-frame digital and film bodies.
5. Yes, it uses an EF lens mount. The lens that comes with your 400D is an EF-S lens mount. The Digital Rebel XT & XTi can use either an EF or EF-S lens mount. The higher models or prosumer models such as the 20D, 30D, 40D, 5D, 1DMk*, can only use an EF Lens mount. You can tell by the the mount designation on the camera mount. It will either have the white square or red dot or both.
6. Nikon's crop factor is 1.5x with some dSLRs- Canon's is 1.6, so a lens on your film camera with an angle of view of 30mm will now be closer to 48mm and on a 200mm lens, it becomes closer to a 320mm lens. So the answer is yes they will work, but you will lose the wide angle capability of your lenses, but at the tele end, you gain.