They Make Teleconverters, Don’t They?

What’s wrong with this picture?

Look closely. Isn’t that a Canon FD Lens on a Nikon body? Isn’t that impossible?

No, it’s not. It’s just not marketable.

I’m sorry; I read all the comments, and even though they said it could not be done, I simply had to see for myself. Even the remote possibility that I could use my Canon FD 24mm f/2.8 lens in full manual mode on my Nikon D90 was too hard to resist.

So, against my better judgement, I went and bought a Canon FD to Nikon Lens Mount Adapter. It’s easy to adapt Nikon lenses to Canon bodies, but the other way around requires an optic to compensate for Nikon’s rather long 46.5 mm flange-to-film plane distance. Otherwise, the lens cannot be mounted close enough to the film plane to achieve “infinity focus”. They’re not easy to come by, and when I found this one at the reasonable price of $39.99, I couldn’t resist.

Fotodiox Canon FD-Nikon Lens Mount Adapter

The lens mounts fine, and of course there’s no aperture coupling between the body and the lens, but who cares? If it weren’t for the optic, all would be well. But sadly, the quality of this single, biconcave optical element is so poor, that the resulting images are not just soft, they’re actually foggy. Plus, the optics increase the focal length by a factor of 1.4x, so my 24mm lens (which on the D90 is actually 36mm) is not nearly as wide as I had hoped. It’s more like 50mm.

C’mon, they make teleconverters don’t they? How hard could this be? Even if it required more than one element, and there was some light loss, it would still be worth it, right? Well, worth it to some, but not to many.

The truth is, Canon did offer a similar converter shortly after the introduction of their EOS line. But, it did not work with normal or wide angle lenses, only telephoto lenses, and was discontinued shortly thereafter. And of course, it did not adapt Canon lenses to Nikon bodies.

Imagine for a moment this Canon FD 70-210 mm f/4 lens converted into a 294-882 mm f/8 zoom lens:

Canon FD 70-210 mm f/4 + Canon 2X-B Teleconverter + Fotodiox Canon FD to Nikon Lens Mount Adapter

…This is just WRONG

Actually, given the smaller aperture and diminished expectations of quality in shooting at 882 mm, this combination might not be so bad.

But anyway, this gets me to thinking. The optic is held in place by a notched retaining ring. Since it’s the culprit, what if I removed it? Sure, I would lose infinity focus, but I could still use it as a macro/close-up lens with the adapter behaving like a 13mm extension tube. And what if I reverse-mounted the Canon Lens, and installed the FD-Nikon adapter on front of it? It could then take the place of the very difficult to find Canon Macro Hood and Diaphragm Adapter that unlocks the aperture ring. And, if I throw the Nikon BR-6 on top of that, I can install a filter of my choice for protection.

So, here’s my reason for not returning this adapter:

Nikon BR-6 + Fotodiox FD-Nikon Lens Mount Adapter + Canon FD 24m f/2.8 Lens 

+ Fotodiox 52mm Reverse Lens Mount Adapter

At $39.95, it’s less than half the price of Nikon’s BR-6, and except for the filter thread and cable-release provision, it accomplishes pretty much the same thing.

So, in a way, it will allow me to use my FD 24mm f2.8 lens on my Nikon D90. Just not for the exact purpose I intended.