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I have a bunch of old Tamron lenses (12mm, 25mm, 50mm, 75mm, etc) that were used on old vision systems (DVT Cameras). These systems are now obsolete and the cameras / lenses are being disposed of. Is there a consumer camera that can utilize these lenses?

one of the lenses

Like an EOS Rebel or something?

mattdm
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Mike Fitzgibbons
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  • Hi and welcome to Photo.SE. Please use the search function first. If none of the previous questions help you, please specify this in your question (e.g.: I've looked for previous questions, but these only covered how to use a M42 lens on a Canon body). – Saaru Lindestøkke Jan 20 '14 at 23:59
  • This could also be handy: http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/42634/how-to-restore-old-lenses. That looks like it's a C-Mount: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_mount – BBking Jan 21 '14 at 00:31

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It appears to be possible with adapters, however there are a lot of caveats to go with it. One of the biggest (which goes for pretty much all pre-digital lenses) is that digital sensors are far more reflective than film. Without coating the interior most lens with an anti-reflective coating, it is common to get ghosting from light reflecting off the sensor, off the rear of the lens and back on to the sensor.

Additionally, if the sensor in the camera is larger than the film that it was originally designed to work with, either the lens will have to be further away from the sensor (which removes the ability to focus at infinity (like using an extension tube) or results in the image circle not covering the sensor (which results in heavy vignetting.)

There are times when the discounted price you can get a lens at make it worth dealing with these caveats, but you should be aware going in that a pre-digital lens will not perform anywhere near the same way as a modern lens designed for digital, so take that in to account when deciding what to purchase.

AJ Henderson
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If I remember correctly, this is a c-mount lens and adapters are available to convert (the link is to a Canon conversion) for use on a dSLR. The thing is, the image circle will be quite small and you'll get a lot of vignetting as a result, even on crop sensor cameras.

For myself, I'm not sure I would bother, except for a little bit of fun, but at worse it's a $20 experiment.

Joanne C
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