Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Mount System

All right. So it is time to get into the features and Technology section, which is where we get to learn about what actually goes into the lenses we make. How can we buy a lands if we don't understand what we're buying? So this is where we're gonna learn the components of what goes in the lands and what we're getting for all that money we're spending money on. All right? All that all the stuff that we're getting money on. Okay, So features and technology. And there's a lot of things that we're gonna cover here, just lots of little vignettes of one thing or the other. So there is a long list understanding about the mount system, and how can it has changed their lens mount over the years? We're gonna go through all the different types of glasses and coding, and there's a lot of terms that you'll see listed by lenses. And is it absolutely critical to taking photos? No, but it helps having an understanding of what you are buying and how it's been improved from previous generations and what...

it's capable of. So I think this is all important. More background information than foreground information, but it's just about knowing your craft well. And if you take your craft seriously, you want to learn everything about it. And so we're gonna be covering a lot of different topics in here. So Canon has been around for a long time, and they started in 1933. Their first camera was a range finder camera. You could not take the lens on and off on it. They didn't get around to making an interchangeable lens mouth until with their cannon flex, and this started with what they called at the time the our mountain. And this used a breach lock mounting system. And a lot of you older photographers who shot with cannons back in the seventies and sixties know all about breach locks and a lot of the kids out there these days. They have no idea what a breach Mount ISS, and so most of you are used to bayonet mounts, which have a small connection part that you stick on the inside. And one of the things about a bayonet mount is that the two surfaces are rubbing on each other as you mount the lens to the camera. You the plates are rubbing on each other, Cannon said. This isn't a good thing. You should just match up the plates and have something else. Connect them together and so on. A breach mount locking system. And it's hard for me to do this. I don't have three D illustrations quite yet, is that you would have the mounts come together, and then there would be a ring around the outside that would tighten, and it was, in theory, a better system. But it proved to be a bit of a hassle to use out in the field because it took longer and was more cumbersome to switch lenses, and they found that they needed to make some adjustments to their mouth. And so they made a modified mount called the F L Mt. And there was compatibility that you could use older lenses on newer bodies. But there were some issues, and we're not gonna get into these specific issues because this is a long time ago in pretty much no one's using these lenses and cameras anymore. Then, in 1919 71 they introduced the F D MT, which had some additional aperture control changes between the body and the lands made it a simpler, more accurate system. And this is when Cannon became much more popular because they started introducing professional equipment. So they had both low end and high end equipment. 1974. They called it the new F D mt. And this is where they replaced the breach mount lock mechanism with the new bayonet system, which is much easier and faster to take lenses on and off the camera. And that was a good improvement. And then everything changed. In 1987 they decided to introduce an Elektronik focusing system and a completely new lens mount that replaced all of their lenses and all of their cameras. How would you feel if all the lenses you would spend 15 years buying and all your cameras were now obsolete and they're going on to something else? And so there was a lot of photographers. They were stinking mad. This was I mean, they had a bag full of gear and I saw these guys and they're just like I don't know what I'm gonna do with this now. It's cost me thousands of dollars to switch, and Canon said that we're going to do this because the leap in technology to this new auto focusing system is so great. We're going to hinder ourselves. If we try to stick to this system that we started with in 1959 let's start from scratch and let's do it right. And that's when they developed their autofocus system. And so when we talk about a lens mount, there's a lot of different characteristics to what we mean and what is important in a lens mount of any camera system. First off, there's the whole physical connection system. What is the size of this were the prongs. How do things connect? And a big part of that is how big is that image circle? Because that's going to determine how big a sensor we can have. What size are lenses are and so forth. Another really important factor is the flans distance. Now what the flans distances is the distance from the lens mount to the sensor. This is going to impact how we design the lenses. It's gonna design whether there's a mere or room for a mere, and so this has a strong importance on the camera because it also has to play with what other lenses we might be able to mount onto the front of that camera. And so that's an important statistic that we want to know about. And the image circle that is created by the lens that we put on our camera is very important because that determines the size of the sensor that we can have in there. And so there are dozens, if not hundreds, of lens Mount systems for various. You know, whether it's Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Fuji, Panasonic and a wide variety of other camera systems out there. And so these are some of the main things that the designers of this camera system lock in very early in the process. What is the overall design parameters of the system we're gonna be using? So Canon developed the Canon Eos system electro optical system. Eos is also the Titan goddess of the dawn. Okay, so kind of photographic related. You're gonna be shooting dawn photos and they have electro focus e f lenses that work on the Ile system cameras, and they went with this for a number of reasons. This is why they changed and went to the system that we are currently using today is they wanted to have Elektronik control of the length so there be electron ICS in the body. They would pass information off to the lands. This would simplify the design process because they don't need to have mechanical linkages which are still used in some manufacturers between the body and the lens. This is going to simplify the divine process. It's gonna make more precise control of the aptitude, focusing and other devices. The focusing motors. They decided revolutionary at the time to put the motors in the lens. And so by doing this, they were able to put the motors extremely close to where the action actually needed to be worked rather than having a drive. SAS system, which is what most other companies did at the time, might also be able to make things faster and quieter and more precise by putting motors in the lens as opposed to in the body having a drive shaft mechanism in the lens. Now they went with a fairly large mount sistemas faras, the diameter of the mount. It's 54 millimeters, and this enabled them to make really large aperture lances and I remember when they first introduced this system, they had the 85 12 and they have a new version of that now and at the time they introduced. And this is one of those flagship pieces optically, it was a terrible lands, but they made a 51.0 lands, and it was it was a brag item. We got a 51.0, and nobody else does. And that's was kind of one of their selling points is they could make these really large aperture lenses, and it also enabled them to improve the View finder experience as well. The short flans back distance well, that improved the lens design, so they were able to do a little bit mawr a little bit more easily with the lenses and kind of completely apart from what Canon wanted. It also allowed the adaptation of non canon lenses onto a cannon body. And so there are people who own canon cameras that use Nikon and other brand lenses on their camera because that short flashback distance allows them to use a wider variety of lenses. So that's kind of the basics of the lens system that was designed back in the in the eighties, now the original E F system. When it came out, Cannon knew they needed to come out pretty strong out of the gate with a good collection of lenses. And so they came out with lenses that covered everything from fish I to millimeters. And if you find these lenses on the used market right now, they will work with 100% compatibility with your current rebel five D mark 31 dx, whatever camera you have. So the beauty of the cannon system, as it stands today, is that it is fully compatible all the way back to 1987. Now you go back into the F D system. Those lenses will not mount on your camera. But these will work and they work perfectly fine and so nice. Little collection of lenses. We've seen a number of camera companies start out new camera systems and they'll come out with two or three lenses. Come on, give me some more. I need some more lenses in this and this. This was a serious effort to get out there and say we have a lot of lenses for you and they they kind of hit pretty hard on new lenses for for several years because they needed to address a lot of the needs that professionals have. Soas faras The history of the e F Elektronik focusing system started in 1987 in 2003. They developed the E. F s system for the crop frame sensors. Normally on the E F system, we have 43 millimeters sensors in a fairly large image circle. They developed a system for their smaller sensors. That's only 27 millimeters diameter. Now the physical connection mount on the lens is exactly the same between the two. All right, it's that the lenses are designed Onley for this smaller size circle here, and they've done that for a number of reasons. Number one. It's cheaper. It's easier to make a lens that doesn't make his big image circle. Another reason is that they were able to do more with the design. They were able to make it more compact. But think about this from a technical standpoint. If you put on an E f lands which has this big image circled in here, you have all this light hitting these other areas in your lens mount, and that's gonna bounce around. And that might cause, ah, little bit of change in the way your image looks. It could lower the contrast of your images a little bit if they didn't really black out the inside of this. So this was really designing the perfect lands for that crop frame sensor. Now in the cameras itself, the flans distance from where you mounted the lands all the way over to the sensor. Normally, there's a fairly big mirror in it in a full frame camera. When the sensor is smaller, they were able to put in a smaller size mere and what this enabled them to do. Just design lenses that protruded into the camera body further than in a normal camera. And this is the reason that you can't use E. F s lenses on a full frame camera is that they extend too far into the body and they would hit the mere. And so if you try to mount it, it just won't work. They physically won't work. They hit in there. I've heard of stories of people disassembling certain parts of this lens so that they could mount it on there. And so it is technically possible if you want to alter your equipment, but I certainly can't recommend it for most people. And so these e f s lenses for the crop frame sensors like the rebels and the 70 D cameras like that, they're gonna have smaller and lighter lenses in general, partly to due to this lens mouth, they're gonna have better quality wide angle lenses that get whiter. And they're gonna build to reduce the cost and keep those things a little bit more affordable. And so that's why they've gone with this somewhat compatible system. Because the E F S users can use the E f blends is on them. And then in 2012 they came up with E e f em for muralist system. Now the lens mount around the outside is exactly the same thing that they've been using on everything else. But the camera is very different because they've taken the mere out of the camera and it has an extremely short flans distance of 18 millimeters. And so those normal lenses won't work on here just straight lens on the camera. And so in a normal camera. It's 44 millimeters. And in this Eos M system, it's only 18 millimeters in depth. And that's why you gotta have that exactly right if you want amount of lens on there because that's where the image is going to be focused. And so we are talking about the e f set of lenses in this two day class, and this is the only slide on the E f. M. Linds is We're not gonna really talk much about him. But if that's what you have, now is the time to watch, because this is the only time. And so the FM system is cannons. It's It's there just a little thank you. Just dipping their foot in the in the water of muralists. It's like they're over here on the edge and all these other mirror listen like Okay, yeah, We have a little camera in here and I'm sorry. You can tell I don't work for Canon now. They really haven't taken the mirrors muralist world seriously, when they introduce a camera system with four lenses, give me some lenses. Where is my fast lands? Well, I got one fast lands and everything else is slow zooms, and so they have a very particular market, and they're just kind of testing things out now. If you want, you can use standard E F lenses or E F s lenses on your muralist camera. They have an M and M two and M three out on the market now, and you can use this E f lens to E f Embody adapter, and this sells for about 100 bucks. So if you want to use any one of these great lenses over here, then you can use that on your muralist camera. But you got to use this adapter because remember that flans distances shorter and where's our flans distance are flans distances shorter? So you mount this adapter on the front of it, and then you can mount on all the other candidate else lenses. But you know what good is a really small camera body? If all the lenses are huge in size is kind of a loss of things, but it can be done, and so that's the E F EM system that's out. We may see that grow in the future. Can it may take it more seriously and want to do more with it. We'll see where they go. I have no idea on that one