canon users

[gokenin]

I am looking at picking up a used canon slr and I was wondering are all the lenses that canon makes compatible or are older slr's limited in what they have the ability to use? any one know?

[Anewman]

I am looking at picking up a used canon slr and I was wondering are all the lenses that canon makes compatible or are older slr's limited in what they have the ability to use? any one know?

By "used canon slr" I take it you still mean auto focus or "EOS", if so YES all canon EF lenses should work. But before EOS bodies and EF lenses they made manual focus lenses and bodies that are not compatible with auto focus counterparts. And currently Canon also makes a few EF-s lenses that are strictly for APS-c digital slrs.

So even a 20 year old EOS body should be able to use a brand new EF lens, no limitations that I know of.

[cpbjgc]

Are you talking about a film SLR, or older digital slr? I believe that for the film-based SLR, if it is part of the EOS family, any EF lens will work with them in terms of using autofocus. An EF-S lens is only designed to work with the digital EOS models that have an APS sized sensor (such as the Digital Rebel, Rebel XT, XTi and soon the XSi). Maybe someone with more experience can chime in.

Hope this helps.

[gokenin]

possibly either the 20 or 30d were the two cameras that i was looking at

[Shutterbug]

okay so you are looking at older DSLR's then. Yes older Canon SLR lens should work on those.

I have an older(8 years) 70-300 tamaron that I used for the eclipse on my 40D the other night.

[AndrewWG]

I'll chime in with the fact that some of the lenses will work. Sigma ones may not. I had a 75-300mm Sigma from my old Rebel film camera and it will not work. Neither will my 90mm f2.8 macro form Sigma. These could hae been re-chipped by Sigma at one time, but by the time I went to the 30D, Sigma no longer offered this service.