step BY step GOING OLD SCHOOL

Attach and shoot with a vintage lens on your Canon DSLR

01 ATTACH THE ADAPTER

Attach the adapter directly to your lens, rather than to the body, as it’s easier to attach or remove the assembly as one piece. Once the adapter is connected, mount the whole thing to your camera as you would a normal lens.

02 BEWARE of THE PINS…

Legacy lenses were designed for legacy bodies, so mounting on modern cameras isn’t an exact science. Some lenses have an aperture pin at the back, so you might need to buy an adapter with a flange to make it fit in properly – be careful.

03 …AND THE ELEMENT

Lenses like the Helios 44-2 have a mechanism that pushes the element quite far back. This can interfere with the mirror on some bodies (like the Canon 6D Mark II we’re using), so check online to make sure that your lens is fully compatible with your EOS camera.

04 MANUAL EVERYTHING

Since these lenses are analogue, both the focusing and aperture are operated manually. Some aperture rings click into place (like the Takumar) while others have a clickless aperture (like the Helios), which can be very useful for video work.

05 USE LIVE VIEW

Because you’ll be focusing manually, shooting in Live View on your LCD screen might help. To ensure that your images are sharp use the Magnify button or, even better if you’re using a mirrorless camera body, you could try Focus Peaking.

06 GET CREATIVE!

With vintage lenses, their character is generally most pronounced when shooting with wide open apertures. Everything from depth of field to bokeh to light flares are exaggerated by old glass, so roll up your sleeves, cut loose and get creative with your compositions.