{"id":1122,"date":"2013-02-10T16:03:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T15:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2013-04-02T23:01:37","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T22:01:37","slug":"canon-mounts-ef-and-ef-s-and-l-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/?p=1122","title":{"rendered":"Canon mounts, EF and EF-S and “L” explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are still a lot of people out there who don’t really know what EF, EF-S and L is all about. In this post I will try to clarify exactly what this is all about.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n



\nPlastic versus metal mount<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most Canon lenses feature a metal mount. In order to make lenses cheaper, some lenses have plastic mounts like the Canon EF 50mm f\/1.8 II: <\/p>\n

\"Plastic<\/a>

Plastic mount of the Canon EF 50mm f\/1.8 II lens<\/p><\/div>\n

There is no real downside to a plastic mount in regards to optical performance of a lens. That said, it may be obvious to you that lenses with a plastic mount are generally cheaper lenses which in turn have less optical quality.
\n

\nEF Lenses<\/strong><\/p>\n

EF lenses are the “full frame” lenses; the format used on analog cameras (35mm) as well. They can be recognized by having a RED dot near the mount:<\/p>\n

\"Canon<\/a>

Canon 100mm f\/2.8 USM macro closeup. Notice the metal mount and the red “dot” which designates this is an EF-mount lens.<\/p><\/div>\n

As cropped cameras came to the market, they initially only took EF lenses as well (like the ancient Canon D30 and no, I do not mean 30D here). This is a picture of the Canon EOS D30 without a lens attached:<\/p>\n

\"Canon<\/a>

Canon D30 camera (note: Not a 30D!). This is one of the first affordable digital cropped sensor cameras from Canon. Note there is only a red dot on the mount indicating this camera only takes EF lenses even though it has a cropped sensor.<\/p><\/div>
\n

\nEF-S or “digital” lenses<\/strong><\/p>\n

As both the sensor and the mirror are smaller on cropped cameras, you can create a lens that illuminates only the smaller cropped sensor surface, plus you can allow a lens to protrude slightly into the body because you have a smaller mirror. These things combined allow you to create cheaper optical designs. They have become known as the EF-S line of lenses and are sometimes called “digital” lenses:<\/p>\n

\"Closeup<\/a>

Closeup of the Canon EF-S 15-85mm F\/3.5-5.6 iS USM lens. This lens has a white dot, indicating this is an EF-S (“digital”) lens. Note the protruding rear element which is typical for EF-S lenses (the smaller mirror of cropped cameras allow this and it simplifies lens design)<\/p><\/div>\n

The more modern Canon cropped cameras (also known as APS-C) are able to take both EF and EF-S lenses. The Canon 30D is an example (and I think one of the first) prosumer camera body that takes the EF-S lenses as well:<\/p>\n

\"Canon<\/a>

Canon 30D body. Notice the red AND the white dot on the mount, indicating this body will accept both EF and EF-S lenses.<\/p><\/div>\n

So all cameras take EF lenses, but only (most of the) cropped cameras take EF-S lenses. You can sometimes fool the system and mount EF-S on a full frame (I know sometimes the 10-22 is used on 5D’s) but in general that is risky.
\n

\nL grade lenses; white and black lenses<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next to EF and EF-S lenses there are L lenses. They theoretically do not have anything to do with the EF or EF-S designation, but the L only indicates the “Luxury” lens aka better sealed, better build and better optical quality. In real life all L lenses I know of are of the EF type.<\/p>\n

\"Detail<\/a>

Detail of the Canon EF 100-400L IS USM lens. Note the L indication and the red stripe across the lens which Canon uses to indicate it is an L-grade lens.<\/p><\/div>\n

The image above shows a white lens. Canon colors all of the longer L grade lenses white. But there are also black L-grade lenses. These are typically shorter (<200mm) lenses:\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_1136\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"A<\/a> A shorter L-grade Canon lens, the famous EF 24-105L f\/4 IS USM. Note the red lining across the front of the lens, a trademark of the Canon L-grade lenses.[\/caption]
\n

\nRed-and-white: Easy to tell apart!<\/strong><\/p>\n

After reading this post you should know all about EF, EF-S, L-grade, black and white lenses to figure out if a lens would fit a certain body or not. Just to sum up, two more examples:<\/p>\n

\"Canon<\/a>

Canon extension tube EF-14. Note the red dot on the lower right: This is the marker that indicates it connects to the camera mount as an EF mount. The other side of this tube has both a red and a white marker, meaning you can mount both EF and EF-S lenses on this end.<\/p><\/div>\n

Confused yet? The picture above is a 14mm tube. These tubes are used to create space between lens and sensor, which will allow a lens to focus up closer (macro usage). It will however loose infinite focus. As you can see by the dots, you could actually mount an EF-S lens on this tube, then mount the tube on a full frame (“red dot only”) camera. This combo probably would work, but as the EF-S lens only illuminates a cropped sensor area, you may end up seeing a sharp vignette around the image. And of course you’d loose infinite focus due to the tube increasing the distance between lens and sensor.<\/p>\n

Another example:<\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a>

Part of the mount of a Samyang 35mm f\/1.4 AS UMC manual lens. Note the red dot: Even though Samyang print the dot inside the mount and not next to it, it is obvious this lens is a “full frame capable” lens (or: compatible with the EF mount). Also note the electronic contacts which I glued on myself to fool the camera of this lens being an automatic lens.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are still a lot of people out there who don’t really know what EF, EF-S and L is all about. In this post I will try to clarify exactly what this is all about. Plastic versus metal mount Most Canon lenses feature a metal mount. In order to make lenses cheaper, some lenses have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[170,169,163,164,168,171,97,98,167,166,165,172],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photobasics","tag-big-white-lens","tag-big-whites","tag-canon-ef","tag-canon-ef-s","tag-canon-l","tag-canon-white-lenses","tag-ef","tag-ef-s","tag-l-grade-lenses","tag-l-lenses","tag-l-grade","tag-white-l-lens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1167,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}