Can Canon EF lenses be adapted to a Pentax 645N, and will they cover the full 645 frame?

Asked 12/8/2017

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I have access to Canon EF lenses and a Pentax 645N, and I’m curious about using the EF lenses to capture as much of the image circle as possible on the larger 645 format. Since Canon EF lenses are designed for a much shorter flange focal distance than Pentax 645, I assume any adapter would effectively act like an extension tube, so infinity focus would likely be lost. I’m also aware that aperture control would be a problem with a homemade adapter. Is adapting EF to Pentax 645N practical, and would the lenses actually cover the full 645 frame?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

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This doesn't answer your question regarding adapter, but I wanted to caution you that you probably won't capture the entire image circle: it will be cropped a bit on the top and bottom edges of the Pentax's frame.

The EF lens projects an image circle with a diameter that is at least as large as the diagonal dimension of the EF body's sensor. Specifically, the 24mm × 36mm sensor has a diagonal of 43.3mm. The image circle of the EF lens must cover this distance (plus probably a little bit extra).

The height of the Pentax's film/sensor plane is 45mm, just 1.67mm wider than the EF's minimum image circle. So there's not a lot of room for error there.

However, the flange focal distance (FFD) of the Pentax is 70.87mm. The FFD of the Canon EF mount is 44mm. Assuming your EF-to-645 mount adapter is a zero-depth adapter (which is actually quite possible, considering the substantially larger diameter of the Pentax 645 mount), then the light cone of the EF lens will project an additional 26.87mm.

You can think of the light cone of the EF lens as a cone with a base diameter (minimum) of the EF sensor (43.3mm), and with a height of the FFD plus the lens's exit pupil distance (from the lens flange). I'll call the exit pupil distance P.

So the lens is mounted an extra L millimeters further from the sensor than normal, its light cone will spread out to a size of 43.3mm × (FFDPentax + P)/(FFDCanonEF + P).

I don't know what the exit pupil distance of your lens is. But just for the sake of example, let's use 25mm. Then the light cone of your Canon EF lens mounted on the Pentax 645 would spread out to a diameter of 43.3mm * (70.87 + 25)/(44 + 25) = 60.2mm, which is just past the width of the 645's film/sensor plane.

The calculation is worse the smaller the exit pupil distance is. For a hypothetical 0mm exit pupil distance, the extended image circle would be 43.3mm * 70.87 / 44 = 69.7mm.


Now, if you used an EF-S lens that projects a "tight" image circle for Canon's APS-C sensors (1.6x crop factor), then a 0mm exit pupil lens would project (43.3 / 1.6) * 70.87 / 44 = 43.6mm. This is less than the 645's smallest dimension, and again, is a worst-case size (with regards to exit pupil distance).

Thus, if you want to capture a full image circle without being cropped by the 645's frame size, you need to use a Canon EF-S lens, or any lens designed for a Canon APS-C sensor (or smaller, such as Micro-4/3).

Originally by user11924. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11924

8y ago

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It’s probably not very practical, and full 645 coverage is unlikely. Canon EF lenses are designed to cover a 24×36mm frame, which needs an image circle only a little larger than the 43.3mm diagonal of full-frame 35mm. Pentax 645 uses a much larger frame, and its 45mm height alone is already slightly larger than that minimum full-frame image circle, so you’d likely see cropping or vignetting at the top and bottom even before considering real-world tolerances.

Mechanically, EF-to-Pentax 645 adaptation would also require a large spacing difference because EF’s flange distance is much shorter than Pentax 645’s. That means the adapter behaves like an extension tube, so infinity focus would be lost and focusing range would be limited to closer distances.

Aperture control is another major issue: EF lenses are electronically controlled, so with a simple homemade adapter you generally won’t have normal aperture adjustment.

So yes, a homemade adapter may be physically possible, but it would likely give close-focus-only use, limited aperture control, and incomplete frame coverage.

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8y ago

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