Canon FD 100-300mm f5.6 - vintage lens review

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There is plenty of good, great, even amazing vintage lenses out there, but very few of them are zooms. In fact, a good chunk of them are just too big, too heavy and produce soft images, but not all of them.

For example, the Sigma 35-70 that I’ve reviewed in 2020 is small, lightweight and sharp.

Many of you have suggested me to check out Vivitar and Canon FD zooms, so when I had the chance to buy this guy, I didn’t turn it down.

The Canon 100-300mm is made out of metal, it weights around 800g, it is 21cm long when focused to infinity and 22.3cm when fully extended, with a 58mm front thread.

The iris has 8 blades, the aperture is clicked and it goes from f5.6 to f32 with half steps.

When focusing, both the external barrel and the front element turn 210 degrees and minimum focusing distance is 2 meters.

Flange distance for canon FD lenses is 42mm, so they can be easily adapted to mirrorless cameras. (affiliate link)

Sharpness wide open is good across the frame and that shouldn’t be a surprise given the maximum f5.6 aperture, but when it comes to vintage zooms we know that’s not a given. Stopping down to f8 it gets sharper.

Chromatic aberration is clearly visible at f5.6 but it is gone by f9.

Colors and contrast are the same as any other Canon FD lens.

Specular highlights are big and soft and don’t deform much in the corners of the picture.

Flares are big and pleasant, but you have to be mindful when shooting towards the sun.

It is not an easy task to find good vintage zooms, especially if we compare them to their modern counterparts, so I was quite on the fence with this one.

I personally don’t like this kind of design with the sliding barrel controlling both zoom and focus at once, as it makes hard to change one independently from the other, so I will never give a lens that uses this system a positive score for handling.

When it comes to image quality, I only have one complaint: there is a bit too much chromatic aberration at wider apertures. Everything else looks good to me.

At the end of the day, I don’t have much of an opinion about this lens, it is quite good and inexpensive, but I don’t really see myself using it.

As always, check the video for all the samples.


Adapter on Amazon (affiliate link)

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