Canon FD 70-210mm f4 vintage lens review

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The lens is made of metal and hard plastic, it weights around 620g, it is 152 to 166mm long and it has an external diameter of 72mm, with a 58mm front thread and the from element turns when focusing.

The iris has 8 blades, the aperture is clicked and it goes from f4 to f32 plus auto, with half steps.

The focusing ring is textured, it turns 160 degrees and minimum focusing distance is 1.2 meters. At 70mm it can be set to macro mode, reducing the minimum focusing distance to 45cm.

The Canon Fd mount has a flange distance of 42mm.

As you all know, I don’t like the sliding barrel focus and zoom system, but this specific copy has just the right amount of resistance.

Sharpness wide open is all right but not amazing, with slightly softer corners and some noticeable vignetting. Stopping down to f8 it gets very sharp in the center, but less in the corners. There doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the two ends of the zoom range.

Chromatic aberration is present wide open in high contrast areas but it disappears stopping down.

Colors, contrast and saturation are in line with the other Canon Fd lenses.

Specular highlights go from very big and soft to smaller with hard edges according to the focal length and distance from the subject.

In normal use I didn’t have any issues with flares and ghosting, but shining a light straight into the lens does produce some flares.

As always, it’s hard to find great vintage zooms, but this Canon is pretty good. Sure, it’s not perfect, but perfection is not what we look for in a vintage lens.

I have two complaints about it and you already know the first one: the sliding barrel, it’s a system that I just don’t like.

The second is weight and size, it is a bit too heavy and cumbersome for my arthrosis to deal with.

But both of those are just my personal problems, overall I would say that this lens is a good cheap vintage zoom.



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