Mount adapted MF lenses require firmware update or just plan ERR 01

[tikkathreebarrel]

Oh the joys of downsizing the pile of camera gear.....

Over the years I had much pleasure in using MF "vintage/legacy glass" on DSLRs and, having sold my 14-yr old 5DII recently have had to confront the problems I've been having trying to use the same lenses on the 5DIII I bought last year where, in a nutshell, the camera refused to talk to some of the lenses. While I had the 5DII it was a simple matter of grabbing that one to shoot with.

Left with one body which seems to like saying "no" I was facing up to letting go a handful of old friends with native M39, M42 and Exacta mounts so I've jus spent good 90 minutes establishing what does and what doesn't work.

Eight different M42-EOS adapters with electrical contacts plus one brand new one simply don't work on the 5DIII presenting me with either a screen message that a "Firmware update is required" or "Err 01 clean lens contacts" and yet they all worked on both my 5DI and 5DII bodies: duh??

The better news is that one visually identical M42 adapter does perform correctly with every one of my MF legacy lenses as does the non-electric exacta-EOS mount and my EOS-mount "new release" Meyer Optik lenses are blissfully unaffected .

I think I should still reduce the size of the fleet because my hobby photography is still fundamentally reduced but is it the camera rather than the adapters and is it a designed-in feature or is it a glitch? The camera is on the correct current firmware so I'm inclined to think "glitch".

 

[hunnymonster]

It certainly wasn't unusual in the past for a new camera to reject an existing non-OEM lens that worked on the predecessor (thinking back to film time I had a Cosina macro lens that worked just fine on my EOS RT but failed to work at all on my EOS 50... Canon said "but why would you want to do that?" Cosina eventually developed a fix that relied on sending the lens to Germany to be updated)

My money would be on the fact that the aftermarket device relied on a reverse engineering understanding of the mount - so maybe timings of signals back are slightly off - or encoding is missed or something like that...

Bottom line it isn't that anything is at fault per se - rather that the particular combination doesn't work.

 

[woof woof]

Is there a "shoot without lens" option? Any communication will be lost but at least you may be able to use MF lenses without error messages.

 

[tikkathreebarrel]

Is there a "shoot without lens" option? Any communication will be lost but at least you may be able to use MF lenses without error messages.

Well I'm ploughing through the manual and, if it's there, it's under a string of words not including "shoot without lens" or anything quite so helpfully obvious. Right now I'm missing the layout of the Custom functions under the 5DII' s menu structure where there were lists of custom functions by number, function description, ON/OFF.

If I wasn't in downsizing mode I'd probably take the electrical contacts off a mount adapter: in some ways that would be retrograde but it should enable me to at least use the lenses.

EDIT: did exactly that and the camera didn't notice that there was a "mute" lens attached.

 

[woof woof]

Well I'm ploughing through the manual and, if it's there, it's under a string of words not including "shoot without lens" or anything quite so helpfully obvious. Right now I'm missing the layout of the Custom functions under the 5DII' s menu structure where there were lists of custom functions by number, function description, ON/OFF.

If I wasn't in downsizing mode I'd probably take the electrical contacts off a mount adapter: in some ways that would be retrograde but it should enable me to at least use the lenses.

Back when I had the original 5D I used manual lenses on it but maybe there is no "shoot without lens" option as such, sorry but I just can't remember but I do remember that I used Olympus Zuiko film era lenses via a dumb adapter. Selecting either Aperture or Manual mode should allow you to use the lenses but the contacts may confuse things so it may be that you'll need to either remove the contacts or if you can't bring yourself to do that instead you could just buy a cheap dumb adapter.

 

[RyanB]

In the same boat in so much as I wanted an AF confirm chipped adapter to use my m42 lenses on my 5D iii, as you have found the old ones don't work. It's the adapters not your camera.

From what I read you need and EMF configurable/ programmable chipped adapter. Also read there is something called a dandelion chipped adapter which I think works although I couldn't find one. There are some adapters dotting about from Chinese sellers labelled gen or mk9 which imply they work with the 5Diii but whether they do or not I'm not sure.

Bit of minefield really (I found it confusing anyway) with all these different versions of chips that may or may not work and I decided not to bother and keep going with my plain old contactless adapters for the time being. If you happen to find one which does work I would love to know.
In the mean time if you have that many adapters you could always just take the chip off one (assuming they have only been glued down). Shouldn't be hard to replace if need be with a bit of epoxy and then at least you can shoot without the error code stopping you.

 

[RyanB]

Took a chance on a Pixco adapter off AliExpress which arrived toady (ordered on 21/4/25), I can confirm it works on my 5d iii for focus assist/ confirm. It is fixed at 50mm f1.4 in the exif data but that was never a deal breaker for me.

The link is here if you are interested.

 

[woof woof]

I'm glad you found one Ryan. Happy snapping