My father passed away a few years ago and I was digging through some of his belongings and found one of his old SLR cameras that he bought in the mid-80s and it has a nice zoom lens with it. I have some pictures of it here.
http://www.jimmypark.com/tmp/bell_howell...
I am thinking of buying a Canon 30D SLR digital camera(body only) and was wondering if I can use this lens instead of buying a new one? Can anybody tell me if it will fit and know anything about this lens such as value, image quality etc? I've searched everywhere online to get some information about this lens but i guess it's too old. I just want to know if it will be compatible with any of the new Canon digital SLRs.
Thanks in advance!
Jimmy First of all, I'm sorry to hear about your father.
As for the lens - The Canon 30D takes EF lenses, and just from eyeing your photos I don't think it would fit into a Canon body without modification/an adapter. This is what an EF lens mount looks like, if you want to compare it to the lens mount on your Bell&Howell.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en...
I haven't been able to find any information about this lens either. :( Sorry. I will let someone else answer about the compatibility issues, because I know there was a specific date prior to which you can not expect Canon lenses to fit modern cameras. This lens probably falls within that "out of date" era.
If it does, don't lose any sleep over it. Bell & Howell made "consumer" grade lenses of medium quality. If you can't use this lens, you probably would have a hard time even giving it away - much less selling it. I'm sorry about that, but it is what it is. As to the compatibility of your lenses, I am not sure. I can tell you this much though:
Lenses made for 35mm Canon SLRs will work on Canon DSLRs (digital single lens reflex). The main thing to remember though is the image sensor on most consumer DSLRs (including the 30D) is not full-frame. This means that the CMOS sensor which captures the light is physically smaller than the 35mm sensor. In layman's terms it means that there is a 1.6 times conversion factor.
Example: you put a 100mm (in 35mm terms) lens on a DSLR and voila! You now have a 160mm lens. So this conversion factor is great for telephoto shooting, but the obvious downside is that it makes it more difficult to take wide-angle shots.
On a side note; the 30D is an excellent camera! I don't know if I'd even want to use those lenses on it even if I could though. You would want to check out Canon's IS and USM lenses [Image Stabilized and Ultrasonic Motor (for faster focusing)]. http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/contro... That's a Cannon (misspell on purpose) FD lens mount. NO it will not fit a Digital Cannon(") | 
