# Vivitar lense vs. Canon FD lense? which one?



## jermo (Mar 30, 2007)

I am looking at some lenses for my Canon AE-1 and because I don not know a  lot about the quality of different brands of lenses I wanted to know which lense youguys would suggest to purchase, a Canon FD 28mm f2.8 or a Vivitar 28mm f2.8? They seem like very similar lenses, does one have a better reputation than the other? Thanks


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## Big Mike (Mar 30, 2007)

Welcome to the forum.

Personally, I'd go for the Canon, unless the price difference was quite a bit.


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## Don Simon (Mar 30, 2007)

I'd say Canon's own lenses (especially primes) are more consistently likely to be better (does that make sense?)... there are some good Vivitars, but the thing is Vivitar's lenses were actually made by various other companies. Each of these companies in turn were capable of making very good or not so good lenses, some more consistently better than others etc... which rather complicates things. Generally Vivitar 'Series 1' lenses are pretty good, with others it's not always so easy to tell. There are various sites which can tell you how to work out who made a particular Vivitar lens, but like Mike said it's probably simpler to stick with Canon except when an equivalent Vivitar is much cheaper.


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## SaSi (Apr 1, 2007)

Canon FD lenses were of excellent quality in their time. Beacause Canon switched to the EF mount, their prices dropped very much over the years.

Right now, I believe they represent an excellent buy. Third party FD lenses also dropped like a rock, to the point you may buy some of those for less than $10 in ebay. I would go for the "expensive" option and spend ~$30 for a lens and get a Canon original.


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