Welcome, lonesome traveller!

You made it to the preview page of the Canon EOS Technoclopedia. This preview exclusively exists out of a curiousity (and is meanwhile more or less outdated). If you are in the hurry and don't want to read any bullshit, head straight over to the left and choose your destination. A new page will open containing the real thing, while it gets you directly where you were heading for ... well, considered that you hit the right menu point. No tricks there, I promise ... I actually thought about coding everything in a way of permanent movement and random link generation, but nooo ... what you see is what you get, it's that easy! :D.

So ... you're still reading, proving a good portion of humor or curiousity yourself, a more general interest not only in technical facts and numbers, but in the man and heart behind all this. More likely you are just bored and looking for some entertainment, having some free time to kill. So here you go, learn why you are actually here:

I set up this page for the haters. Yes. Frame flamers and java script bashers. Haters gonna hate! And here they can learn something about it. Just look at this beautiful design for a while and imagine its handiness. You can scroll up and down and still see the menu all the time. I hope it will help. After a while you should click on one of the links to the left just to see how awful everything works with dirty frames and scripts. Yes, haters are great. And my menu is bigger than yours. No cheats. Pwnd ya!! Hahaha.

I also set up this page, because I was bored and tired that one night and was curious, how everything would work out without frames, only using CSS and DIV containers. Yeah, it was fun!

And of course the existence of this page has something to do with Google and other search engines. They are often blaimed to be too stupid to index framed pages properly. Poor bots. Some even can't process scripts, and I use both - java scripts to load framesets. For a web crawler this must look like The Day After. And still that's not even all about it. The whole database is coded in tables, containing a mere infinite amount of numbers to a huge extend, so the pages themselfs don't make any sense to whatever indexing spider might stop by. Let's see how this page pays out in the end. If you made it here by clicking on a link in Google search results, you just prove me right, 'cuz you actually aren't expected to find this page for its sole uselessness.

I could also go on and say "Hey! I also set up this page for the poor guys whose browsers either can't show frames or interprete java script." But I know that'd just be a lame excuse and you know it as well. Someone with a browser that old can never happen to browse my pages, because they simply did not yet have any knowledge about timetravelling back in the days when those browsers existed. And they couldn't properly use nowaday's Google with those browsers either. That much about this preview. Still it has a nice side effect. Indeed you do have a scrollable menu now just for the case of you being too lazy to fullsize your Chrome window or whatever you use to reach the lower menu items. Just call /googles.htm instead.

Alright, I'm starting to fall asleep. Let me just copy and paste some stuff about this page, so you get your preview not only graphically, but also contentual.

This database was started in early spring of 2007 with a very simple idea in mind. At that time I was about to buy some additional lenses for my Canon EOS, but as a student I also was extremely low on budget. I recognized bigger sets containing my targeted lenses selling on Ebay for very low prices. So I bought some of these sets and sold what I didn't need. By the summer of 2008 I had collected a good load of equipment for a bargain. But all this buying and selling also had some side effects. Besides getting kind of addicted to learn something new about that lens I did not yet had held in my own hands I for example realized all these weird variations of Sigma lenses, of which nobody could tell for sure whether they would work with newer camera bodies or not, how old all these lenses are at all (not only the Sigmas), what the small differences in their specs and behavior are (just try to find something about the Tokina 17mm F3.5 AT-X non-Pro) and so on, so on, so on.

At that time a few good resources existed: Besides the Canon Camera Museum and other manufacturers' product listings and discontinued product archives there was Patrick Murphy's lens list (that was taken off the web a few weeks after I started), an outdated lens list focusing on Pentax by Martin Trautmann and PeNum.de, just to name a few. They were all very good, but not complete, nor mainly focused on Canon EOS. To retrieve information about discontinued stuff I digged through The Internet Archive most intensively. Finally the database collected here is, to my thinking, the most comprehensive one dealing with Canon EOS at the moment. And since I also like playing around with web servers and web publishing I decided to keep all this information available online. So far about the story.

This database deals with technical specifications of the Canon EOS system - original (genuine) Canon, dedicated third party, adaptable third party and vintage equipment, including analog and digital SLR cameras, all kinds of video cameras, autofocus lenses as well as manual focus lenses, flash guns, ring flashes and radio triggers and last but not least camera body accessories like wireless file transmitters, battery grips, remote switches, eyecups and other view finder enhancements, laser matte (focusing) screens, batteries, battery chargers and ac kits, further lens accessories like tripod mount rings, tele converters, close-up lenses, extension tubes, screw-on and drop-in filters and hard cases for lenses. If you just own a EOS 50D with a bunch of lenses and ever wondered, what you could do with it except for jsut shooting pictures the conventional way, have a look at those lists to get an idea of what is possible.

The following list might serve as an index of covered companies, brands and topics:

SLR CAMERA BODIES are made by Canon (Canon EOS film and digital), Kodak (Kodak EOS•DCS/DCS) and Hartblei (Hartblei Cam). Industrial, surveillance and normal video cameras with EF mount or corresponding adapters are available from Allied Vision Technologies, Avigilon and Lumenera, again Canon (Canon XL via adapter and Canon EOS Cinema) and of course RED. Softhard also presented some Currera XL models with Canon EF mount at Vision Expo 2009, which did not make it into mass production though. Two very special military grade cameras are offered by Desert Star Systems for deep water operations down to 6000m. Lately Sinar also announced an adapter to use Canon EOS bodies with their View Camera system.

BESIDE CANON EF LENSES AF lenses are available from Angenieux, Carl Zeiss, Cosina, Exakta, JVC, Kodak Gear, Magnicon, Phoenix, Promaster, Quantaray, Samyang, Sigma, Soligor, Tamron, Tokina, Vitacon, Vivitar and Voigtländer. Especially for the high end entusiasts the Conurus conversions of Contax N AF lenses to fully dedicated EF mount lenses (AF capable) might be of interest, too. See Other Lenses page for all brands mentioned above without a link. See here for tele converters, achromatic macro lenses and extension tubes and for some equipment upgrading lenses to something else.

MANUAL LENSES WITH CANON EF MOUNT are available from Arax/Arsat, B.I.G., Beloma, Bower, Carl Zeiss, CoastalOpt, Elicar, Falcon, Hartblei, Lensbaby, Loreo, LZOS (Lytkarino Zavod Optitcheskogo Stekla = Optical Glass Factory), Monochrom, Opteka, Photex, Polar, ProOptik (Adorama), Rokinon, Samyang, Schneider-Kreuznach, Sunex, Walimex and Zörk (PC Super Angulon conversions). Again, see Other Lenses page.

As very special lens accessories the Electrophysics nightvision equipment is to be mentioned. A word about astro conversions of Canon cameras can be found here, as well as an overview for available underwater camera housings. Also, don't miss the Fun page.

FLASH GUNS AND RING FLASHES for macro work are available from Canon (Speedlites, Macrolite, Macro Ring Lite and Twin Lite). Better known third party manufacturers are Metz (Mecablitz), Promaster, Tumax, Quantum (QFlashes), Sigma, Sunpak and Nissin. Still, not all of their E-TTL models are always compatible with every E-TTL camera body (only exceptions here in general are Metz and to some degree Quantum (Quantum QFlashes don't offer true E-TTL but Quantum's own Q-TTL, thus no compatibility issues)). But on the other hand compatibility issues with Sigma, Sunpak and Nissin flashes are widely documented. There are afaik no incompatibilities documented for Promaster and Tumax flashes so far. Using the rest of the third party flash brands is often accompanied by trial and error in compatibility issues, as soon as E-TTL gets involved. These brands include Bilora, Bower, Brilliant, Cullmann, Dörr, Emoblitz, Fomei, Marumi, Opteka, Phoenix, Quantaray, RPS, Soligor, suntax, Targus, Vivitar, YongNuo and Zeikos (there is an extra page for their macro ring flashes).

Finally, the main content of the database also includes various kinds of both "modern" and vintage adaptable lenses. To name all the brands would not make much sense here. As the most important ones I consider Vivitar (Series 1), Kiron, Pentax/Asahi, Olympus, Nikon, KMZ (Zenitar), Zeiss, Century Precision Optics, Kilfitt, Novoflex, Yashica and Tamron's Adaptall system. There are many more, just have a look at the lists for adaptable fisheye, ultrawide, wide, standard, long focus and mirror lenses, macro, tilt/shift and other special application lenses (UV, IR, soft focus, pinholes etc.).

Another of the more recent additions are some rather selective page about camera bags and cases (Lowepro Stealth Reporter, B&W outdoor.cases) and rechargeable batteries and rechargers (Sanyo Eneloops and RS700/IPC-1L/BC700 types of rechargers). Of more and more growing interest also is the database about available online product documentation. There is an index of useful addresses as well as an index of available documentation. A simple links list to manufacturers homepages can be found as well.

Well, let's have an end to the name bashing and keyword dropping. Go and enjoy the Canon EOS Technoclopedia. You might even want to consider to provide some support by sending in some missing specs or product photographies. Thanks a lot, if you do so.

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