FocusEd: Camera Lens Mounts Explained

On this B&H video (made by Kelby Training) photographer Larry Becker talks about the different camera lens mounts for different brands.

Lens mounts is often a confusing topic for new photographers and there are quite a few common mounts around and the number had grown considerably in the last few years with the introduction of mirorless cameras.

We made a general list of some of the most common mounts and their limitations:

Canon

EF mount (Full Frame) – Fits only full frame lenses from Canon.
EF-S mount (APS-C) – Fits APS-C and Full Frame DSLR lenses from Canon.
EF-M (mirorless/APS-C) – Fits mirorless APS-C lenses from Canon and EF-S/EF lenses from Canon with an adaptor.

There are many 3’rd party EF and EF-S lenses from companies such as Sigma, Tamron, Tokina Zeiss etc.

Nikon

F-mount (FX – Full Frame) – Fits both full frame and APS-C lenses from Nikon (DX lenses will usually automatically be cropped on full frame cameras).
F-mount (DX – APS-C) – Fits both FX and DX lenses from Nikon.
1-system (CX – mirorless) – fits both CX/1-system lenses from Nikon and FX/DX lenses with an adapter.

There are many 3’rd party FX and DX lenses from companies such as Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Zeiss etc.

Sony

Alpha (DSLR) – has both full frame and APS-C lens variants which fits both Sony, Minolta and Zeiss lenses.
FE mount (Full Frame) – full frame version of the Sony E-mount for Sony’s mirorless cameras.
E-mount – Fits both the APS-C E-mount and Full Fame FE-mount lenses.

There are 3’rd party lenses from companies such as Sigma, Tamron, and Zeiss etc.

Olympus & Panasonic

4/3 – the older Olympus DSLR mount. Micro 4/3 lenses will work with an adapter with some limitations.
micro-4/3 – will work on

Olympus micro 4/3 lenses will work on Panasonic cameras and vice versa (there are also some 3/rd part micro 4/3 lenses from different manufacturers).

Samsung

NX mount – Samsung specific mount – should accept Pentax lenses with adapter.

There are also 3 different versions of K mounts from Pentax as well as Q-mount and 645 mount, Sigma also has SA-mount and quite a few older and different type legacy mounts.

You can watch many more photography tips on the LensVid technique section. You can check out more videos from the FocusEd series here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.