Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Current State of Lens Adapters

It has been almost eight years since I started using manual focus lenses on my digital SLRs; longer than most people.  Back then, adapters were expensive, even for a Canon EOS-M42, which cost around $50 to $60, and now can be had for under $5.  But I was happy to pay the price, because at least someone was willing to produce these adapters so that wonderful old lenses could have a second life.

With more companies getting into the lens adapter business, adapters are getting better and more sophisticated; they are getting smart too.  Old adapters were purely mechanical and there was no electronic linkage between adapter and camera, but that has changed.  First we had the EOS-NEX adapter by Metabones, that allows the NEX camera to control aperture of Canon EF lenses from the NEX camera.  Since then, various Chinese adapter makers introduced their own, with image stabilization and AF support.  They are also readying the Contax-G rangefinder to NEX adapter that allows auto focus.

The latest, and the best news, is the Metabones SpeedBooster adapters that makes full frame lenses behave the same on NEX or M4/3 cameras by angle reduction.  It behaves the opposite of lens extenders, with an added benefit of increasing the maximum aperture by one stop.  So, your EF 24mm f1.4 will have basically have the same angle of view on the NEX camera, but at f1.0 instead. The optical lens in the adapter was designed by the very well known Dr. Brian Caldwell.  So, all is well, right?  Yes and no.  The price is very steep.  Yup, $600 for the adapter.  Unlike mechanical adapters that can be copied/cloned, the optics in the adapter is pretty hard to copy without being sued.  So, don't expect the price of this great adapter to get cheaper any time soon.

Cherry Blossom in Infrared - Canon 20D IR & Pentax-M 20mm f4.

9 comments:

  1. I read about the Metabones. It's not for me, but its a real boon for cinema guys. If I really needed it, I would buy even at the high price. Finally, something to talk about in camera world besides "when is the next DSLR coming out?"

    Beautiful image. I shoot IR with a full spectrum.

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    1. I have quite a few fast Canon primes that I would love to use it on the NEX-6. It would be sweet to shoot the 85mm f1.2L as the f0.95 lens! But the price is a big factor.

      Do you have any samples of your IR work? I would love to see some.

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  2. Has anyone used a metabones adapter? My questions is on the adapters that have a built in tripod foot. I like this feature on other adapters but have found that they can be flimsy, and tend to unscrew. I wonder if the metabones foot will be more substantial as their price would warrant and from what I have read about the overall construction of the adapter.

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    1. I have a Metabones M4/3 to C-mount adapter and it's very well made and fits perfectly. I would assume this particular new adapter should be better than the average Chinese made ones with tripod collard.

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  3. Try turning around a 1.5x teleconverter and see what happens. You can easily do a 'Proof of Concept' of this metabones adapter at home. I did it and it works well, though the two main issues are hand holding the three unfixed objects and getting the lens to flange base length right (which you can achieve with some extension tubes)

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    1. Fantastic idea, James! I think I will try a Canon 1.4X converter and see what happens.

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    2. Briefly tried it, and it didn't seem to work. With the Canon EF 1.4x teleconverted in reverse, the light loss still seems to be 1 stop, not the gain of 1 stop expected. Perhaps I didn't do it right, though.

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  4. its one of the reasons I like to keep my adaptors simple. Basic EOS adaptors with chips for some lenses are quite cheap. Then there is m4/3 and your Sony NEX.

    all low hanging fruit for the photographer willing to understand their gear ;-)

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    1. True. We are lucky in this time of the digital photography period.

      EOS system now has some of the cheapest adapters available.

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