Adapter stacking on Metabones speedbooster: anyone have experience?

[freeman]

Hey guys, have a question for anyone with experience stacking adapters. I use a gh4 with a speedbooster (nikon mount), as well as a nikon mount sigma 18-35 and a couple other nikon lenses. I have been thinking of moving to a canon mount speedbooster because of some greater flexibility. adapting to the canon mount. I understand you can adapt nikon lenses to the canon mount, so my question is: anyone have experience using a nikon lenses adapter to a canon speedbooster on a mirrorless cam? The adapter for nik-canon is very thin, usually with an aperture lever. If this is viable I may switch to a canon speedbooster so I can use nikon, canon, as well as some contax lenses with respective adapters. I don't forsee any problems occurring as long as the adapter tolerances are close enough.

Thanks

[scotchtape]

Well those cheapo adapters (I have many) usually aren't that great and usually have some play in them.  Even metabones has some I think.  So when focusing manually it will make the wobble even worse.

 

Also I don't remember how, but I broke one of my adapters (Nikon to Eos) and realized if I knocked my lens really hard it might just fall off the camera!

 

But there really shouldn't be any reason why it wouldn't work.

 

Honestly if you are serious about it you should just get native canon lenses... Shouldn't be too hard to switch that sigma one as it's pretty popular and in demand.

[Cinegain]

Should work. People stack all the time. That's indeed why a Canon mount Speedbooster is the more flexible option (just in my eyes not worth the money over the Nikon version and I really don't have any need for the electronic control, I avoid owning any EF-mount lenses myself; otherwise, sure). There's not a ton of adapters with that aperture control lever like that, actually, up to now, I didn't even realized there were any at all, but you made me look into it, it does appear to be the case. I just don't like adding variables and prefer single adapter solutions. A few times with stacking dummy adapters I've had a little hit and miss running into focus issues, so I keep it as tidy and basic as possible. What I did is... I went with the Nikon Speedbooster XL from Metabones (also nice to mount like the 'native' Nikon lenses I have lying around such as the 28-70 & 80-200mm f/2.8 D, 28mm f/2.8 AI-s, Sigma, Tokina zooms etc)... and then got the ZY Optics/Zhongyi/Mitakon Lens Turbo II for EF mount adaptation (e.g. Contax Zeiss primes through a K&F Concept adapter (love those)).

[mercer]

What Cinegain said... but I will add that you could get a leitax mount to change your Contax Zeiss lenses to Nikon F Mount lenses and then they would natively mount to your Nikon speedbooster, but it would probably be easier and more cost effective to go the Mitakon Lens Turbo route as Cinegain suggested... then you will have two speedboosters that will serve all of your lenses well. At vintage lenses for video, the guy did a comparison between metabones and the lens turbo and saw zero difference in visual quality.

[Cinegain]

Yeah, quality is fine, just the focal reduction is not quite as significant as with the XL 0.64x, namely 0.726x. Having a 2nd one comes in handy for multicam shoots too, though.

[mercer]

Yeah, honestly if I didn't get a metabones BMPCC Nikon speedbooster so cheap recently, I would have gone with the Lens Turbo ii. 

[freeman]

thanks guys, cinegain great point on the lens turbo for now that could solve the problem of getting them on the gh4 as I don't have any canon glass at the moment.

[tupp]

Some Nikkor lenses will not work with the Metabones EF speedboosters, when using a Nikon-F-to-Canon-EF adapter.  Those EF speedboosters have a flange surrounding the front optical element that is positioned slightly forward from that front element.  The protective metal "tongue" on the back of some of the Nikkor lenses hits this forward flange, thus preventing the lens from being mounted.

 

Also, keep in mind that EF speedboosters are about 30%-50% more expensive than those with other mounts.

[Justin Bacle]

I am frequently using an MD -> MFT lens turbo II.

When I want to use M42 lenses, I just stack an M42 -> MD adapter on the MD->MT Lens Turbo, no problems here

[mercer]

1 hour ago, Justin Bacle said:

I am frequently using an MD -> MFT lens turbo II.

When I want to use M42 lenses, I just stack an M42 -> MD adapter on the MD->MT Lens Turbo, no problems here

I've also read you can stack MD lenses to an ef speedbooster and get infinity focus if you buy one of those slim md to ef adapters. Apparently on ef camera you can only use them for macro photography but when used in conjunction with an ef speed booster, you can get infinity... don't know if it's true though. 

[Justin Bacle]

2 minutes ago, mercer said:

I've also read you can stack MD lenses to an ef speedbooster and get infinity focus if you buy one of those slim md to ef adapters. Apparently on ef camera you can only use them for macro photography but when used in conjunction with an ef speed booster, you can get infinity... don't know if it's true though. 

Don't do that, trust me, I did not find any acceptable options for monting MD lenses on an EOS mount, and I've tried many things (slims adapters, adapters with optics)

Conversion should be an option, but the people making lens conversions are not interested in "lower" lenses than the mighty 50/1.2 & 85/1.2 :s

The "best" adapter is this one (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thin-Minolta-MD-Lens-to-Canon-EOS-serial-Camera-Adapter-without-glasses-MD-EOS-/111751120312) but you are still missing around 1mm flange distance -> Infinity focus is not an option wide open 

[mercer]

17 minutes ago, Justin Bacle said:

Don't do that, trust me, I did not find any acceptable options for monting MD lenses on an EOS mount, and I've tried many things (slims adapters, adapters with optics)

Conversion should be an option, but the people making lens conversions are not interested in "lower" lenses than the mighty 50/1.2 & 85/1.2 :s

The "best" adapter is this one (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thin-Minolta-MD-Lens-to-Canon-EOS-serial-Camera-Adapter-without-glasses-MD-EOS-/111751120312) but you are still missing around 1mm flange distance -> Infinity focus is not an option wide open 

Metabones should make an MD to EF adapter with glass.

[Justin Bacle]

Just now, mercer said:

Metabones should make an MD to EF adapter with glass.

You just cant, MD flange distance is 43.5mm, which makes it 0.5mm smaller than Canon MD mount. You can push as hard as you want, you just can't fit a thing in -0.5mm :D

[studiodc]

I'm a big fan of the RedRock Micro lens adapter flanges. They are designed to be "dedicated" to a lens and lock down (gently but very firmly) with setscrews. Eliminates wobble, focus is bang on, and they don't get lost. Plus they are cheap enough to keep one on each lens you want. I have them all for Canon EF, have an EF speed booster, and a variety of lenses (Contax, Nikon mostly) that they stay on permanently. 

[mercer]

1 hour ago, Justin Bacle said:

You just cant, MD flange distance is 43.5mm, which makes it 0.5mm smaller than Canon MD mount. You can push as hard as you want, you just can't fit a thing in -0.5mm :D

With an adapter with corrective glass you can reach infinity focus with an MD lens on a Canon EF DSLR... the problem is the glass the cheap adapter manufacturers use is so piss poor that you take an iq loss. I assume if Metabones were to use high quality glass, like they do in their speedboosters, they could make a glass adapter that is of good quality. 

[Justin Bacle]

Just now, mercer said:

With an adapter with corrective glass you can reach infinity focus with an MD lens on a Canon EF DSLR... the problem is the glass the cheap adapter manufacturers use is so piss poor that you take an iq loss. I assume if Metabones were to use high quality glass, like they do in their speedboosters, they could make a glass adapter that is of good quality. 

That would be Greeeeaaaaaat indeed !

[BasiliskFilm]

Would it be impossible for Mitakon to make a Lens Turbo with interchangeable rear mounts, being as they are just dumb adaptors of slightly different lengths. Going with the EF version, and finding 3rd party adaptors to F, MD, M42 etc seems a bit kludgy.