APS-C and Super 35mm just went full frame - Metabones Speed Booster

[Andrew Reid]

Micro Four Thirds sensors are not all alike. There's a 1.86x crop on the GH2 and a 2x crop on the GH3. I wonder how they will accomodate this?

 

Indeed there's the 2.3x crop one on the BMCC.

 

Hopefully they will make 2 versions.

 

One for 2x and one for 2.3x.

 

On the GH2, 2x would be a good enough fit. For example a 24mm becomes even a bit wider than 12mm.

[richg101]

This is a little bit offtopic but I'd like to point out you got it backwards. Customers want the lowest possible price for the best possible product. So by saying greedy do you mean yourself? Companies in order to deliver what customers want look for ways to make production as cheap as possible for customers. It's good for everyone. Don't want to make it long so I stop here.

 

I'll apologise to Andrew now for drawing this further into politics, but here goes:- 

 

(Disclaimer.  I'm not saying I am right, I am just saying this is what I believe)

 

I mean corporations on the whole are greedy.  Being brought up since the early 80's i guess I have been shaped to be greedy, but i'm less greedy than most.  I remember a time when items were made in the uk for the masses.  Now only small runs of specialist goods are made here, and this is not good for the economy.    My point is that most western companies are so inefficient the only way they can earn profit is to take advantage of cheap labor.  Smaller companies like metabones will be manufacturing in China due to it being the only option (western labor is too expensive).  

 

Now, if we boycott the Chinese manufactured goods and say "NO" then companies have to manufacture in their own country.  When this happens we end up paying what products should cost, not what 'sweat shop low' paid kids and their parents are allowing the corporations to get away with charging.  Conversely to your comment, I'd rather not have the cheap knock off option so easy to obtain.  A dumb lens adaptor (for example) should cost more than £10 (including delivery).  I have bought them instead of the original one that was copied,  If it weren't there I'd have paid the £50 for the original one.  When we buy these things we are lowering ourselves and lowering the value of everything.  This IMO has played a large part in why the western world has found itself in such problematic financial times of late.     

 

If Chinese and other cheap manufactured goods were banned from being export out of China, it would take less than 2 years for the rest of the world to rebuild their manufacturing bases tothe point where we become self sufficient and I imagine prices of items wouldn't be very much higher than if made in China today.  The longer this goes on, the less productive the world will become.  When China want more money per hour (which they will do), The business model stops dead.  Western society wont be able to call upon the African workforce that China are developing, so who will make all our stuff for us at a price we can afford??  Every decade this continues, the less likely it will be that there are people in western society that can work and do for themselves.    

[richg101]

Indeed there's the 2.3x crop one on the BMCC.

 

Hopefully they will make 2 versions.

 

One for 2x and one for 2.3x.

 

On the GH2, 2x would be a good enough fit. For example a 24mm becomes even a bit wider than 12mm.

 

IMO I don't think a m4/3 version will come any time soon.  They never bothered with a smart m4/3 to ef.  Metabones nex to ef was created with FS100 in mind.  Most owners of the metabones nex to ef are users of fs100 and fs700.  e mount is priority to metabones because of this.  Due to BMC being both ef and m4/3, but with little hope of there being electronic control on the m4/3 version, maybe they will release a dumb version for m4/3.  I hope they release a dumb nex to ef version myself, which will accept a load of vintage MF to ef adaptors for use with contax, m42 etc      

[pask74]

I don't see the point or logic there.. if you want to adapt other lenses, the EOS adapter would be the best option.

 

On the EOS mount you can use Canon EF (of course), Nikon F, M42 and Leica R with adapters.

 

You can't use 'whatever format' because the register distance will have to be as long as Canon EF mount at least. Leica M, Canon FD etc is no option.

 

OK - so basically we'd be stuck with EF lenses? (sorry for my slow brain)

[theSUBVERSIVE]

If it was a panacea for getting the FF look on small sensor cameras I'm sure the big manufacturers would have been on to it by now...

 

I think that they don't do it because you earn a lot more money from selling FF cameras rather than adapters. In Sony, Canon, Nikon's case that's quite true but for m4/3 and Fuji, this could really be something, they don't have a FF line up and with this, getting the FF look PLUS faster aperture, that's HOT!

[tomekk]

I'll apologise to Andrew now for drawing this further into politics, but here goes:- 

 

(Disclaimer.  I'm not saying I am right, I am just saying this is what I believe)

 

I mean corporations on the whole are greedy.  Being brought up since the early 80's i guess I have been shaped to be greedy, but i'm less greedy than most.  I remember a time when items were made in the uk for the masses.  Now only small runs of specialist goods are made here, and this is not good for the economy.    My point is that most western companies are so inefficient the only way they can earn profit is to take advantage of cheap labor.  Smaller companies like metabones will be manufacturing in China due to it being the only option (western labor is too expensive).  

 

Now, if we boycott the Chinese manufactured goods and say "NO" then companies have to manufacture in their own country.  When this happens we end up paying what products should cost, not what 'sweat shop low' paid kids and their parents are allowing the corporations to get away with charging.  Conversely to your comment, I'd rather not have the cheap knock off option so easy to obtain.  A dumb lens adaptor (for example) should cost more than £10 (including delivery).  I have bought them instead of the original one that was copied,  If it weren't there I'd have paid the £50 for the original one.  When we buy these things we are lowering ourselves and lowering the value of everything.  This IMO has played a large part in why the western world has found itself in such problematic financial times of late.     

 

If Chinese and other cheap manufactured goods were banned from being export out of China, it would take less than 2 years for the rest of the world to rebuild their manufacturing bases tothe point where we become self sufficient and I imagine prices of items wouldn't be very much higher than if made in China today.  The longer this goes on, the less productive the world will become.  When China want more money per hour (which they will do), The business model stops dead.  Western society wont be able to call upon the African workforce that China are developing, so who will make all our stuff for us at a price we can afford??  Every decade this continues, the less likely it will be that there are people in western society that can work and do for themselves.    

 

This is really not the place for talking about it so I won't reply after this post. Make another thread if u want further discussion or send me a msg. First - it's not politics. It's economics.

 

You post is based on the assumption that somehow prices will not be affected by more expensive labour. I can't see logic in it. You would prefer to make production more expensive (by eliminating cheap labour) and rather overpay for a product you could get cheaper if cheap labour was allowed. Interesting logic, but I guess most people want lower prices, not higher. Me included. If I can get same quality product cheaper then I'd prefer to buy cheaper one. Sure, you can eliminate cheap labour but don't expect final price of the product to stay the same.

 

Think about it this way: competition. Sure, you can boycott chinese... hell why only chinese. Let's boycott everything that's not UK made. Ban ALL cheaper products which are not uk made (that's what you're suggesting, expensive you don't have to ban - nobody will buy them :D). So what we got now? UK prices, and UK only products, huurraaayyy!!! Who's profiting? UK manufactures, hurrraaayyy!. Who's losing - customer... wait.. huurrayyy??

Good luck with repairing economy this way.

 

What you SHOULD pay for a product SHOULD NOT be controlled / enforced. Free market ensures it's the most optimal price that can be set. If you want to control it, you are on the way to socialism. Cheap labour is good for economy because first and foremost you are a customer and you want low prices and biggest possible competition. Making things expensive is not the way to go. It's the opposite of reparing the economy. As you can see it's not as easy as let's get rod of the imigrants and non-uk companies. It doesn't work that way. Actually, it's exactly the opposite. Most things you buy, don't produce. So let's say it's good for you as a producer to get rid of cheaper competition. Ultimately for you as a producer the best situation would be if there was NO competition in your field. It's not good for you customers though.

So if you buy most things, you lose out most of the time if you limit cheaper force. You want to ban chinese? Go ahead, but the only outcome is bad for economy because you are limiting competition.

[michaeldoe]

Dear Andrew

advanced practical optics ahead of us (with reduced language capability):

 

With the "speed booster", depth of field will NOT become shallower, compared to the same lens on a normal adaptor.

 

Today the small sensor is zooming into the lens´ image and therefore detecting softness earlier.

With the speed booster, depth of field of the same lens becomes deeper, goes back to the original FF image perception. 

 

Especially because the lens will not "go" from f1.2 to f0.9, it still produces the same optical image. 

 

But of course, with the speed booster we will pick a longer focal length for the same angle and therefore gain much more "shallowness".

 

Yours, 

 

Michael

 

P.S. I hope i´m right because this is my first post in here and i don´t want to start with smartass the host and confusing people..

[Andrew Reid]

The optics are by a couple of guys who are working on cinema primes for Panavision's new 70mm digital cinema camera, so you can't exactly say the Chinese will go off and copy it and make one in a big factory. Quality optics are difficult.

 

[Andrew Reid]

Now, if we boycott the Chinese manufactured goods and say "NO" then companies have to manufacture in their own country.  When this happens we end up paying what products should cost, not what 'sweat shop low' paid kids and their parents are allowing the corporations to get away with charging.  Conversely to your comment, I'd rather not have the cheap knock off option so easy to obtain.  A dumb lens adaptor (for example) should cost more than £10 (including delivery).  I have bought them instead of the original one that was copied,  If it weren't there I'd have paid the £50 for the original one.  When we buy these things we are lowering ourselves and lowering the value of everything.  This IMO has played a large part in why the western world has found itself in such problematic financial times of late.

 

I would totally rather have the high quality version as well. Why put $$$ worth of optics in front of a cheap knock off?

 

If something is worth doing then it is worth doing properly.

 

The reason I like the GH2 and Blackmagic for instance is not that they're cheap knock offs but that the results come so close to really high end cameras.

 

The pricing of this adapter is a none issue! If a clone springs up and it is even 5% less good I won't buy it for all the tea in china.

 

You make an interesting point Rich about if goods were manufactured in the US or UK we'd be paying what they actually cost to make. Actually I think we'd only pay slightly more and that big companies would be FORCED to lower their margins. What they're doing today (take Apple, Dell, Canon, Sony, almost anybody big as an example) is simply exploitation. Exploitation of low living costs for their huge gains. It isn't to bring the prices down for consumers, it is to put their margins up.

 

There's zero reason Apple needs to make 500% margin on an iPhone and have 70 billion or something in the bank. Zero reason for it at all. They're too powerful and it is power built on the back of the weak and disenfranchised.

 

They could double salaries at Foxconn and raise the price of an iPhone only 10% and still make a nice profit on it.

[jbgeach]

I don't get this part. James said optical performance increases due to image compression. So I guess the question is: by how much?

It increases compared to using the lens without the adapter on a crop sensor, it will still be inferior to the lens being used on a Full frame camera. 

[itimjim]

IMO I don't think a m4/3 version will come any time soon.  They never bothered with a smart m4/3 to ef.  Metabones nex to ef was created with FS100 in mind.  Most owners of the metabones nex to ef are users of fs100 and fs700.  e mount is priority to metabones because of this.  Due to BMC being both ef and m4/3, but with little hope of there being electronic control on the m4/3 version, maybe they will release a dumb version for m4/3.  I hope they release a dumb nex to ef version myself, which will accept a load of vintage MF to ef adaptors for use with contax, m42 etc      

 

It'll be ready in March. Download the pdf whitepaper, it's not 'planned' it's already done. Plus a passive Nikon F version too.

[tomekk]

 

You make an interesting point Rich about if goods were manufactured in the US or UK we'd be paying what they actually cost to make. Actually I think we'd only pay slightly more and that big companies would be FORCED to lower their margins. What they're doing today (take Apple, Dell, Canon, Sony, almost anybody big as an example) is simply exploitation. Exploitation of low living costs for their huge gains. It isn't to bring the prices down for consumers, it is to put their margins up.

 

This is really getting interesting. I wonder why there is no regulation on for example what actors/models you can hire. Definitely you shouldn't be allowed to pay to little for worse quality. Well, yeah you should be forced to lower margins as well. There is no reason for your margins. LMAO The other solution is to just compensate for more expensive labour and make the price higher (that's what actually happens most of the time. External cost of your work goes up, final price goes up. Thought you know this basic law)

[A Y]

+1 on reading the whitepaper: http://www.metabones.com/images/metabones/Speed%20Booster%20White%20Paper.pdf 

 

There are all sorts of other really interesting benefits of using the adapter, including helping alleviate the wide-angle lens problem (eg. magenta corners on Sony NEX-7).

 

Also, just from reading the whitepaper, I don't think there is going to be a 0.5/2-stop version for MFT because they give examples in there for MFT using the 0.71x/1-stop reduction.

 

There's also an interesting discussion of Kubrick's use of the Zeiss/NASA 50/0.7 for Barry Lyndon, which had an integrated focal reducer in it.

[itimjim]

Yup, agreed. They will use the same optical element for both E-Mount and mFT. Makes sense really, as it keeps costs down, and it allows the usage of DX type lenses such as Tokina 11-16, which becomes a 7.5-11 :)

[A Y]

Also, after some cyber-stalking :ph34r: , the designer talked about this design on DPReview a while ago:

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/thread/2733577#forum-post-42427797

 

[quote]

 

Designing focal reducers to fit 35mm SLR lenses onto mirrorless Sony NEX and m4/3 cameras is most definitely feasible. The design isn't easy because there is very little room to work with, but if the magnification is restricted to 0.7x it can work surprisingly well at large apertures. Prepare yourself for optics as fast as f/0.90 by attaching a 0.7x (more accurately, 0.707x) reducer to an f/1.2 (more accurately, f/1.2599) SLR lens. And the reducer actually improves the MTF of the lens its attached to since it de-magnifies the aberrations.

 

Expect some interesting news later this Fall.

[/quote]

 

He says that 0.71x/1-stop is what they can do given the physical space limitations.  The whitepaper also says that they could design something that will take faster lenses than f/1.2, but that the lens element closest to the front would be impractically huge in order to receive the light rays for big apertures.

[Julian]

Indeed there's the 2.3x crop one on the BMCC.

 

Hopefully they will make 2 versions.

 

One for 2x and one for 2.3x.

 

On the GH2, 2x would be a good enough fit. For example a 24mm becomes even a bit wider than 12mm.

 

Everything in the white paper talks about 0,71x for the M43 version. I don't see any mention of a 0,5x version. They talk about the possibility of using DX lenses, this would be possible with 0,71x but not with 0,5x.

http://www.metabones.com/images/metabones/Speed%20Booster%20White%20Paper.pdf

 

Interesting read by the way, check page 22/23 for the increase in sharpness.

 

Expect a dramatic increase on M43!

 

[quote]

1) both the Sony NEX and Micro Four Thirds versions give a dramatic MTF enhancement near the center of the image; 2) the Micro Four Thirds version is better than the original lens used by itself over nearly all of the Micro Four Thirds format; 3) in the outer parts of the field the Sony NEX version has slightly reduced contrast relative to the Micro Four Thirds version where their image circles overlap; and 4) the Sony NEX version in the extreme corner of the NEX format has similar MTF to the original lens in its original image corner.[/quote]

 

Anyway.. i'm more than happy with a 0,71x Speed Booster for M43.

It just means I'll have to get rid all of my Minolta MD glass and trade it for Nikon F / M42.. But I can live with that :)

I wonder if the M43-version will be active or passive. I could live with passive (cheaper!), although active would be nice for zooms like the Tokina 11-16mm.

 

By the way, It could be interesting for anamorphics as well to get smaller DOF. For example: GH2 + Speed Booster + 50mm 1.4 + Kowa B&H 2x should work... I'll definitely try it out if I can get my hands on this piece of magic.

 

Another thing I like: you can pack really light now. With one lens and two adapters you get four possibilities. Take a GH3, a 24mm f/1.4, a Speed Booster and a plain adapter for example. This would turn into:

 

24mm f/1.4 + Speed Booster = 34mm f/2 equivalent (17mm f/1 x 2)

24mm f/1.4 + Plain adapter = 48mm f/2.8 equivalent

24mm f/1.4 + Speed Booster + EXTC = 88mm f/5.2 equivalent (34mm f/2 x 2,6)

24mm f/1.4 + Plain adapter + EXTC = 125mm f/7.3 equivalent (48mm f/2.8 x 2,6)

 

One more small detail: it doesn't completely remove the crop factor on Sony NEX-camera's, there's still a little bit left:

 

[quote]A big problem with DX, APS-C, and Four Thirds format sensors is that they crop the full format image produced by conventional 35mm full frame optics. Since the Speed Booster essentially compresses the image formed by the objective lens into a smaller size it helps to undo the cropping effect. The Speed Booster doesn’t completely recover the corners of the original lens – it would have to have a magnification of 0.67x or 0.5x, respectively, to do that for DX or Four Thirds formats. However, it does provide a very useful and welcome field of view increase with its 0.71x magnification.[/quote]

 

Not that it is a big deal, actually the new cropfactor is 1,065x on Sony NEX (1,5 x 0,71).

[jcs]

Finally a worthy upgrade to the 5D3 (was considering the 1DC): MB SpeedBooster + FS700. My thoughts here: http://cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=45529

[tony wilson]

the designer of this brian caldwell designed the 

CoastalOpt® UV-VIS-IR 60mm Apo Macro - JENOPTIK Optical ...

60mm hand built lens.

expensive and one of the best lens i have ever used incredible.

the guy is a bit of a legend.

if he is happy with the design this thing wiill be pretty amazing.

it will then be up to the glass and engineering folks to take it slow and do a nice job.

this thing is gonna work good.

[zephyrnoid]

Indeed, it should improve the image as reduction uses a lens or series of lenses that converge rays rather than expanding them. Since the focal length and focus point of the host optic is unchanged, it should also preserve DOF characteristics of the host. The sceptic in me wants to see some comparison rez charts before I can fully believe that something important isn't being changed (introduction of pincushion distortion for example, or that moire isn't being accentuated).
But are the NEx systems delivering what people want otherwise? Can this adapter be used on other cameras too?

[A Y]

There are distortion and MTF simulations in the whitepaper.

 

The designer writes on Lloyd Chambers's [url=http://diglloyd.com/blog/2013/20130114_6-Metabones-Speed-Booster-Caldwell.html]site[/url] that the MFT version has an "entirely separate" design, and that they decided to go for quality instead of cost savings:

 

[quote]We designed an entirely separate optical system for micro 4/3. However, the magnification is the same as the NEX version: 0.7x. In order to get a significantly smaller magnification while maintaining excellent image quality we would have had to get much closer to the image plane with our optics. Unfortunately, the m4/3 cameras don't allow this. 

 

The good news is that the performance of our 0.7x optics for micro 4/3 is really good, and I expect that some pixel peepers will prefer it over the NEX version. If you look at the MTF curves in the white paper you can see that the m4/3 version gives higher performance in the corners than the NEX version. We could have saved a lot of money by re-using the NEX optical cell for the upcoming m4/3 Speed Booster, but we decided to maximize image quality instead.[/quote]