Those Hong Kong manufacturers have impeccable timing. Just as Panasonic seizes the DSLR video crown from Canon – out comes the best adapter for Canon lenses on the GH2 yet seen. For the first time this one allows you to control the aperture and it costs $125.
The iris in Canon EF and EFS mount lenses is electronically controlled, like on many modern lenses. There hasn’t yet been an adapter which promises a full electronic interface between camera and body although an engineering company in the US is said to be working on one, and they already have an adapter for RED cameras.
So no auto-focus or OIS yet – but at least now we have aperture control.
Canon lenses are wide open when not connected to a Canon body and snapping away. So this adapter has it’s own iris – a very nice 14 blade aperture, most lenses have half that number of blades. You will get gorgeous round bokeh with it along with the advantage of a sharper image when stopped down even just a little. Most fast F1.4 EF lenses sharpen up around F2, for example.
This will go well with the 85mm F1.8, the 50mm F1.2 and even help get an extremely deep depth of field on super wides, although it will not work with lenses that have unusual mechanics like the 10-22mm with it’s internal zoom and focus system.
So the adapter has many advantages, until we wait for the electronically controlled version – if indeed, it ever arrives!
I’ve had Kipon adapters in the past, and although I cannot vouch for this particular adapter until it comes in the post (takes around 5 days from HK) the Kipon I do have was entirely metal and solidly built.
