[shoplink 18056 ebay]
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(UPDATED) The Chinese company making the adapters contact us to say that these first Nikon to NEX “Lens Turbo” adapters are still NOT IN STOCK. The auction can be found here on [shoplink 18056 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]. Please be aware that these do not ship.
As you know the “Lens Turbo” works like the well known “Speed Booster” from metabones.
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P.S: Thanks to the anonymous source for sending me this!
59 Responses
Admin, the focal reducer idea is more than 100 years old.
Admin, i believe that your words may offend a lot of Chinese.
I think the future of A-mount is Full frame so we will make good ose of these big lenses with those focal reduicer. Maybe no point to buy A-mount lenses APS-C only cause we cant use speedbooster with them.
I have been waiting for a Nikon mount to NEX SB adapter. But it is hard to pay $200 for this one as it doesn’t even have a brand name.
theres always someone who whinges about EVERYTHING! if you want brand name wait for the metabones one and expect to pay $400+ for it then…
Finally, a Nikon adapter. I’ve contacted the seller to see if they have any photo comparisons.
Say whaaaat? Out already? Did they even do QC? Too bad I mostly shoot with Minolta lenses so will have to wait a little longer.
I agree. I have really big concerns over the quality of this knock off. My Metabones SB is solid, well made, fits both camera and lens like a glove and the image quality is wonderful. I simply cant believe that this cheap knockoff is going to be anywhere near as good. But hey, more power to them. Maybe this generic Chinese company can make a high quality product that is as good or better then the one Brian Caldwell designed and sell it for a fraction of the price.
Yeah, right, because Chinese knockoff products have SUCH a great track record when it comes to quality. I will be very interested when these get into testers and bloggers hands so we can see the results.
And I believe we will start to see soon, most likely from Sony (because Nikon and Canon will never move fast enough on something like this), focal reducers built onto apsc cameras from the manufacturer. I would like to see a new mirrorless A mount camera with a built in focal reducer ready to take all the full frame Sony and Minolta glass.
Oh, and I feel your pain on the Minolta Rokkor Speedbooster. I mainly shoot Minolta but went back to Yashica and M42s so I could shoot the C/Y speedbooster. It was worth it.
What I am also waiting to see is some new ‘older’ style adapters start to show up specifically for the speedbooster. For instance, the Flange/Focal distance for Alpa is shorter then Minolta, so if one of the Chinese adapter companies realized this and made a Minolta to Alpa adapter then there you go. Minolta lenses on a SB, via the Alpa version.
So what’s actually with all that talk about ‘wonderful’ image quality? All inferred from test charts on some major review site and 1 or 2 favorable sample shots?
You should look at some proper real life comparisons or browse a bit on flickr
http://3d-kraft.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138:adorable-35s-35mm-speed-lens-comparison-leica-slr-magic-mitakon-canon-speedbooster-samyang&catid=40:camerasandlenses&Itemid=2
The test uses the 50 1.4 EF which is a modern well regarded lens so that can’t be the problem. There are several flaws with the SB. One thing is the visible distortion. But that’s not an issue for anyone who uses post to correct those things. What I found really disappointing is the bokeh. One thing is that the bokeh looks rather harsh. I guess that the 50 1.4 EF contributes to that on its own but the bokeh is definitely milder on a FF body. The other and in my eyes really critical thing is the swirly bokeh which definitely does NOT occur on FF bodies. It’s an effect that might be nice effect once in a while but do you really want that on every pic? I downloaded the sample and used distortion and vignetting correction but the ‘swirlyness’ remains quite annoying. Even more so as you won’t be able to correct it easily in post (if at all). Doing any shots with structured background won’t be fun with such a setup.
Sharpness, color and contrast looks good but that’s not everything a lens is about.
Or you can go to Flickr or getdpi and see some great images taken with the speed booster especially the macro ones taken by widdershins.
+1. The focal reducer and extra stop are more important to me.
“One thing is that the bokeh looks rather harsh. I guess that the 50 1.4 EF contributes to that on its own but the bokeh is definitely milder on a FF body.”
Yes and yes. Canon sensor has enormously thick stack of glass which mitigates the harshness projected by their lenses. That isn’t the case with a Sony sensor.
Try a Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 (EF mount) and the difference is like night and day!
Wow I didn’t know that.
As regards the Planar, I’ve included a link in a response post to widdershins below. Imo what you say at least doesn’t apply for SB+Planar 50 1.4 but you can see for yourself.
Had I not used the said combination myself, I would not be making comments like that. Do you shoot with any lens or camera? Whose pics are you linking?
That’s a great comparison. I was looking for something like this a week or so ago. I basically wanted to see how the Mitakon compared with other lenses. Thanks for posting. The SLR Magic is clearly the pick of the bunch.
I’ll wait for my $50 Chinese speed booster ;P
I’m sure we will see that after 1-2 years 😀 I can’t wait to get a cheap Minolta MD speed booster too just to have some fun with my existing lenses and not serious about absolute pixel quality.
Aperture control of Nikon lenses can still be achieved via mechanical little handle… too bad this one doesn’t have!
I need to buy this to compare to my Speed Booster…
C’mon we already have our SpeedBoosters, the ultra wide and fisheye adapters for SEL16f28 XD
I want a M42 version !
Is SONY watching? The growth of the adaptor market shows just why fullframe NEX would succeed even with no native lenses.
How can this be a metabone copy? Metabones does not offer the nikon to nex adapter.
I thought the same. It’s like all new lenses from Sony are a copy because they already exist in similar optical quality for Canon and Nikon mount
This thing isn’t exactly complicated.
+1
With a computerized rig and a decent quality control it can be as good as Metabones. Back mounted wide converters are much less prone to causing problems than front mounted anyway.
Sorry Metabones, you’ve missed the boat by being too slow.
It isn’t “wide converter”. It cannot make lens any wider than it originally is. It’s a focal reducer.
I wonder if the elements are coated… aberration booster? hahaha
The Chinese can copy the look but not the optic.
I agree, except for the “Chinese” label. Metabones’ owner, AFAIK, is also Chinese.
I have high regard for RongJin (“jinfinances”). His mechanical creations are top notch and he has made countless useful adapters. I would like to see some test images from this and some comparisons with the “lens Turbo” and the Speed Booster.
Lol, this is getting kind of fishy. Maybe Metabones sold those companies the right to copy/modify their schemes. Selling the same product with different pricing and slight modifications under different names/brands/distributor is standard business practice.
How could those companies even have known that Metabones would ignore popular mounts like Nikon, Canon FD and Pentax K for so long? Most users didn’t expect such a delay and Metabones themselves claimed to be looking into those mounts for months and yet they don’t even have a definite release date.
Yeah, that’s kinda possible.
What about a Sony/Minolta A mount to NEX speed booster adapter so that FF A mount lenses could be used on NEX with FF view and speed increase?
Where is my Minolta MC/MD Speedbooster?? An unbranded copy that expensive!?! Its not going to be a huge sucess at that price! They going to miss the hype and is not going to sell many of them..
Admin, not to nitpick on you, but do you realize that your sentence is stereotypical, borderline racist: “Chinese are damn fast when it comes to copy good ideas”? A lot of copycats are Chinese – absolutely true. But it doesn’t mean a lot of Chinese are copycats. Even if the latter is true, it’s unfair to make a general statement like this.
Maybe I am racist too but I saw that comment as a compliment to chinese business and the fast response they seem to have to market demand.
To me, when it’s a compliment in someone’s ability of “copying”, then the “compliment” is sarcastic at best. I appreciate admin’s effort and I don’t think he intends to offend. But quite often he uses such kind of tone when it comes to anything Chinese.
I love China and have been there a few times for work. I use the word “copy” because they made these adpaters AFTER the Speed Booster release. And not BEFORE. And that’s what Chinese company usually do. And I don’t mean this disrespecfully. I am happy we can have a cheaper alternative!
as with the case with MXCamera’s accented Cantonese speaker, to accuse anyone here of “racism” is almost as crude as being racist oneself. the problem is certain stereotypes do pass off subliminally, one of which is definitely that the chinese (or even asians in general) are uncreative hard-workers who can only copy.
that’s what was said of the japanese back in the 60’s too.
And whether or not you’ve been to China, whether or not you like this “copy,” whether or not you think calling this out is hyper-political correctness, has little to do with it.
im chinese and i took that as a complement to the chinese with pride XD
Any one defending Chinese should go to CNN.com
Admin, thank you for your response and I’m really not trying to give you a hard time. I think it’s perfectly okay to use the word “copy” because it’s almost sure that the idea is copied from speed booster. It’s the general characterization of Chinese that I’d rather avoid. Again, thank you for your effort.
He is referring to Chinese companies not Chinese people.
From the back, the Metabones reducer looks better, more solid build and adjustment screw.
Andrea,
fix the spelling of your title “AnOther Chinese Speed Booster copy!” missing O in “another”
thanks!
Tony, I base my ‘wonderful image quality’ off of the REAL WORLD photography that I shoot with my SB. I have posted this before, but for anybody who want to see what the speedbooster is capable of when using it as a photographic tool then please see my SB folder on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8539414@N07/sets/72157633126249795/
First of all, I have never been a big fan of many of Canons lenses bokeh. Just a personal thing mind you. And thru most of that article they keep saying something like “but this wasnt the SB’s fault, just a trait of the Canon 1.4 lens”. Any photo you take is going to be far more dependent on the lens you use, and only a small part dependent on the SB. And anyway, as Vivek says below, pop a Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar on there and be in bokeh heaven.
I think what many people who sit around on forums discussing stuff like this forget is that photography is NOT about test shots, corner to corner sharpness, charts or lens statistics. It is about creating an image that moves the human soul. It is about creating Art. Amateur photography is way to full today of gear heads who would rather discuss the tiny corner to corner difference between two lenses and never get out of in front of the computer to go actually make wonderful and memorable photographs. Or who can tell you all the specs of the latest digital camera but cant even begin to discus the merits of photographers like Meatyard, Dian Arbus, Gordan Parks or the man himself, Henri Cartier Bresson.
And thanks for the shout out Slingers. 🙂
You make it sound like I posted test chart shots. The samples that I linked are real world pictures just like yours. Btw. I already saw them and I like how you use the SB.
One thing you have to consider with most of the SB shots on the net is that they won’t show its flaws, simply because no serious photographer will upload bad pictures. Generally good pictures taken with any gear dont prove much about the gear (but the skill of that photographer). In your case it proves its usability for macro. I quite like macros myself and I prefer pictures without the light of diffused flashes so I see that the SB can be a really good solution there.
I didn’t know of any Planar 50 1.4 + SB examples so I looked some up and what Vivek says simply isn’t true. The swirly part is extremely noticeable (and imo very distracting) in the part below the bottom wire in the following shot. The bokeh isn’t good either, even though one has to say that these kinds of background are generally very demanding:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/khuzul/8654959953/sizes/k/in/photostream/
I think you will agree if I say this is in no way close to how the Planar performs on a proper body.
The main reason why your pictures work out nicely is because of the background distance. Close backgrounds are generally easier to render smooth. Long distance backgrounds also are less demanding because the elements are so far away that they lose most of the structure that could cause harsh rendering. Medium distance backgrounds are amongst the hardest and that is where the SB fails. The critical point is that such medium distance backgrounds are anything but rare. If you do some portraits in an urban area or just street photography, you’ll often get highly structured backgrounds at medium range and such a swirly effect would ruin a good portion of your work.
By going very close or macro, you worked around those flaws. Knowing and avoiding the flaws of one’s gear is essential but that doesn’t eliminate them. Imo it’s kind of irresponsible to recommend something which has (in my eyes) such severe limitations at certain common applications without pointing them out. That’s what I’m trying to convey.
I see what you are talking about in regards to the planar photo. It just must be a personal thing as I for one have never found swirly bokeh to be distracting. Like you said, everything is a tool and has a time and place for use. Swirly bokeh can happen with any number of different lenses. For instance, here is a shot from my old Canon 5D with a Yashica ML 50/1.7 (series 1) attached.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8539414@N07/7403667622/in/set-72157626741667467
Very swirly bokeh indeed. I have always found the effect rather pleasing. But again, one would assume that you would not want every shot to be so obvious about it. I have not done a lot of street shooting myself, with or without the SB, so I cant testify to that. But there are many good examples in this link that you can view.
http://www.getdpi.com/forum/sony/43130-speed-booster-nex-11.html
That should take you to the last page where there are some great city shots by CronoDL. If you go back and look at some of the past pages there are some excellent examples of what the SB can do by Vivek and Michiel.
At the end of the day the SB is just another tool in your photographic arsenal that can, depending on your skill level, help you take really great photos or really crappy photos. For the most part it does exactly as advertised. Does it add a small amount of barrel distortion and sometimes make bokeh swirly? Could very well be. But there are expensive new lenses out there that do the same. Would I personally let that stand in my way? No. The benefits of this device in my opinion far outweigh any perceived negatives. It will be up to the individual to make that choice for themselves. But the blanket statements I have seen on here such as “The speedbooster makes horrible bokeh” from people who have never used it and probably dont even own a camera (Im not referring to you here Tony, I have seen others post this) are simply untrue. But then hey, this is the web. We get all types.
In the Yashica image I’d say the ‘swirlyness’ has a different quality. The swirlyness is created by large COCs changing shapes to ellipsoids depending on the angle and I don’t mind such effects either. What I don’t like about the swirlyness of the SB is that it looks to me like circular smearing. It could well be that both are due to the same principle, only differing in the size of the COCs but I find this difference critical (maybe the angle dependent shape changing kicks in earlier with an SB). Then again, as you say other people won’t care.
I know this thread and I agree, there are quite a lot of spectacular shots among them.
Tony, Its strange you missed my shots with the planar SB combo and found an image for you to critique with flaws. They are easily found on flickr. But you missed what Vivek and widdershins were saying cause that image is with a Contax Planar not a ZF/ZE Planar.
How often do I have to say I KNOW you can shoot totally fine images with the SB. I never denied that. On a side note I never said that the SB is a bad tool. I’m just questioning some people who just tell how great the SB is without mentioning its drawbacks which are obviously there. In the examples I linked, the IQ is anything but wonderful. Rather its abysmal because it shows hard to correct things that don’t correspond to reality.
I didn’t look closely but do you really think the Y/C Planar is that behind the ZF/ZE Planar? I doubt it. If you got similar shots to those I referred to without the problem, then I’d like to see them. The Flickr search for ‘Planar Speed Booster’ doesnt return many hits and I couldn’t find much.
Another image that shows the problem for the 85 Planar (rokkor_58_1k2 is the user name):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rokkor_58mm_1k2/8533757538/sizes/k/in/photostream/
And to refer to you argument, sure this combo also produces nice images with no problems at all:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rokkor_58mm_1k2/8532648503/sizes/k/in/photostream/
but that doesn’t make the swirly effect in the other image magically go away.
I like my gear to be as neutral as possible because I’d be distracted otherwise. Others like gear with strong character and I kind of forgot that, so nvm what I said.
Wow, I’ve been shooting with a SpeedBooster and a Rollei CZ Planar 85mm f/1.4 for a few days, and I have not yet seen it deliver that kind of swirl. Nor does my CZ Distagon 35mm f/1.4. Not saying it won’t happen, but I don’t think it is that common.
Out of curiosity, I purchased one from ebay and it has been marked as shipped.
So, perhaps they are out of stock.
Once they arrive–maybe in a week or two–I will report back.
Overall, I would say that the Chinese “copies” have been fine for what I purchase online for camera equipment. I will routinely buy NEX adapters (mostly Nikon and Minolta adapters), lens shades (the vented kind you screw into the filter thread), and bottom caps (NEX, with the adapter) and have never had an issue with them. I’ve even purchased some knock off Rogue flashbenders to compare to the real thing (the large ones are nearly perfect copies while the smaller ones need some work).
For certain things, I wouldn’t worry about purchasing from China at all, while for other things, such as electronics and flash brackets, I would be cautious. It basically depends on the technology and the materials required to produce such things. Small plastic and metal things, such as adapters and flash reflectors/diffusor do not rely so much on “quality” because the materials speak for themselves and they are simple. Heck, I even purchased a Yongnuo YN-560 ii to complement my HVL-f43AM from Sony and it works great for a manual flash!
In any case, it may be a “copy”, but it’s not that much cheaper than the “real thing” and the overall concept of the tool is not very complicated. I wouldn’t be surprised it works very well with my Rokinon 85mm 1.4 or my 135mm Nikon Nikkor Q.
-Jarvis
scratch that second line.
*Perhaps they are NOT out of stock.
hey Jarvis, any news? curious on your experience. I’m also considering ordering one.