Steel Chen contacted me yesterday. he is the maker of a completely new Nikon F to Sony FE autofocus adapter. This would be the second adapter after the [shoplink 43423 ebay]Commlite adapter[/shoplink].
He sent me a video showing the improved version of his adapter. Steel is using the [shoplink 43430 ebay]Nikkor 70-300mm lens[/shoplink] on the A7rII:
My Nikon/Sony E ring performs better AF because we can better leverage Nikon lens parameters, make it the best fit in PDAF on A7R II.
1. Engineering prototype demonstration.
2. AF-S lens support only, for now.
3. Fast full range PDAF on Sony A7R II, good CBAF speed on A7R II
4. Its status can be tracked here in http://forum.xitek.com/thread-1529533… , sorry its in Chinese .Mine is still in prototyping, cause I need to solve the problem of automatic Aperture control of Nikon G lens.
Compared to the Commlite adapter Steel Chen’s version seems to focus much faster and also absolutely no annoying autofocus motor noise! He is reading this site so feel free to comment this post with your questions and he will try to answer you. There is yet no exact plan about when the adapter will go on sale and for what price. But I surely hope to get my hands on that adapter soon as it really seems to work fine!
63 Responses
Hello Chen,
Congratulations on your work. Would it be possible to put a motor inside the adapter to make it compatible with older, non AF-S lenses? If the answer is yes, could you do one for Minolta A mount too? 😀
For Minolta AF Sony already has the LA-EA4 Adapter – the one with the mirror! 😉 But support for old Nikon glass would be really great!
But NOT losing 1/3 stop of light and using the 399 AF points of a A7rll would be great. Simply impossible with the current LA-EA 1/2/3/4 adapters. LA-EA3 with screwdrive would be great!!!
+1
Just that not everybody owns an a7r2 – for first Generation A7/A7r the LA-EA4 is a pretty good option that works pretty well and reliable with the cameras and older lensesas well as newer ones. That 1/3 stop is not really noticeable. On the upside it makes the weak focus system on the original a7r quite usable.
LA-EA4 works really well even on the a6000 driving a
Minolta AF 80-200mm F2.8 HS APO G lens. Even a blind squirrel doesn’t need 4 million focal points.
I dont need 4 million af points. but 399 for object tracking 😉
Additionally, the A7Rll AF has no missaligmement as it happens when having dedicaded AF modules (front/backfocus).
Loosing light in that additionally, dust collecting mirror isn’t all that great, too.
I don’t say that the current adapters won’t work. But they are behind a7rll AF capabilities….
D lens is the next step after AF-S. Sony already has LA-EA1,EA2,EA3,EA4 for A mount lens, didn’t you know or you just want a cheaper one?
I already own the LAEA4 and LAEA1. The problem is, 3&4 have a mirror so you can’t use camera’s internal AF points and you lose a stop of light and with 1&2 you can’t have AF on 95% of the lenses.
Yes. it’s reasonable, I will think about it when I got time, and if Sony finally refuse to do so.
You mean 2/4? It’s 1 and 3 that don’t have a mirror.
Yep, you’re right.
You really should open a page for donation or something like that, or even indieGoGo.
I think a tripod screw mount is a must for landscape photographers as well event photographers who use harness systems.
Absolutely agree. Making a EF or F mount adapter without a reliable tripod mount is a fail. The Metabones are the winners so far with their excellent Arca Swiss compatible all metal tripod foot. There is one thing they could have done better, and that would be a rotatable foot on a collar for portrait orientation.
I think Fotodiox are the winners for making the tripod mount tool less detachable.
The product will have Arca Swiss compatible tripod foot
Count me in- I am mostly interested in using th 58mm 1.4 g with the A7rII, looking forward to it!
Please make it an optional attachment. I mainly use light primes for walking around, and would prefer not to have a bulge at the bottom of the adapter so I can easily handhold the lens.
Its still a prototype, calm 😛
Is it just me? or did anyone else not get satisfaction from that video? I didn’t see much focus change. I need to see more examples.
Yes, you are right, I shot the video while I handheld the Camera/Adaptor/Lens combination with my single right hand. It’s not easy to keep the A7R2 LCD screen in focus while I try to change the focusing targets, but the focus locking beeps will not lie. Anyway, I will shoot another video for better demonstrate my product. Thanks for the comments.
Thanks Steel Chen looking forward to it
Maybe you could try using the Remote App, that way you can touch to focus, so you don’t have to hold the camera while being able to select different focus point.
Great work anyway!
I wonder what differs the Contax G system to other screwdriver mounts? Techart already made possible to drive screwdriver-AF thru OSPDAF, what stops them to making the LA-EA3+screwdriver or other adapters for Nikon, Pentax…
Market share and/or difficulty. Also the only thing recognizable as a possible aperture actuator at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contax_G#/media/File:Contax_G_Series_Lens_Mount.jpg is a straight line, if that pin on the right side of the body image even IS an aperture actuator. It may be screwdrive AF but electronic aperture – which makes things a lot easier.
Manual aperture linkages aren’t too difficult, automatic ones can be really hard to get right precision-wise. Heck, Pentax even gave up on one of their aperture mechanisms in modern bodies, crippling them with older (K, M series) K-mount lenses.
hum… makes sense, Contax G lenses are all manual aperture…
Ah, so at most the body might read aperture? Yeah, that’s even easier. When I said “manual aperture linkages” I meant something like the Open/Close ring of K-mount adapters. If there’s no linkage at all, that’s easy. 🙂
Steel Chen:
I just got a Sigma 800mm f5.6 in Nikon mount, and the 2x and 1.4x sigma apo dedicated teleadapers.
I plan to use it on my Sony A7Rii, and future new Sony E mount cameras.
How well will this work, and when will this be available…???
This Sigma 800 f5.6 is very rare to find, I don’t think I can find one to test its AF performance on A7R2. Anyway I will figure out a way to allow end user to tune the AF performance by himself, at least for lens which I don’t have the pleasure to test.
Sorry, it’s late in China, and I still need to refine the AF performance of my ring, talk to you folks tomorrow, cheers. Steel
Hi Chen, do you know if it will be possible to control the electric aperture of nikon pc-e lenses with your adapter? By the way, your solution looks very promising so far.
Thanks.I have made a C645/Nikon F lens adapter years ago, actually it talks PC-E protocol to Nikon DSLR camera, so the answer is YES.
After multiple attempst I finally got a response from Commlite about thier
CM-ENF-E(1)
They have not officially anounced the product yet and say to wait.
They also say MAYBE middle of next month.
The performance on that lens looks very good, would like to see this adaptor used with other Nikon lenses and also third party lenses using the Nikon mount. Good job Steel Chen, your product looks promising.
Not bad at all.
I’d like to see a video with the “S”mall AF spot in a corner, please.
If you make one for af-d, i’ll buy it!
The Nikon lens kinda has a sexy thing going on with that A7RII.
Congratulations, Steel Chen, very good performance already. Even if it will be AF-S first, this is another whole world of AF-lenses available on the Sony A7 cameras. I hope it will be available soon… But indeed older AF-D lenses would be even better…
So cool! If it can auto-focus on AF-D lenses I will buy the legendary nikkor 200 F4 Macro for sure and forget about FE90 macro!
This definitely looks like a better performer than the Commlite even in this prototype stage. Please keep us posted Steel Chen! If nothing else, I sure would like to get EXIF data on my photos when using adapted Nikon lenses…
I don’t know if it was my eye or what. But even though I heard the focus confirmation beep, I never saw the area in focus.
As I replied before, I am sorry for the confuse, I promise I will shot a new video to prove myself soon.
Dear Chen, do you think you will add AF-C for video mode in the final product?
Thankyoiu very much. you are great
I tested video shooting in AF-C yesterday, but focus following did not work yet, I will see if you can figure it out in the future.
I’d like to volunteer for performance testing a prototype with the AF-S 200/2 VR on the A7R II. 😉
AF-S, aperture control, VR, Exif, sold for me.
Not yet, stay tuned.
Yesterday, after SAR posted my demo video, I got many comments and emails. After I replied them, I even got more comments and questions, so thank you – SAR and dear readers, I will update my progress periodically here. In the meantime, I need to spend more time in its production, I will do my best to bring it to the market asap. If I can’t reply your comments or emails in time, please forgive me.
Yesterday, I rewrote the AF logic of my ring, its new AF performance is event better than it was in this video. Please allow me several days to shoot a new and better quality demo video of it, Stay tuned.
Thank you all and Merry Christmas,
Steel
Thank you Steel, I’m really looking forward to getting one for myself. Very exciting stuff! I’d just be waiting for aperture control on G lenses and VR, but I’m sure you’ll eventually nail it.
VR was already working, and aperture control is what I am working on besides finding more lens for compatibility testing and AF performance tuning.
That’s great, I’ll keep following your project eagerly.
Are you emulating an LA-EA1/3 like most adapters, or attempting to emulate a native lens in a similar fashion to the Techart EF-NEX III does?
Will this adapter have provisions for firmware updates? An adapter with updatable firmware AND an engineer who actually communicates with the rest of the world is a huge improvement. 🙂
Firmware will be customer up-gradable, I am after LA-EA1/3.
Steel Chen : Wonderful product at first view – is this available for sale now or still under development. Is it available in Hong Kong ? whats the price ? There are a number of my friends in DXB interested .
Thanks, still in development. What does DXB mean?
DXB means Dubai
This adapter will work with a6000?
Sure, CBAF is no problem at all, I will show it in my new demo video.
@Steel
Developing such a nice adapter, communicating and listening to the market, releasing a new firmware just over night, filming with one hand while focussing and holding another camera with the other one, and all this … while attending a ballet class … WOW
I guess you and your product will rock the world. Steel is the best name for you 🙂
You are kidding me, thanks. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
when?
Hope we will see NX to E fully electronic adapter