Rick Young of Macvideo test drives the F3 with Canon glass using the Adaptimax.

Well Paul I can quite assure you our adapters are spot on and are milled to thousanths of an inch accuracy. Considering how many we have sold, (we struggle to make them fast enough for our customers!) I am sure if there was a problem we would have heard about it weeks ago.

Rick Youngs review has actually swamped us with orders, so I owe him a couple of beers when I catch up with him! And before anyone asks, he paid for his adaptor.
 
PaulReam said:
I think you're right Douglas, I'm reluctant to alter the back focus on the F3 as it tracks perfectly with the couple of PL Zooms I have. I don't mind it a little off with an adaptor, indeed I expected that, what's odd is the amount it's off by? I doubt there'd be enough adjustment on the F3 anyway!

It's probably best if I post a video to demonstrate... I'll try to get it done this weekend as soon as I have a mo.

Thank you.
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Hi Paul,
Have you checked your lens at a middle length at 1' and infinity for accuracy? or even better use a prime to test it.
 
I will do Douglas, good idea and I'll record those results as well.

From what Steve says above it would seem I've got the only duff one!
 
I'm sure you've considered this but when dropping $15K on a camera, a little more for an MTF adapter and optically pristine used Nikon zooms for $800 - $1K @ ain't a waste of money when they offer parfocal design and real iris rings. I can't imagine shooting EOS lenses on an F3, especially zooms. I'd lose my clients.
 
There is "no duff one". It's a combination of the setup on your F3 with the Canon lenses. But to show we are an honest, reliable company who stand by their guarentee, contact us off the forum for a return and refund.

If anyone is considering which lenses to buy to use on their F3, I always recommend going the Nikon route. Iris adjustment is simple and the lenses are superb, with a multitude of cheap Nikons for sale on Ebay.
 
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Just received Steve's Adaptimax Nikon F "classic" , I have a nice set of fast AIs prime. it's gorgeous ! no focus issue and like the all black silky anodizing
 
As promised, I've included a short test video to demonstrate the issue I'm having with this Adaptimax adaptor. Both the Sony and MTF adaptors are working as they should. The Canon EF lenses, while not parfocal, do track surprisingly well on the Canon 5D and Panasonic AF101 I was able to try previously. Unfortunately as soon as you add the Adaptimax into the equation everything goes a little pear shaped?

I realised when shooting this one of the reasons I found it so frustrating to work with this adaptor so far out. If you set the camera down looking for minimum focus distance on a tight shot, and then decide to change focal length to something wider, you'll find that minimum focus is no longer achievable. Meaning you then have to reposition the camera again - and each time you change focal length!

I'm not trying to rubbish Adaptimax and Steve's made a generous offer of a refund which I will accept. I was just surprised to hear that mine is not in any way faulty and has been made to the same thousandths of an inch accuracy as all the others that have been delivered without comment. Maybe it's just me?

 
Enough said. Take the offer to return. Maybe the one you got is deffective. It happens.
I once bought a brand new BMW 528 2000 I had to retuned it the first month under the Lemon Law. What I am trying to say is that BMW is a great car, but that one was defective. Maybe you got the Lemon that time.
I personally don't like electronic lenses anyway, but I have Sigma 10mm f2.8 that I may want to get an inexpensive adapter for the few times I use it on a production. I don't care if back focus is off as long as it focuses to infinity or pass it.
 
Steve Shovlar said:
There is "no duff one". It's a combination of the setup on your F3 with the Canon lenses. But to show we are an honest, reliable company who stand by their guarentee, contact us off the forum for a return and refund.

If anyone is considering which lenses to buy to use on their F3, I always recommend going the Nikon route. Iris adjustment is simple and the lenses are superb, with a multitude of cheap Nikons for sale on Ebay.
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while maybe the issue stands, when it "goes soft" is it possible to reach infiniity at all focal lengths? IE variable prime?
 
Quite a long way past it...

I've just gone outside with a 70-200mm f/2.8 on the Adaptimax EF to test infinity by focussing on the lovely full moon we have right now. At 200mm I can easily focus on the moon at a reasonable distance before infinity and all is well. However, when I set the lens to 70mm focussing on the moon gives a distance reading on the lens of just 4 meters. I then tested the 24-105mm f/4 and with a focal length of 24mm the moon is pin sharp at 1.5 meters!

It would seem that infinity is not the problem - it's the other end... ie: minimum focus as I was saying earlier?

Or alternatively, the moon is very close tonight :shocked:
 
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PaulReam said:
Quite a long way past it...

I've just gone outside with a 70-200mm f/2.8 on the Adaptimax EF to test infinity by focussing on the lovely full moon we have right now. At 200mm I can easily focus on the moon at a reasonable distance before infinity and all is well. However, when I set the lens to 70mm focussing on the moon gives a distance reading on the lens of just 4 meters. I then tested the 24-105mm f/4 and with a focal length of 24mm the moon is pin sharp at 1.5 meters!

It would seem that infinity is not the problem - it's the other end... ie: minimum focus as I was saying earlier?

Or alternatively, the moon is very close tonight :shocked:
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Infinity should be at infinity in order for it keep focus. I think that what Timur tried to say is that you can still use it as you would use a prime not zooming.
 
You could... however, this means everything between the moon and minimum focus is contained within the range 0.7 - 1.5 meters on the lens distance scale at 24mm. So you can imagine it makes it pretty twitchy to pull focus if something moves!!!

I would have left this subject alone some time ago as it sounds like I've got something against Adaptimax (which I don't) but now I'm intrigued? Steve says these are are milled to thousandths of an inch accuracy and there's no possibility of a faulty one. What I don't understand is that these Canon 'L' Series lenses do track reasonably well on other adaptors and other camera's. How can that change if the adaptor is the correct size? So far I've only found one other user who's got a similar problem, where the back focus is beyond the range of the F3. He was told that it was because he wasn't using Canon EF glass, even though his lenses tracked fine on the Canon?

I hope to have another make of F3 to EF adaptor coming this week, so I might have a better idea what this issue is soon.
 
Okay, some more observations which I hope help with these issues...

The flange focal distance on an EF lens and an FD lens is 44mm and 42mm respectively. I have an FD adaptor which tracks perfectly so I think I'm right in assuming that the difference between the back plate and the lens mount on these two adaptors should be 2mm? Now I must be honest and say I don't have a micrometer, but even using a flat and steel rule I can see that there's not even 1mm between them. Could this be part of the problem?
 
I think that beating this into the ground anymore won't really solve anything. The fact that your lenses behave differently on your F3 than on your still camera implies that something is off somewhere but theer are many many variables. It could be the adaptimax or it could be the F3 back focus setting. The fact that a PL zoom holds focus implies that its the adapter but its not certain . There is a PL adapter in that mix that could be off as well , even making it work correctly with an F3 setting that's wrong. Also we don't know enough about the PL zooms to know how critical the back focus was on those lenses, or how critical your testing method was to be assured that your F3 backfocus is correct.

Because the lens is long, I found that the back focus on my 80-200 looked good even when it didn't on an 24-70. An F4 lens is probably useless for judging.You need a big monitor and a big chart to tell anything at all especially with wide lenses as they make everything look in focus - so unless you've tested your PL lenses to exacting standards you could be fooling yourself that the F3 setting is correct.

I think from what you've said its quite likely however that the adapter is off a bit. With all respect to Steve , I'm sure that every effort is made to mill these to exact tolerances, but "never say never". They are very fussy and as I recall on the Canon boards no one had ever come across a Nikon to Canon adapter that was correct.
My local rental house says every PL adapter they have and every PL lens they have for a number of F3's is different and they have had to color code which lenses go with which cameras to keep it straight. Maybe that's an exaggeration but you get the point.

So return the adapter and try another one.

Better yet, Go to a facility that can accurately test this stuff for you. Have you gone to a professional house that has large charts and monitors, or much better that has real collimators and flange depth gauges to check this stuff accurately.
 
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When Paul sends it back ( he hasn't been in contact yet) we will of course take a look at it and test it here. I am confident the adaptor is spot on and the problem is a back focus issue with his F3 and his Canon EF glass. If it wasn't, we would have been inundated with hundreds of customers asking what was wrong with their adaptor. The fact is that Paul is the only customer who has had a problem.

And as Douglas has said above, zooms should be used as primes anyway. Canon EF stills lenses are not designed for zooming in video.
 
I just wanted to add that instead of using shutter speed I was using GAIN to adjust light when I was testing FS100 some weeks ago (since that camera has no ND). Can't adjust as much as with shutter, but get less strobe effects.
 
Steve Shovlar said:
When Paul sends it back ( he hasn't been in contact yet) we will of course take a look at it and test it here. I am confident the adaptor is spot on and the problem is a back focus issue with his F3 and his Canon EF glass. If it wasn't, we would have been inundated with hundreds of customers asking what was wrong with their adaptor. The fact is that Paul is the only customer who has had a problem.

And as Douglas has said above, zooms should be used as primes anyway. Canon EF stills lenses are not designed for zooming in video.
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That is not what I meant to say. What I said is that he can still use it the same way you would use a prime in most case.
When I buy a zoom for the F3 it would have to work as a zoom. One thing for sure is that I won't be using Canon lenses.
 
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