Someone finally got it right! (EF->M4/3 adapter)

Tesselator

Tesselator

Active member
Now, this ROCKS! I can't wait to get my hands on one! Now if only they can keep the price down around the $100 range.

This is very exciting news indeed!


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http://www.eoshd.com/content/504-Birger-Canon-to-AF100-adapter-to-also-support-GH1-and-GH2
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I don't care about the IS nearly as much as I do simply getting aperture control! My idea would have been a wheel built into a battery operated adapter that could adjust the EF apertures manually but this is way better!

Nice! :thumbup:
 
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This thing is known for long.
It is constantly delayed. And will be very pricey (company cites about $500-700 price).
I predict that if first batch will be ever completed it'll be about $800-1000 each.
 
I think it will be a best-seller even at that price. If you own 3-4 grand of canon glass, which tons of people do, and want to shoot it on a GH2 or AF100, you'll buy this adapter.
 
Supposedly you'll need an external battery connected to the adapter for use with a gh1/gh2, since the small battery can't keep it going for long.
 
Instead of buying the adapter, I'd buy more M43 lenses with fast AF and good sharpness. If the speed is the issue, Panasonic will make fast pro zooms for M43 mount. Most people will use M43 lenses on M43 bodies as most Canon owners use Canon glasses and Nikon owners use Nikon glasses. This adapter is really for Canon L owners in GH niche market.
 
stonebat said:
Instead of buying the adapter, I'd buy more M43 lenses with fast AF and good sharpness. If the speed is the issue, Panasonic will make fast pro zooms for M43 mount. Most people will use M43 lenses on M43 bodies as most Canon owners use Canon glasses and Nikon owners use Nikon glasses. This adapter is really for Canon L owners in GH niche market.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think the same. The cool thing about m43 is the compactness/weight. This adapter makes the already bigger and heavier Canon lenses even more bigger/heavier. So it is not for everyone...
 
It is not "constantly delayed"! They have only ever given one completion date, and that date was February 14th, 2011. And we are nowhere near February 14th, 2011. So it not only isn't "constantly delayed", it isn't even due to be released at all yet.
 
I can't trust panasonic. Their 100-300 for example is sold at very high quality prices but the lens is a total dog. I have $25 legacy glass that kicks it butt all over the place. For the same $800 panasonic is asking for their dog you can get an incredible EF lens - Nikon, Sigma, and Tokina too! Almost all "Lumix" lenses are like that - high price but _comparatively_ low quality. I haven't looked at oly's offerings yet though - but I plan to.

Still, this adapter offers wireless follow-focus for the video buffs and no M4/3 lens can compete with that. Personally I just want something to control the aperture on EF lenses when mounted on M4/3 bodies. Hopefully they'll release a feature scaled version of this adapter. :)

For those wondering about this adapter's functionality see these vids:

Part 1: http://blip.tv/file/1941398/
Part 2: http://blip.tv/play/hKMX9659Ag
Part 3: http://blip.tv/play/hKMX9+wGAg

Although this is the one for the Red One, they are supposed to be the same thing (basically).

.
 
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Tesselator said:
I can't trust panasonic. Their 100-300 for example is sold at very high quality prices but the lens is a total dog. I have $25 legacy glass that kicks it butt all over the place. For the same $800 panasonic is asking for their dog you can get an incredible EF lens - Nikon, Sigma, and Tokina too! Almost all "Lumix" lenses are like that - high price but _comparatively_ low quality. I haven't looked at oly's offerings yet though - but I plan to.

Still, this adapter offers wireless follow-focus for the video buffs and no M4/3 lens can compete with that. Personally I just want something to control the aperture on EF lenses when mounted on M4/3 bodies. Hopefully they'll release a feature scaled version of this adapter. :)

For those wondering about this adapter's functionality see these vids:

Part 1: http://blip.tv/file/1941398/
Part 2: http://blip.tv/play/hKMX9659Ag
Part 3: http://blip.tv/play/hKMX9+wGAg

Although this is the one for the Red One, they are supposed to be the same thing (basically).

.
Click to expand...


Mind if I ask why it's a dog? I'm interested because I was thinking of getting it, and selling my Canon Fd 300 f/4 (primarily because of IS in the 100-300)

I've read reports of it vignetting badly at 300mm - but the sharpness seems to generally applauded.

You obviously don't think so?
 
Well... M43 lenses do lose values quickly. That's a good thing for people like me looking for good deals. Sometimes ridiculously cheap price. Don't get me wrong. Panny makes good lenses. They will make better lenses. M43 revolution is really about lenses. They removed the mirror to achieve new lens design.
 
Of course no one knows what will happen in the future or if Panasonic who has no exceptional lenses to date, will begin releasing exceptional lenses. I guess there's a resale value loss according to the post above but I hadn't noticed this myself. The 100-300 is a dog IMO because it's actually NOT sharp at all except from 100 to about 150mm. After that it gets bad! I have no idea why people feel the need to cheat results. I guess they don't want to personally look like losers for buying something that isn't great and having to pay $800 for it. That seems pretty lame to me but it's the only thing I can think of. I know for sure it's not the case that one user gets a fantastically better copy than some other user. I also know for sure that the only way to get "great" results from this lens is to use it under optimal lighting conditions, preferably on a tripod, and then post process the heck out of it and/or scale it way down. The Lumix 100-300 reminds me almost exactly of the Sigma AF 100-300mm f/4.5-6.7 DL - not to be confused with the EX DG or EX DG APO of the same focal range from the same maker. The properties of the DL http://www.photodo.com/lens/Sigma-AF-100300mm-f4567-DL-423 are nearly identical to the Lumix 100-300mm and so is the performance - although it can be debated that the Sigma DL is actually a little better than the Lumix and this is indeed a sad state. The Sigma in question here goes for $10 ~ $75 BTW. :)

So how come about 25% of the images posted from the Lumix look OK to Good? Like these: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1041&message=37221057 as opposed to the other 75% that show how poor the lens actually is? Like these: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1041&message=37093234 Yeah; lighting, post processing, and scaling - and of course knowing how to use the tool - like using magnification/proximity and texture contrast to your advantage, composition, and etc. to optimize the affects or "look" that we most commonly associate with "good glass". If you know what you're doing in just post for example, you can make a poor lens look quite good and the skill-set needed to do so is not that difficult to learn - although admittedly only about 20% of the users and posters I see know them. Let's take a look at this phenomena for a moment. I'll use the sigma DL for this example as almost everyone agrees that this lens is a total dog (no one will fell the need to defend it!) while there remains some debate however unfounded in fact, about the Lumix. Here's me trying consciously to use magnification/proximity, texture contrast, color contrast, and composition in coordination with post processing and scaling in order to make the relatively bad Sigma AF 100-300/4.5~5.6 DL look half way decent. I'll post the final image first and follow it with a 100% crop that had all of the ACR sliders (except color noise reduction) set to zero and all images were at approximately 300mm f/5.6 which is "wide open" for both the Sigma and the Lumix alike:



Sparow_1010217.jpg

Not too bad right? About like we see from the Lumix yeah? Ummm:

_1010217_100c.jpg








Sparow_1010221.jpg

Wow, huh, what a sharp lens! Oops:

_1010221_100c.jpg








Pigeon_1010326.jpg

Sweet! Or not?:

_1010326_100c.jpg








Pigeon_1010383.jpg

This lens must have great colors! Let's see:

_1010383_100c.jpg

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OK, so what's the difference between these and actual "good glass"? Well here's some images from a pretty good $200 lens at 300mm f/5.6 (same as the settings from above) which have received the exact same processing as the 100% crops from above - meaning nothing but color noise reduction. These are also 100% crops:


_1020636_100c.jpg




_1020637_100c.jpg




_1020638_100c.jpg

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I think this demonstrates something that I have convinced myself of, and that's that the main difference between poor glass and good glass is the time we have to spend in post making the images look acceptable or "good". In this case 3min. each vs. about 10sec. each. Some lenses are so good that the results can't be touched via post processing images from poorer glass but there's not too many like that - especially if we're scaling the images for video, or web pages like these. The number of lenses I have processed, charted, and compared is large. Here it is back in November but it's about twice this size now currently:



_IGP3505_Comp2.jpg

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Anyway, this is kinda OT for this thread so I hope this doesn't spin off into whether or not the Lumix 100-300 is crap or not. Back to the adapter? :)
 
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Getting back off topic, those 100mm version do look considerably better than the 300mm version, in terms of sharpness, colour saturation and contrast, it's true.

Shame, I was considering the 100-300mm m43... :(

Then again, I'd like to see the inbetween settings. Also, is f5.6 ideal for this lens? Some prefer f8 or even f11.
 
I look at it this way, which lens will work for me on most cameras in the future. Red has a Canon or Nikon mount. My Canon I have a Nikon mount. Birger is creating a Canon to m4/3 mount. To me, since I shoot stills on a Canon and a Nikon that Canon makes the most sense. I've not seen any lens in native m4/3 other than the 25/0.95 which is full manual or the 7-14 zoom that really has no other competition. I am not trying to run an ENG setup so for me, powered zoom or autofocus in itself is not a must. However, I run on a crane or a stabilizer and would like remote focus controls so that is why I haven't jumped the gun on the 25.

I did get a chance to play with an m4/3 zoom on Jan's AF100 at a tradeshow (no m4/3 lenses available locally) and just didn't make we want to replace any of my lenses just for the mount difference.

Can't wait to get the birger.
 
Lucas Adamson said:
Getting back off topic, those 100mm version do look considerably better than the 300mm version, in terms of sharpness, colour saturation and contrast, it's true.

Shame, I was considering the 100-300mm m43... :(

Then again, I'd like to see the inbetween settings. Also, is f5.6 ideal for this lens? Some prefer f8 or even f11.
Click to expand...

By f/8 or f/11 the gap in IQ between most lenses closes considerably. I can't say "they're all about the same" but one needs to spend a lot more time examining the images in order to distinguish the differences. By those apertures sharpness and CA are usually pretty even among all and other differences like color, contrast, bokeh, and etc. are left.

The Lumix G Vario 100-300mm f/4-5.6 lens:

FD = Focus Distance
AP = Aperture
FL = Focal length
SC = Perceived sharpness as compared with most other ±100~300mm lenses of the same price ($800 MSRP) or less . 10=best, 5=average, 1=worst

FD: 1.5~4m, FL: 100~150mm, AP: 4-4.8, SC: 5
FD: 4~20m, FL: 100~150mm, AP: 4-4.8, SC: 4
FD: 20~inf., FL: 100~150mm, AP: 4-4.8, SC: 4

FD: 1.5~4m, FL: 230~300mm, AP: 4.7-5.6, SC: 4.5
FD: 4~20m, FL: 230~300mm, AP: 4.7-5.6, SC: 3
FD: 20~inf., FL: 230~300mm, AP: 4.7-5.6, SC: 2



FD: 1.5~4m, FL: 100~150mm, AP: 8, SC: 6
FD: 4~20m, FL: 100~150mm, AP: 8, SC: 5
FD: 20~inf., FL: 100~150mm, AP: 8, SC: 4

FD: 1.5~4m, FL: 230~300mm, AP: 8, SC: 5
FD: 4~20m, FL: 230~300mm, AP: 8, SC: 4
FD: 20~inf., FL: 230~300mm, AP: 8, SC: 3.5



FD: 1.5~4m, FL: 100~150mm, AP: 11, SC: 5
FD: 4~20m, FL: 100~150mm, AP: 11, SC: 5
FD: 20~inf., FL: 100~150mm, AP: 11, SC: 5

FD: 1.5~4m, FL: 230~300mm, AP: 11, SC: 5.5
FD: 4~20m, FL: 230~300mm, AP: 11, SC: 4.5
FD: 20~inf., FL: 230~300mm, AP: 11, SC: 4

So by f/11 it's pretty average across the board.
Average is not bad. It's not exceptional either though.
SC or perceived sharpness is kind of a combination of micro-contrast, local-contrast, and scene resolve - my own mark. ;)
These do not account for color (which isn't great), CA (which is good), bokeh, and other ratable aspects of an optical system (lens).
These numbers are just from my own experience with the Lumix and 7 other lenses (under $800!) that cover the 100-300mm range - and they're not perfectly scientific either. :)
 
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