GH4 Speedbooster for photos

[64mulford]

Hi everyone. What are your experiences using a speedbooster for photos? I know it would depend on the lens (I'm thinking fast primes from canon or the sigma 18-35). I'm interested in getting shallow DOF portraits and don't want to switch to full frame. Does the speedbooster inprove this for the gh4 dramatically? More importantly is shooting stills with a speedbooster functional? Auto focus reliable? Easy to manual focus? Vignetting? IQ? Etc. Does anyone have any samples to share or link to?

 

[David W. Jones]

It will effectively put you into S35mm territory as far as DOF. I almost always keep a SpeedBooster on my GH4 and have been pleased with the results. While I find the Photos from the GH4 acceptable, 99% of the time I use my 5DkIII for stills. As a side... I never use autofocus, so I can not tell you how it works using a SpeedBooster.


All the best!

Dave

 

[aljudy]

My favorite is a Minolta 58mm/f1.2 with the Metabones Speedbooster on my GH4. However, I am not a professional, just a grandad amateur that mainly documents family. Here's my wife of 50 years at sunset near Morro Rock, Morro Bay, California, USA

 

[Batutta]

Main thing to look out for is that photos use the whole sensor, so you may notice vignetting, softness in the corners when using the speed booster that you wouldn't see when shooting cropped video, especially if you mainly shoot 4k or UHD which is cropped more than 1080.

 

[Bruce Foreman]

Speedbooster not necessary (although I do have and use an RJ focal reducter with "ancient" Nikkors). Here is a portrait of a family member done with a GH3 and 0lympus 75mm "native" m4/3 lens wide open. I could do essentially the same kind of look with the Oly 45mm with proper management of working distance and subject to background distance.


Depth of field is dependent on lens focal length, lens aperture, camera to subject distance, and subject to background elements distance. Manage these factors properly and shallow depth of field is possible with many lenses.