--> Skip to main content

17mm TS-e with Metabones Speed Booster on FF A7rII



I'm starting writing up this test without having tried it. At this stage, I have no idea what the results will be. But let me start with the idea behind the test.

I've owned the Canon 17mm TS-e for a few years. I switched to Sony mirrorless a while back. My solution for Sony due to the lack of good native E mount lenses has been to mostly use Canon lenses with either the Sigma MC-11 or Metabones adapter. There have been some down sides to this solution but on the whole I've been pretty happy.

So I was at the pawn shop a couple of months ago - and stumbled upon a few items. One of which was  a Metabones Speed Booster! Frankly I've got so many new toys I've had little time to test this out. But I had an epiphany- what would happen if I put the 17mm TS-e on a full frame camera? Honestly I don't know yet as I write. The image circle of the lens is huge! On full frame with no adapter, there's 12mm rise-fall.

So my theory is that the lens-adapter combo will result in a 12mm f2.8 lens that might cover full frame!

------------------- ok, the results are in ---------------------------

So, just having tested my theory, it did NOT work. The image circle with the Speedbooster is far too small and vignettes massively. The 17mm TS-e on the A6000 seems to work fairly well. However, there is a little distortion, and when shifting vignetting appears well before the 12mm shift, in vertical position I noticed it around 9mm. What else is weird is that the vignetting appears in the opposite position: when shifting upwards for architecture, the vignetting cropped up at the bottom! I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.

On the plus side, despite the extra glass, the results are super-sharp. You can see and download full-resolution samples here (for your own personal use of course.)

17mm TS-e with Metabones Speed Booster on Sony a6000

17mm TS-e on full frame Sony A7rII

17mm TS-e using Speed Booster on full frame Sony A7rII


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Linhof Serial Year List - Salomon Says

Recently I've acquired a few Linhof cameras. I got a 5x7 view camera from Oakland Museum's White Elephant Sale. Later I stumbled upon a Color Kardan 90 Jahre Jubalaeum edition on Craigslist. And more recently, I found a "baby Technika" 2x3 (6x9) at Oakland's East Bay Depot for Creative Re-use. Not knowing much about Linhof large format cameras, I tried getting more info online, and came across a strange thread on the Large Format Photography Forum . Basically on this thread various Linhof owners ask a guy named Bob Salomon what year their Linhof was made. And the thread is over 100 pages long! Sifting through that thread is mindnumbing. Why Bob doesn't just publish the list of serial numbers is beyond me. Maybe it's just nice to feel needed. So I started compiling a spreadsheet of the serial numbers and the answer Bob gives. If you don't feel like spending a couple days reading this thread to get a hint as to the age of your Lin

Lossy DNG File Sizes by ISO.

Fairly recently I discovered the magic of lossy DNG's. My stock photo library is ever growing. Though JPG's might really be enough for my archive, I've been keeping my raw files. RAW files take up lots of space. And RAW files can't typically keep user generated EXIF data in the file. RAW files keep their keywords and other metadata in a sidecar, that is if you regularly save the EXIF data to file. So recently I've been converting all my RAW files to lossy DNG's. After testing the highest ISO setting on the new-to-me A7R IV, I converted the files to lossy DNG's only to find a surprise. The very high ISO lossy DNG's were much larger than the original Sony RAW files! Lossy ARW vs Lossy DNG full image sample So I thought it would be a good test to shoot from the lowest to highest ISO, convert to lossy DNG and see where the file size savings invert. Here's the data as seen in the above screen shot: ISO Lossy Sony ARW Raw file size (MB) Lossy DNG file siz

From the Archive: Obsolete Film Data Sheet Scans - ORWO Information

Here's a sheet I got from writing ORWO Technischer Kundendienst back in the 1980's. It lists development times for all the ORWO Black and White films sold for export at the time (NP15, NP22, NP 27) combined with western developers Microphen, Atomal, Rodinal, Refinal, D-76, & ID-11. A little bit of ORWO history- Germany's big photo film/paper manufacturer up until Germany's losing WWII was AGFA (short for  A ktien G esellschaft F ür A nilinfabrikation - or corporation for some sort of plastic manufacture.) Germany was occupied by the winning powers USSR/USA/GB/FR and the rift between the USSR led to some complications for industries. Depending on your view of history the US and western allies were much friendlier to the land they occupied (remember the USSR lost many millions of their citizens to the NAZIs which made them much less tolerant.) In any case, some factories in the east moved to the west with many key employees. Most photo enthusiasts know of the t