New Lens Turbo NEX adapter auctions (Minolta, Canon, Nikon and Pentax). And first impression report.

May 16, 2013
deals, reviews
35 Comments

[shoplink 18380 ebay]

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There are four new auctions of Lens Turbo Adapters (the Chinese version of Speed Boosters):
1) Hong Kong store Roxens sells the Pentax K to NEX adapter on [shoplink 18380 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink], Canon FD to NEX adapter on [shoplink 18420 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and Nikon F to NEX adapter on [shoplink 18421 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and Minolta MD to NEX adapter on [shoplink 18422 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] 2) Shanghai store Jinfinance has three adapters: Pentax K to NEX adapter on [shoplink 18381 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink], Canon FD to NEX adapter on [shoplink 18382 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and Nikon F to NEX adapter on [shoplink 18383 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].

Please notice that I don’t know these stores. But you can pay via PayPal with all the guarantees you get through it. And the stores have a high 99,5% positive feedback. The real doubt we have is if these adapters are as good as the Metabones Speed Booster. There is a first feedback on Dpreview forum written by “Forpetessake”:

“Adapter looks well made, lenses are coated, it feels heavy. The adapter fits very well on the Sony body, but the lens mount feels tight.
Optically it’s better than I expected. I took a few pictures with the Lens Turbo and with a dumb adapter from the same distance, only changing the FL to get the same FOV. The images looked sharper with Lens Turbo than with a dumb adapter, though I didn’t do any measurements, so I don’t know yet if the resolution or contrast improved or the lens is simply better on the long end. Since in real life shooting, all other things being equal, the lens will be closed more with Lens Turbo than with dumb adapter, the improvements in sharpness should be even better. But that’s my speculation. The light gathering improved, though I can’t verify if it’s one stop. Because of the variable aperture lens in this experiment, I got around 1.6 (1/160 sec exposure vs 1/100 sec) improvement.
Now, the negatives. There is a noticeable vignetting on the short end at a fully open aperture. It decreases as the aperture being closed. That was expected, and might not be a big problem in real shooting. There is also a glare in high contrast situations when shooting towards light source. It looks like a fuzzy bluish spot near the center. It might be the light reflected from the sensor and the rear surface of the Lens Turbo, which is flat. Other than that I didn’t notice any other problems.”

Would be nice to see a Speed Booster vs Lens Turbo real world comparison! Some reviewers out there ready to do this for us? :)