Back in April it became clear that the Micro 4/3 version of the Metabones Speed Booster (the lens adapter that makes lenses wider, faster, and sharper), was going to be delayed for some time. While it still probably won't be shipping for a while, the company has sent out some pre-production versions of the adapter, and we've got our first look at images from the adapter thanks to Philip Bloom, who recently got his hands on one. Check out his video below.


It looks like at the moment the Contax and Leica R versions are a bit further along, so it will probably still be a while before we see the Nikon model, and definitely a while before the Canon version (since they don't actually have a timeline for the Canon MFT Speed Booster yet). We've already seen some copycat versions of this adapter, so while I have no doubt there will be cheaper options for folks, the quality of the optics in these adapters is very high.

I'm really looking forward to trying this out on the Blackmagic Pocket Camera. The MFT Speed Booster adds a crop factor of 0.71 to any camera taking the mount, so because the Pocket Camera is a 2.88x crop, it works out to 2.04x. Even though a 2x crop is still quite a bit, it's basically the same as the Panasonic GH2 and exactly the same as the GH3. It's unclear what Blackmagic is doing with the MFT version of the Cinema Camera, since they haven't actually shipped any yet, but that crop factor will be about 1.6x, which is the same as putting full-frame lenses on Canon DSLRs.

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