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Lens Adaptors & Cleaning

Alright, so with mirrorless cameras, because they don't have a mirror in them, we're able to keep, or get, the lenses closer to the sensor plane, we're able to adapt and hook on a lot of different lenses. I mentioned this in the opening segment on cameras. And so if you wanna mount a Canon lens on a Sony camera, you can do it. Not directly, though. You're gonna need a lens adapter that allows you to make the physical connection as well as the electronic connection between them. So that way you can use these other aftermarket different brand lenses. And there's been a lot of people having a lot of fun picking up old lenses on eBay, and at garage sales, using old lenses from the 60s and 70s on their new camera. They're probably not optically really high quality lenses like a lot of today's lenses, but they do offer a unique look. And some people, they're not after the highest quality, they want a unique look for what they're doing. And so there's a lot of fun that you can have with relat...

ively inexpensive lenses, adapting these lenses on here. And I think I have one of these adapters in here, and so, I have the adapter, don't have the right cameras and setup here, but this is the adapter so that I can mount Canon lenses on a Sony camera. Now there's no optical bits in here, and so it's just the straight optical quality of the Canon glass, and it's got the electronics in here, and Metabones has actually done a good job of getting the electronics from the Sony camera to operate the electronics of the Canon lens. Now, I don't always use Canon lenses, I sometimes use other brands. I have a Sigma lens. And so I think it's kina funny sometimes, I have a Sony camera, a Metabones adapter, and a Sigma lens, and I'm using a Canon mount but no Canon products. And so you can have a wide variety of things out there that are mounted on here. Now there are a lot of different types of adapters out there and one of the more interesting adapters is what I wanna show you here. Speed Booster. So if you remember how lenses produce an image circle, alright. When you have a full-frame lens on a small sensor of any sort, it produces a very large image circle, and you are getting a cropped image in there. And so the down side to this is that you've lost the wide angle ability of this large image circle. Well, there's been a new invention somewhat recently, and that is the Speed Booster. And this is available from a few different manufacturers. And another term for this is a reverse teleconverter. And so rather than giving you more telephoto, it gives you more wide angle. What it does, is it takes all of that light, put it on the back of your lens, and it concentrates it into a smaller size circle, reducing it back down in size. And this has two interesting effects. One is you get your wide angle back that you kinda lost from going to a smaller sensor camera. But by taking a light source and condensing it into a smaller area, it makes it brighter. Which it actually increases the amount of light that would be let through the lens, because you're concentrating it in a smaller area. We all know this, remember being at camp with the flashlight. You shine it really broad and you can't see very far, but you go really narrow and you can see quite a ways. It's the same philosophy with this. And so you can take lenses designed for full-frame cameras, adapt them onto crop, micro four thirds type cameras, and have 'em let in quite a bit of light. Now the problem here is that you're kinda changing over electronics from one brand of lens to another brand, and you're adding more optics into the equation. So you might be losing a little bit when it comes to image quality. But it does get you wide angle back and sometimes then some. And so this is gonna be good for increasing the brightness and regaining the wide angle view. So there's a lot of different adapters and it can get a little confusing, so here's a few of the things to look for. So if you wanna use an SLR lens on a mirrorless camera, you're gonna need a lens adapter. It's possible a speed booster will work, depending on the combinations that you are working with. Will it communicate between the body and the lens? Well that depends on what you buy. There are some devices out there that are twenty dollars that have no electronics in it, and it's just designed for you to mechanically hook one system up to the other. Something else will allow you to do exposure. Something else will do exposure and focus. You've gotta find out how compatible is it, how many features continue to work when I mount these two things together? Will there be glass in there? Lens adapters may or may not have them, it depends on what you're doing. The lens adapter I got is just, I want the straight lens. But sometimes they'll have tilt-shift adapters, or macro adapters, or something else in there, and they'll add elements in there to do something else. And you'll find that there's lots of different adapters on the market. If you do want a speed booster, it absolutely has to have glass in there in order for that to work. Will it increase the light gathering ability? A straight lens adapter will not, even if it has glass in there. But that's what the speed boosters are designed to do. And will it increase your wide angle of view? That's what the speed boosters do, the regular lens adapters, that's not the intentions. They're just simply intended on adapting one product to the other. Everybody should be using microfiber cleaning cloths for cleaning your lenses. That's these little fine woven cloths like this, and if you're like me, you should probably have a dozen of them, because they get lost really easily. And so these are nice, soft, they can be washed, and just blow a little bit of hot air, and clean it off. In fact, I have a great little video here and I think this would make a fine little vine video that we can just let play and play and play here. And so it's very easy to clean your lens. And so we'll just watch this for the next hour I think. (audience laughter) See isn't this fun, they're laughing, I bet they'll laugh more the next time. See, they're laughing more. We'll just keep watching it. Okay, maybe not. Removing filters. Oh, I love that challenge. Please, come to me, tell me your filter is stuck on your camera. I just wanna try to get it off. Filters can get stuck on for a variety of reasons. One reason is you just cranked it on too hard. But every time you grab something that is round, it kind of pushes it into an oval shape ever so slightly. And it's quite possible that you could screw on a lens like this and go, okay, that's fine. And then, you come here and you're like (grunting) and you're squeezing it kind of in the wrong place. And if you grabbed it here it'd come off in a second. And I know we've all had the experience, where ah, this is totally stuck on there. And, okay, give it a try. And they're just like, boop, see? I'm magic, I can do this. And it's about grabbing it in the right spot. It's also about grabbing it in a multitude of locations. And so what you're trying to do is not bend the oval. It doesn't bend a lot but just bends a little bit, and so grab it in different locations, grab it with as many fingers as possible, and you can usually get it off. Another, there's a lot of tools out there, and a rubber band is also gonna work in getting that off. There's lens wrenches that you'll have in a repair shop or a camera store for getting things that are really stuck off, and I've seen lenses that get dropped and the only way to get a filter off is by hack sawing very carefully into the filter so it'll pop off. But generally just using fingers in the right location. And I forget what combination, I have one filter and one lens that you just, little bit too hard, and it feels like it's stuck forever unless you grab it in the secret location. And then it's very easy to get off. Storing your filters. There's a lot of different ways. The way that I've found that I really like is the little Tamrac case that I have here, and I gotta admit, I'm not a fan of fanny packs. I don't think they look real good. But when I'm working, this is really practical. My polarizing filters, my neutral density filters are right here. And I always try to wear a belt so I can use this system so I can just take it on and off and it's a great system. This stores about five filters. But there's a lot of other nice, padded filter systems out there. I think, you wanna find something other than those little plastic cases that they came in. They're fine for storing an individual filter, but once you have a number of filters, it's just real easy to get these. And so if you're interested in this, it's the MX5388. Mine's 10 years old so they might have had some slight changes in the design to it. So I have few older polarizing filters that were from film cameras, and I was recently at a camera store and was told that the polarizing filter for a digital camera is different and I should get a new one. Really? Have you tried it out? No. Okay. I would try it out. It was 60 bucks, I didn't wanna buy it unless I needed to. Yeah, and so I guess we'll get into my conspiracy theory now. So I'm not a big person on conspiracy theories, alright. I like facts, I like reality, don't tell me what you think, what is the real case. Well back in the days of film, before auto focus, we had linear polarizers. And I'm not gonna get into the technical specs, because I don't really know them, but it's put in a linear fashion. And then when we got into auto focus cameras, remember that sub mirror, that focused the auto focus light down to the auto focus sensors? They were of a linear style, so that it let some light in, and it was found that in some auto focus cases, these linear polarizers blocked the focusing to the auto focus signal, and you couldn't focus. And with other cameras, you couldn't get exposure, because it blocked all the light from coming in the camera. Now I think they changed what they were doing on the cameras because, I thought, well, this is interesting. I just want to see how it works. And so I took a bunch of cameras, and I took a bunch of linear polarizers, and I took 'em out and I tested 'em, and all the cameras worked with focus and all the cameras worked with exposure. I'm like, well, why are we supposed to buy these more expensive circular polarizers? Because at some point I think there was a problem. And so I have a couple of linear polarizers still. The fact of the matter is now, it's a hard time buying them, a linear polarizer. And actually one of my linear polarizers is the most effective polarizer I've ever had. And so in theory it's supposed to cause a problem with focusing or your metering. And so if it's not causing a problem with your camera, then it's perfectly fine to use. And my theory is, my conspiracy theory, is that they just said, or there was at one point you needed a circular polarizer. And then they changed the equipment, and now you don't need a circular polarizer, but everybody keeps telling everybody that you need a circular polarizer. But I haven't seen anybody that has proven me wrong. I mean, give me a linear polarizer, show it to me where it doesn't work on a camera. And so I'd say, yeah, give it a try. I think it'll probably be fine. Is there any special gadget for when you are out in the snow and sometimes the cold weather kind of like make crazy things with the camera? Oh, so if you're shooting in cold weather, the idea is to get your camera cold or warm very slowly. And so one of the things that I would do, I was in Yellowstone in the winter time, where it got down to, what was the temperature, it was minus 35, is that cold enough for ya? Okay. And so I would put my camera in the camera bag and I would go out, and it would usually take a little while before you got to where you were shooting, but in that case it's getting colder and colder and colder and colder, and I took it out and I shot for hours with it. And so it's just that you didn't go from a hundred degrees in the car with the heater jammed on outside into the cold weather. And so, had it in the camera bag, so that was kind of a bit of a buffer zone for it, you might say. And when I came back inside after being out for several hours in really, really cold weather, I resisted the urge to pull my memory cards out and download and open the camera up, and I just left it in the bag so that it would slowly warm up. And so in some cases, there is a desiccant that you can get that absorbs moisture, but I haven't really had to deal with that, at least in my shooting. And so, when you're out shooting with it, I can shoot, at least I have shot, in really, really cold weather, just with my straight camera. I will use gloves and there are some fingerless fleece gloves that I like that has a mitten over the top so I can get my actual fingers on those buttons from time to time, but that's definitely where it's nicer to have a little bit larger camera with big buttons on it. The mirrorless cameras, where they are more dependent on batteries, will do less well in their life, but apparently if you get cold enough, it'll freeze some of the LCDs on the camera. But most cameras are lubricated and built so that it'll withstand pretty much anything that we can stand. So, pure cold doesn't seem to be a problem on the cameras. Limitation on us, though.