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Powered lens adapter just for OIS
  • Just a question in my head: electronic OIS that exists in lenses are completely autonomous? i.e. if the lens have power on their power contacts in the mount, the OIS will work?

    There are a lot of "smart" adapters for different mounts, but they are expensive, since it have electronics to operate aperture and (sometimes) autofocus. All good, but at least for me, if I have a OIS lens with manual aperture control, all that I would want for filming is the OIS being active.

    Is it possible to build and adaptor just with the contacts to bring the power lines from the camera mount to the lens mount? There are differences between voltage values supplied to the lens between different mounts? I think that an adapter like this would be reasonably cheap and very useful.

  • 8 Replies sorted by
  • There are inexpensive "smart" adapters for Canon EF lenses to Sony E-mount cameras that support autofocus, aperture control, and image stabilization. They cost much less than the equivalent Metabones adapter. I haven't seen inexpensive smart adapters for Micro Four Thirds.

  • As far as I remember - the only real hurdle here is legal one. Panasonic and Olympus just told developer that they will face very bad consequences.

  • Yeah, legal one because autofocus and aperture control involves reverse engeneering of the firmware functions. But an adapter that only extend the power lines probably will be no issue - as for as I know, DC current is not patented. :)

  • How would a lens know how to stabilize if it didn't get image feedback from the sensor ?

  • @kurth This is my doubt - if sensor feedback is needed or if the lens have internal sensors to detect movement.

  • How would a lens know how to stabilize if it didn't get image feedback from the sensor ?

    The lens has built-in accelerometers and a processor. It is just stabilizing movement. It is not using image sensor data at all.

  • @balazer..ok you're right ...at least for expensive canon and nikon lenses. But is this also true for cheap IS lenses for mirrorless cameras, like the pany kit lenses ..or the sony equivalents ? I can see how a $1500 70-200mm has the room both physically and economically, for 2 gyroscopes and a processor...but a $150 kit lens ?

  • ...still waiting, or was my question too dumb ? Maybe this is the reason for the microjittering problem on pany ois lenses....that they do receive feedback from the sensor ?