Milkyway season just kicked off and I am trying a new adapter this year after enjoying the Magic Format Converter last year and so far I am very impressed with how well the Metabones 1.26x Expander works. I just received it along with a few Nikon lenses from B&H Photo yesterday afternoon before packing my car and my initial impression is that it is a keeper. The Nikon adapter is expensive, but the Canon adapter is reaching difficult to justify if you do not already own a lot of Canon glass. Granted the Canon adapter has autofocus, but that is not useful for Astrophotography.
If you have been a reader of the site for a while you probably know by now I love to shoot the Milkyway and have been doing it for years, but it is not easy to fully utilize a Fujifilm GFX100 for the task, which is why I have turned to various adapters to gain access to faster wide glass than Fujifilm currently has available for GFX. I was going to wait until I had more to share about various lens combinations, but that will take time and there really isn’t much out there about the Metabones 1.26x Expander for Fujifilm GFX, plus a few readers have asked me for recommendations for this season so I figured I would put my initial praise out there with the caveat that there is much more to come during this season so this is not my final verdict, but after 4 hours of shooting, 3 hours of driving, 1 hour of editing and a little sleep I am very impressed.
The only flaw I noticed about the adapter so far is that the Arca-Type Tripod Foot is relatively useless on a GFX100 so this adapter might not be for you if you want to mount something huge on a GFX that doesn’t have a tripod foot of its own. It is an odd oversight, but it should work fine on the GFX50S/GFX50R/GFX100S. I have adapted 12 to 40mm with great success, but it is hard to tell much at night so I will provide more useful samples at a later date. The thing that makes this adapter a must-own for GFX photographers that like to shoot the Milkyway is that it allows you to successfully use a lot of wide glass that might not normally cover the GFX’s sensor.
The Metabones adapter is a great start, but I still hope Fujifilm or a third party will release a native lens in the future that is ideal for astrophotography. China has been killing it with its lenses lately and one of my favorite Milkyway shots from last year on my GFX100 was taken with my Mitakon Zhongyi Speedmaster 85mm f/1.2, which you can see here if you like. Well back to bed for another long night of Milkyway photography in the middle of the everglades.
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