Laowa Magic Format Converter – Full Frame Glass on Medium Format Fujifilm GFX 50S Camera

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by Olaf von VossMay 24^th, 2017

Chinese manufacturer Venus Optics has just released a new lens adapter called the Laowa Magic Format Converter. With it you can use your existing full-frame Canon or Nikon glass on the mighty sensor of the medium format Fujifilm GFX 50S camera. Let’s have a look!

The Laowa Magic Format Converter

The Medium Format Fujifilm GFX 50S Camera is Finally Here and Shoots Video. That was the headline of our first article about this stunning medium-format beast from Fujifilm (check out the article here). Unfortunately, that superior sensor has a major downside built right in: it’s sheer size renders your existing full frame glass useless since the smaller image circle would produce massive vignetting.
The solution? Well, meet the Laowa Magic Format Converter by Venus Optics. You might think of calling it a Speed Booster, but that is not quite the case here since it’s actually more of a Speed Shrinker.

A Speed Booster will shrink the image circle produced by a full-frame lens in order to fit, say, a Super 35mm sensor, acting as a magnifiyng glass which is why the image becomes brighter. As a a result, you gain an extra stop of light hitting the sensor.
Conversely, the Magic Format Converter is designed to increase the size of the image circle a full-frame lens is capable of rendering, allowing it to cover the huge medium-format sensor of the Fujifilm GFX 50S camera. The downside is a decrease in incoming light because the same amount of light needs to be spread out over a larger sensor area. As a result, you’ll lose one stop of light.

Image Quality

Although the Magic Format Converter isn’t quite ready for shipping, the results already look very promising! There’s no visible vignetting and the overall sharpness seems to be very decent. Oftentimes, the peripheral image sharpness gets pretty degraded when using low quality adapters.

No vignetting!

Read all about this new Magic Format Converter over at venuslens.net. You can find lots of comparison shots there and you can even download the RAW files for further inspection.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing hasn’t been set yet but the Magic Format Converter should be ready soon, and is expected to start shipping in July 2017. The Adapter will be available in two versions: Canon EF to Fujifilm G and Nikon AI to Fujifilm G.

Several Laowa lenses on the Fujifilm GFX 50S using the Magic Format Converter.

Also, the engineers over at Venus Optics seem to be eager to improve the adapter even more. Therefore, they are seeking Fujifilm GFX 50S owners in order to gather feedback:

We are currently inviting volunteers who owns a Fujifilm GFX 50S to test and jointly make this adapter a better one. If you are interested, please send us more information about yourself via email. [email protected]

What do you think? Is it time to jump on the medium format train? Share your thoughts in the comments below!