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Commlite High Speed EF to E Mount Adapter Review | 4K
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Jul 25, 2023
Commlite High Speed EF to E Mount (CM-EF-E HS ) Adapter Review | Photographer Dustin Abbott breaks down the strengths and weaknesses of the newest adapter from Commlite that enables you to mount EF/EF-S lenses on Sony E mount bodies. Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase the Commlite HS adapter: Amazon: https://amzn.to/2tCdCHu | Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/2tCf0tI | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2lDM93D | Amazon Germany: https://amzn.to/2KdynDD Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/dustinabbott Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Make a donation via Paypal: paypal.me/dustinTWI Get a discount off all Skylum Editing Software (Luminar, Aurora HDR, AirMagic) by using code DUSTINHDR at checkout: http://bit.ly/LuminarDLA Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | Check me out on: Personal Website: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Google+: http://bit.ly/24PjMzv | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Twitter: http://bit.ly/1RyYxIH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu My filming setup: Sony a7R III: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2D6ibNO or Amazon: http://amzn.to/2CNxOvH | or | Sony a9 @ B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2HyWIyt or Amazon: https://amzn.to/2s1vYE0 Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 RXD @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2FA00la or Amazon https://amzn.to/2G2kaEr Lights: Rotolight AEOS @B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2IK7mqV | Genaray Contender @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/33HbGNM | and Aputure AL-MW: https://bhpho.to/2N3MtZV DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you a review of yet another adapter
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that enables you to get autofocus with your Canon, EF mount lenses, and EFS, as we're going to discover
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on Sony FE bodies. And that would be true either on full frame or APSC
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And so I have tested this on three different camera bodies on a Sony
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a 6500 and that's an APSC model. I've then also tested on both the Sony A7 R
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Mark 3 and Sony A7 Mark 3 cameras which are full frame cameras. I must be an
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optimist because I always believe the marketing that the next adapter that comes
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out is going to be the one that gives you performance very similar to native
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glass with adapted lenses and while there certainly are some a lot of
1:00
on adapting lenses to Sony FE mount. I'm afraid to say that the adapter I'm here to review today, which is the Comlight. This is their new high speed CMEF to E mount adapter. Now when I saw when I was approached by Comlight about doing this review, I initially was was very intrigued because they were saying all of the right things. Reporting things like high speed auto focus like correct
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XF data reporting, firmware updatable, a lot of different things that I really like the sound of
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communicating information and so that Sony's embody image stabilization works properly. All of those things, the ability to switch between, much like you can do with, say
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the MetaBone's fifth generation or fourth generation, the ability to switch between
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phase detect and contrast AF modes. All of that stuff sounded very good to me
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And so anyway, I was very excited. But as we're going to see in this review, unfortunately, the reality doesn't meet the expectations
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You may have seen that pulled out here on YouTube a time or two. So let's take a look at what's positive about this
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I've got actually a couple of these adapters here. And so one thing that I do want to point out, this one I've got the tripod foot off
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But unlike the Sigma MC11, and that's the primary one I'm going to compare it to
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price wise the Sigma is still more expensive but it's closer to that and certainly a lot
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closer to the Sigma than to the Metabones though in a lot of ways some of the behaviors are more similar to Metabones than they are to the MC11 but positive
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here is that unlike the Sigma MC11 you have a nicely built by the way constructed
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removable tripod foot here which enables you to with you know longer glass to be
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able to when you're going to a tripod to mount on the tripod and so you're putting less stress on the actual mount and also getting a better balance with everything
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And so that's certainly a plus and as noted the build quality of this is very nice. It seems very sturdy
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And unlike some of these removable tripod foots, it actually engages nicely
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Some of them I find that you have a really hard time kind of initiating any kind of actual loosening or particularly with tightening But as you can see it tightens up there nicely That positive Also as noted unlike the MC11 MC11 only supports Canon EF mount lenses
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And so physically, for example, I have the EFS 24 millimeter F2.8 lens here
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I cannot physically mount that on the MC11. It simply does not mount
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It does not allow you to use EFS lenses. So it's certainly a positive for those of you that have APSC glass that you want to adapt
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that you can mount EFSS lenses on there and they work just fine
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So that's certainly a plus there for Comlight. Another plus is that an advantage when compared to the MC11 is that the Sigma does not correctly report lens information for any lenses save Sigma lenses
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And so you're going to get kind of generic type terms. For example, when I get to the one lens that I've kind of used across a number of adapters
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and I kind of use it as a benchmark because it's amazing lens. And it's one that I would love to be able to adapt wonderfully
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and that is Canon's 35 millimeter F1.4 L Mark 2, an amazing lens
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But, for example, with the MC 11, it reports as something like DT, S-A-M-35-millimeter F-1.4
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With this calm light adapter, it does report it correct. as the right lens. And I found that to be true with most of the Canon lenses that I put on there
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However, if you're going outside of Canon lenses, you know, for example, if I tried to mount some Tamron or Sigma lenses there
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what it will do is revert to the nearest equivalent Canon lens in the XF data. So, example, I put the Tamron 70 to 200 F2.8 G2 lens on there
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and it reported it as Canon 70 to 200 F2.8 LIS mark
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too. And so, I mean, pros and cons. Of course, as noted, you do have the ability to switch between contrast and phase detect. Now, the way that you do that, there's a button here, but it's not so simple as just hitting it live. What you've got to do is you've got to dismount the lens. And so the, you know, the connection is broken, remount the lens. And as you turn on the camera, you hold down that button. And then it will switch to the different mode
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Just so you note that in phase detect, if you're going into your options, for focus modes
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you only have AFS and AFC available to you. In contrast, you have all focus modes available to
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Obviously, you would have manual focus available to as well. But in contrast, you have all focus modes available to you
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And so, of course, the ability to switch in between those is positive
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Now, some pros for this that it shares with the Sigma is that both of them are firmware updatable
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Sigma has two advantages here, however. One of those is that the actual little cover that goes over the port of the firm area where you update the firmware
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Once you remove that, it is very hard to fit it back in. It took me probably close to 10 minutes, you know, fiddling around before I was able to get it to seat properly again
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And so and it also fully detachable which means there a good chance you going to end up losing it somewhere along the way or just giving up and trying to reattach it Sigma MC11 has a you know a better setup here to where the port you know opens
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You then can seat it back down very easily and it stays connected at all time
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The other thing, too, is that the process for delivering firmware updates is a little bit more, you know, sophisticated with Sigma because of their software
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and the ability to very quickly check their firmer updates. Meanwhile, the Comlight's going to require you to go to their website
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download the packet, go through a whole process. And so it's just, Sigma, again, Sigma has the advantage
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of having a more developed ecosystem for doing that kind of thing. Also, both of them share the, you know, shared advantage
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of having electronic aperture control with lenses that support that. And with both adapters, it works perfectly fine
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I had no issues switching aperture on any of the lenses and I was able to open them up fully to their widest maximum aperture
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The embody image stabilization with both adapters is automatically transferred and seems to work properly from what I can tell
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Now some pros, reasons why you might want to consider the Sigma over the Com light is that the Sigma provides much, much better performance with third party lenses
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In fact, with most lenses, it provides much better support, but particularly, of course, if you're talking about Sigma lenses
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Sigma lenses on the MC11 are the closest thing you're going to get to native focus
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Also, Tamron lenses focus better with the MC11. I found that third-party lenses really did not focus particularly well with the com light
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and so it's very much optimized for Canon focus algorithms. I also found with the MC11 that focus is very much
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more confident in general. It locks more quickly. It locks more accurately. It has better focus
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repeatability. And not to say that I got poor focus results. Actually, in real world shooting
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I got pretty much good focus results with a few exceptions. But even that is unusual because
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typically I get pretty close to perfect focus accuracy with adapted lenses in this kind of setup
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And so I would say that of the adapters I've used that the focus repeatability on the calm light was
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the poorest. I also believe that while the calm light is better than some that I've seen
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that the tolerances on the Sigma MC11 are a little bit better. And what I mean by that is that
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to get a perfectly balanced sharpness profile across the frame, you have to have very exacting
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tolerances to make sure that everything is sitting extremely flushly. Sigma seems to have
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done that pretty well. And I've heard very few negative accusations and I certainly have no
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issues with my copy of the MC11. With the calm light, while it's better than some I've seen and that
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the corners are not super soft, I did notice that compared to the Sigma that corner performance on
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the right side on one of the two adapters, one was better than the other. And even with the better
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one, I found that the right side performance wasn't quite as good as it was on the MC11
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Now so just talking about autofocus in general so phase detect with the of course I got lots of lenses to test I got a very big kit And so most of the lenses that I tested however phase detect works and it will lock focus but it gets to focus in stages it like it adjust a little bit forward and then a little bit
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forward and then a little bit forward and then it finds focus lock and that's in aFC mode
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in aFS mode it you know it's lens to specific some that works better than others now if you switch to
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contrast, contrast actually delivered faster focus for me in a lot of situations. It racks
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back and forth, but it racks quickly. It's not like kind of that slow and gradual, which
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I saw some of that behavior by the way with metabones as well. But in contrast mode, it racks
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back and forth, but it does it quickly and then grabs a focus lock. But that only really works
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well for AFS mode. If you try to put it in AFC mode in contrast, what I found is that because it
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it racks, it just keeps racking. And so it goes back and forth, back and forth
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and never achieves a focus lock. And so I don't recommend using it in AFC
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And so, you know, by and large, I have to say that I was disappointed by focus speed
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and overall performance of this adapter. It certainly didn't live up to my expectations
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On a positive note, the fact that it is firmware updatable means that there is, of course, the possibility
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that things will improve as they're underwent. understanding of focus algorithms improve
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You also probably should be pretty careful to look over, if you're considering this new
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Comlight adapter, to look over their list of compatible lenses because I found that lenses
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outside of that list didn't work really all that well. And that's particularly true, as I noted, of third-party lenses
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This is basically, it seems to be designed for Canon lenses. The advantage also, though, is that if you're wanting to use EFS lens
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lenses and you've got a number of those. This may be a good option for you. I found that with, I don't have a lot of EFS lenses, just a couple of them
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I found that focus was pretty good, 24 millimeter. I was pretty happy with what I saw there
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And so it might be a valid option for you there. It might also be good if you're primarily shooting manual focus
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And so it gives you, you know, electronic aperture control, you know, say if you're shooting
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Zeiss glass, you know, some positives there. The bill quality is good
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it gives you a tripod foot which is certainly a positive if you're using heavier lenses
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and so there are some positives there but i would say that if you are considering between the
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com light and the sigma mc 11 particularly if you're getting the mc 11 on some kind of deal i think that it is
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the better adapter at this point and it's the one that would get my money if i was plopping it down
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right now i'm dustin abbott if you look in the description down below i do have an image gallery of
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some of the images that I've taken with the adapter and of course you can make beautiful pictures
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because it's however good the glass is you're putting next to the adapter and and so some pictures
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you might want to look at there and there's also some buying links there if you'd like to purchase
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either the com light or the mc 11 for yourself you can follow me on social media sign up for my
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newsletter become a patron and of course you haven't already please click that subscribe button
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thanks for watching have a great day