Third party EF-to-RF adapters...

The question about whether 3rd party EF-to-RF adapters are good enough seems to come up a lot with new people and those with limited budgets. Just documenting my experience with the Meike and Vello adapters compared to the Canon adapter. Both of the 3rd party adapters have faux internal design which looks to mimic Canon's adapter. Both of the adapters have problems in actual usage when it comes to internal reflections. The Canon does a really good job of dampening internal reflections. The 3rd party adapters not quite as good. So while the 3rd party adapters are good enough to pass the electronics, in slightly more demanding light conditions they have problems.

I recorded videos that make it easier to see when you get flair with each adapter in place. Both of the 3rd parties exhibit secondary reflection because of the lack of REAL light dampening inside the adapter's tube.

Youtube video of comparison EF-to-RF adapters

Below is what the test setup looks like. The Godox AD400Pro LED modelling lamp on a stand is used to simulate a bright light for the sake of reproducibility. For video using the R6 on a tripod and Canon EF 85mm/1.4 IS with lens hood.

Just posting for knowledge because I used the 3rd party adapters for about a year with this flaring issue before the Canon were readily available.

Interesting. I bought the Canon adapter because it was not that expensive and convenient: that's what the store where I bought the camera had.

The Meike is about half the price of the Canon today. The Vello is 20% less today. When I bought both of them, the Canons were out-of-stock at the major retailers (B&H and Adorama). That was early in the pandemic so there wasn't as much of a choice. I saw the question come up on Reddit and thought it would be a good starting point for this forum. 🙂

Thanks - good tips. I have thought about saving 50-60% on an adaptor - but for a R camera + lens investment - the $ just are not there. I've had to buy used though at one point as all new stock on backorder at one point in UK

This is exactly my perspective. The Canon adapters are relatively inexpensive, especially when one looks at the overall costs of a R camera and lens(es). Saving another $20-50 by purchasing a third party adapter, which is not guaranteed to work or be of the same quality, just doesn't make any sense to me. I can understand when the Canon adapters were out of stock, but now they are widely available I will not go third party.

Chris

There shouldn't be any difference among any of the EF-RF adapters. Unlike adapters for every other camera system, the EF-RF adapters don't do any of the protocol translations because RF cameras are able to "speak" EF Protocol, so the EF to RF adapters are essentially dumb. That's good news and bad. The good news is that since they're dumb adapters, they should all perform the same way. The bad news is that since the EF protocol is built into Canon R cameras, Canon can drop it at any point with future camera releases, in which case, the adapters will become useless.

Adapters for Olympus and Panasonic 4/3 to m43 are pass through adapters. There are differences when non-OEM adapters are used. The most common complaint, besides fit and build quality, is that wide angle lenses do not perform correctly on them. After that it is that they lose connection between the camera and the lens, so the non-OEM adapters are not well regarded. Canon offers their adapters at a fair price so I went with their own. On the m43 side the worst thing is that both Olympus and Panasonic stopped making the adapters a long time ago, so you have to buy used or third party if you want to adapt 4/3 lenses. I'm hoping Canon doesn't decide to abandon its users like that, but just in case I have two.

i buy a Commlite adaptor partly as the Canon adaptor was not available..it cost me 47GBP and the Canon one at the time was 115GBP ..i have had no problems with the adaptor but some have so i would only buy from a place with a good returns policy ..today if the price was still 47 vs 115GBP i would still get the 3rd party adaptor but now i see the Commlite is 75GBP so maybe not...as i have all most all EF glass the adaptor gets left on the body but if i ended up with 1/2 EF and 1/2 RF lenses then i would get more adaptors so no messing about

Apologies if I am wrong about this, but I am under the impression that the EF signals are a subset of the RF signals, and that the latter are accommodated by the extra contacts. If this is so, Canon is not likely to drop the system.

However, he point has been well made that the problem with the two non-Canon adapters discussed is internal reflections.

David

Interesting. I used my 400/4DO II w/ EF2xIII recently on my R7 after having used the RF800/11 for a long while, and noticed that the contrast wasn't as good with the DO. I thought it was the lenses, but I use the Meike adapter, so maybe that is the real reason.

There's still one good reason to buy Commlite control ring adapter. As far as I know, it is the most simple one to modify to allow RF extenders with EF lenses. As the adapter is filled with the protrusion in the extender, the reflections are no longer an issue. Mechanically it is just adequate and the missing weather sealing could be an issue to some.