Canon EF lens support finally for 35mm adaptors (well just the Encore!) The Redrock Micro Live Lens

Canon are very secretive about how their EF lens system works. Other manufacturers have had to reverse engineer the system to make their own lenses. To use EF lenses on 35mm adaptors until now you had to buy the EOS mount for your adaptor and bring your Canon DSLR with you to set the aperture then remove the lens from it and stick it on the adaptor. A crazy procedure for me  (until recently) a die hard Nikon lens man! Do people really do it? Yes they do, I  know a few! Life is so easy with Nikon lenses as most have manual apertures.

Redrock are the first manufacturer to engineer a solution. It’s called the Live Lens and it works brilliantly!

P1000037Now I have been due to test out the M2 Encore for about 3 weeks now, ever since I received it but followers of my blog will know I have been working 24/7 recently and the only chance I had to go and test it the weather was so incredibly shitty that there was no way I was going to get it done! I am off to India in a couple of days to shoot the Greenpeace commercial so I won’t get a chance to test the Encore until I get back now. But in the meantime I have tested out the live lens, great for me as ever since I bought a 5d I have spent every penny I have on new lenses. I have a really great set of Canon glass now so this lens mount is great!

It works very simply, but is probably very complex! It’s the EOS mount but with contacts inside it to communicate with the lens, there is an aperture control box on the left hand side which is powered by a 9v battery, the battery compartment is connected to the control box via an industry standard hirose connection, a nice touch. There is a simple plus and minus and an LCD displaying the f-stop of the lens.

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f 1.2
f 1.2
P1000042hirose connector
hirose connector

P1000054

P1000055P1000059So obviously I haven’t shot with it yet. Just connected it up to see how well it works.

Will this work on other adaptors? With modifications perhaps…but it would not be easy. I tried to see if it would go on my Letus and there was no way, the circuit board inside the live lens is in the way. A clever chap may be able to do it. Alas I am not that clever!

Now it isn’t cheap. It’s $495. But it’s absolutely essential if you are a Redrock Encore owner (it does not work with the original M2) and own EF lenses. Redrock are really aggressive with their pricing. Just look at how much of a bargain that Matte Box is, so you know if they are charging $495 it means a heck of a lot of R&R has gone into this and it’s not easy to make!

I get a lot of people asking me, why bother with an adaptor if you have a 5d? Well the 5d is great for some situations but it is far far from replacing 35mm adaptors with PROPER video cameras, please read my long article about it. I will be using 35mm adaptors for a long time to come. The image out of them is just so beautiful and organic, very different from the 5d. I can’t wait to get the Encore out with my EX1 and shoot with it. I just need a clone of me…or at least a few days off to catch up. What with the launch of F-Stop Academy approaching fast it’s trying to find the time to do anything. But testing the Encore out is top of my list. So as soon as I get back from India and as soon as I get a day off I will be putting it through it’s paces! So stay tuned. Sorry again for the delay with this!

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7 comments

  1. Philip, I spoke with Letus a few weeks ago after discovering this new product from RedRock.
    According to Letus themselves, they are already in development together with Canon to produce something similar for September this year.

    Darragh.

    1. I was standing at the redrock booth at cinegear last month and the letus guy was trying to convince redrock to sell him the livelens. canon doesn’t even work with third party lens manufacturers like sigma and tamron so their lenses will work with canon cameras. letus sounds like a bunch of smoke

      dj

  2. I want to use canon lenses on a cmount camera using the live lens to control the aperture, I have bought and was told by redrock that it would work as the electronics are independent, so far all I get is nada? suggestions anyone, I just one to change the aperture using this gizmo and engineer my own cmount adapter ring,

  3. “bring your Canon DSLR with you to set the aperture then remove the lens from it and stick it on the adaptor”

    How is this possible? I have an ‘old’ 350D and I can’t seem to make the aperture ‘stick’.

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