Canon R Mirrorless brings new life to the EF Life Size Converter!

Some of you may recall a lifetime ago when I posted a thread regarding Canon's EF Lifesize Converter;
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=93064

The Life-Size Converter was designed and marketed to be an accessory for one lens only, the EF 50mm "Compact Macro" which on it's own offered 1/2 life-size. Add the "Life-size Converter" and that 50mm would offer 1:1 full life size capability.

In a nutshell, the thread was about the breakthrough "discovery" of the fact that contrary to Canon's own insistence, this remarkable combination teleconverter with extension tube could be used with ANY EF mount lens (optically)

The downside was that with most lenses and bodies, the AF was horrible. AF would have fits and jiggers. I think it was Lester that called it a "feedback loop" that sent the AF into a death spiral. For many Macro shooters however, no big deal, manual would be a usable solution and this little tools utility was a revelation.

Well, over the years as newer and better bodies have come out I have often gone back to re-try this converter. the last big try was when te 1DXII/5D4's new AF had MAJOR upgrade in their ability to work with Teleconverters in general.
Alas, no such luck getting an improvement with the converter.

Well, i am here to say that this time, with the switch from the Phase Detect AF of the SLR to the Dual Pixel contrast Detect of the new Canon Mirrorless bodies, on my R5 all the AF woes are behind us.

I've used it with EF 50mm f/1.8 STM, EF 100-400mm L IS II, and EF 1/2.8 100mm macro (Classic) and in all cases, AF was solid and accurate. No flips or twists, just lock and load.

The Life size converter combines what I estimated to be approx 1.5/1.6x (the converter does not report any change to FL or aperture.)
Add in the extension tube aspect and you can also focus much closer. Combined you dramatically increase the magnification.

Of course with the tube effect, you lose infinity focus. In fact it's impact on focus of any distance at all is dramatic, yet varies from lens to lens.

With the little 50mm f/1.8 STM, the farthest I could be from a subject before it was too far away to focus was only about 13 icnhes!

With the 100mm macro that distance opened up to about 7 feet.

With this converter, and lens you have, including zooms, will make a close up lens, and now finally years later the mirrorless AF will let you do this and retain fully functioning Autofocus.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #19165897
Some of you may recall a lifetime ago when I posted a thread regarding Canon's EF Lifesize Converter;
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=93064

The Life-Size Converter was designed and marketed to be an accessory for one lens only, the EF 50mm "Compact Macro" which on it's own offered 1/2 life-size. Add the "Life-size Converter" and that 50mm would offer 1:1 full life size capability.

In a nutshell, the thread was about the breakthrough "discovery" of the fact that contrary to Canon's own insistence, this remarkable combination teleconverter with extension tube could be used with ANY EF mount lens (optically)

The downside was that with most lenses and bodies, the AF was horrible. AF would have fits and jiggers. I think it was Lester that called it a "feedback loop" that sent the AF into a death spiral. For many Macro shooters however, no big deal, manual would be a usable solution and this little tools utility was a revelation.

Well, over the years as newer and better bodies have come out I have often gone back to re-try this converter. the last big try was when te 1DXII/5D4's new AF had MAJOR upgrade in their ability to work with Teleconverters in general.
Alas, no such luck getting an improvement with the converter.

Well, i am here to say that this time, with the switch from the Phase Detect AF of the SLR to the Dual Pixel contrast Detect of the new Canon Mirrorless bodies, all the AF woes are behind us.

I've used it with EF 50mm f/1.8 STM, EF 100-400mm L IS II, and EF 1/2.8 100mm macro (Classic) and in all cases, AF was solid and accurate. No flips or twists, just lock and load.

The Life size converter combines what I estimated to be approx 1.5/1.6x (the converter does not report any change to FL or aperture.)
Add in the extension tube aspect and you can also focus much closer. Combined you dramatically increase the magnification.

Of course with the tube effect, you lose infinity focus. In fact it's impact on focus of any distance at all is dramatic, yet varies from lens to lens.

With the little 50mm f/1.8 STM, the farthest I could be from a subject before it was too far away to focus was only about 13 icnhes!

With the 100mm macro that distance opened up to about 7 feet.

With this converter, and lens you have, including zooms, will make a close up lens, and now finally years later the mirrorless AF will let you do this and retain fully functioning Autofocus.

I had never heard of EF life size converter before.
Learned something today.
But looks like it is out of production as google brings handful used sale listings.
Thanks for sharing though.

Thank you, Jake, for pointing out the new possibilities with the EF LSC. I placed it on order and I'm quite excited to find out what I can do with this. I do macros once in awhile with my EF 100mm Macro. It'd be very interesting to see what I'd get with some of my zoom lenses, such as Sigma 150-600C!

Have you used the EF LSC with your latest R5? Any hiccups of using it on the R5? With the R5's DP-AFII, its macro fine tuning and pre-shot magnification review capabilities, the EF LSC will breathe a new life.

SYS wrote in post #19166217
...

Have you used the EF LSC with your latest R5? Any hiccups of using it on the R5? With the R5's DP-AFII, its macro fine tuning and pre-shot magnification review capabilities, the EF LSC will breathe a new life.

Well yes, that was the point of my post!

( I went back and added bold to the sentence that makes it more clear)

This sounds very interesting. So if I took say my Canon 70-200ii lens and added it to my Canon R6 with the EF Life Size Converter I could focus closer and also would get the 1.5/1.6x magnification.

Curious how this would differ from adding say a 1.4x TC and an extension tube.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #19166300
Well yes, that was the point of my post!

( I went back and added bold to the sentence that makes it more clear)

Now I see it, but I could swear that I didn't see the R5 mentioned when I first read your post (in R5 thread?). I believe you also have 5D IV, which has DP-AF, so I just wanted to confirm. Your observations regarding the EF LSC should apply to both 5D IV and R5, right?

SYS wrote in post #19166631
Now I see it, but I could swear that I didn't see the R5 mentioned when I first read your post (in R5 thread?). I believe you also have 5D IV, which has DP-AF, so I just wanted to confirm. Your observations regarding the EF LSC should apply to both 5D IV and R5, right?

Good point!

On the 5D4 I only ever thought to test it with regular optical viewfinder AF. (which it failed to AF)

Good point. I forget that a lot of what we are able to do with the mirrorless could be done via live view. I just never used it. For macro though, of course, live view is really the way to go. that said, I feel like I might have tried it on the EOS-R and not had the good results, but I may be misremembering.

Looks like I'll have to give both a try at some point soon and post here.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #19166788
Good point!

On the 5D4 I only ever thought to test it with regular optical viewfinder AF. (which it failed to AF)

Good point. I forget that a lot of what we are able to do with the mirrorless could be done via live view. I just never used it. For macro though, of course, live view is really the way to go. that said, I feel like I might have tried it on the EOS-R and not had the good results, but I may be misremembering.

Looks like I'll have to give both a try at some point soon and post here.

My EF LSC's due to arrive by this Friday, and I'll also post what I find out by using it on both 5D IV and R5.

Received the LSC a day early, what looked to me like a used copy. With Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens, I tested it on both 5D IV and R5 (with adapter) and the AF works on both. The main difference is that the R5 focused much better with the help of IBIS hand-held. The R5's pre-focus white box immediately found this ladybug's eyes, too.

100mm Macro

Cool!

Live view on the 5D4?

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #19168328
Cool!

Live view on the 5D4?

No, this was a very quick test on AF behavior.

SYS wrote in post #19168330
No, this was a very quick test on AF behavior.

Fascinating!

So these are test shots from this morning, uncropped with some sharpening and NR applied. The Eye-AF and tracking worked just as normal with no noticeable IQ degradation.

R5/Adapter/Sigma 150-600C @600mm 1/1250sec f/7.1 ISO 3200 (didn't focus right, error on my part)

Wow!

The previous squirrel photos were shot through my kitchen window glass from a short distance, but today I was able to shoot outside, this time from a good distance. The first one was shot awhile back right after I receive the R5 without the LSC. The second one was shot today with the LSC. I'm not a measurebator, but I think the LSC picks up about two ISO stops.

R5/Sigma 150-600C Without LSC