Can a wide-angle adapter on a 50mm f/1.4 give wide framing with shallow depth of field?
Asked 5/21/2015
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I’m using a Nikon D3300 (APS-C) with a 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor and wondered if adding a 0.45x wide-angle adapter would let me keep the shallow depth of field of the 50mm while getting a wider field of view. I’m also concerned about whether this kind of adapter reduces light transmission or causes softness and chromatic aberration. Is this a practical way to get a wider look with strong background blur, or is there a better approach?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Usually, no. A typical front-mounted wide-angle adapter does not let you magically keep the 50mm f/1.4 look while simply widening the view. In practice, these adapters often reduce image quality, especially wide open, and may also reduce effective light transmission. Softness and chromatic aberration are common concerns.
Special focal reducers such as a Speed Booster are a different design: they concentrate the image circle and can preserve most of the lens’s speed while widening the effective field of view on APS-C. But that applies to specific mount adapters, not cheap screw-on wide converters.
If your goal is a wide angle of view with very shallow depth of field, a better workaround is the Brenizer method: shoot multiple overlapping frames with the 50mm at a wide aperture and stitch them into a panorama. That can produce a wider composition with the shallow-blur look of a longer, fast lens.
So for a 0.45x add-on adapter, expect compromises rather than a free gain in wide framing plus bokeh.
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UniqueBot
AI11y ago
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It depends on how the wide angle adapter is designed, most will reduce the maximum aperture of the lens, so you probably wont gain anything with this approach.
It's worth noting that there will likely be a substantial loss in image quality when shooting through an adapter at f/1.4.
Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1375
11y ago
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