Can you use a focal reducer (speed booster) to make Nikon FX lenses wider and faster on a Nikon DX DSLR?

Asked 5/23/2019

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I’m wondering if the opposite of a teleconverter is possible on a Nikon DX camera. Specifically, can a focal reducer/speed booster be used with a Nikon FX lens on a Nikon DX DSLR to reduce the effective focal length and gain light, so the lens behaves wider and faster on the crop sensor?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

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The nice thing about teleconverters is that they extend the effective focal length of the lens. That makes it easy to design them with enough thickness in front of the camera's mounting flange to fit all of the needed optics inside.

In the case of speed boosters, though, we are effectively reducing the lens' focal length, which means the lens elements in the booster need to be brought closer to the camera's sensor than the flange mount. Pretty much every speed booster I've seen is used to adapt a lens made for a longer registration distance to a camera with a shorter registration distance, i.e. a Canon EF lens with a 44mm registration distance adapted to a Sony camera with an 18mm registration distance. The speed booster occupies the space in the 26mm difference between the 44mm Canon EF mount and the 18mm Sony E-mount.

To create a speedbooster placed between a lens and camera with the same mount would require it to have an effective optical thickness of zero if infinity focus is desired. While this could be done using some of the same design techniques that go into making lenses with retrofocus designs, which have an effective focal length shorter than the camera's registration distance, it would necessarily be large, heavy, and expensive. You'd probably also have mirror clearance issues with cameras that have reflex mirrors. So far I've never seen anyone market such an adapter.

My proposal is to take a lens at a given focal length that was designed for an FX camera, ie. having an image circle to cover a FX sensor, and reduce the focal distance, ie. shrink the image to DX sensor size, so that the wide angle of the lens is unchanged on the sensor, the light will be compressed into a smaller area of the chip and therefore the lens will be 'faster'.

Your proposal requires the glass for the reducer to be between the lens' flange and the camera's sensor without moving the lens forward from its position against the camera's flange. There's no practical way to do that because:

  1. There's nothing on the back of the FX lens for a "countersunk" adapter inside the flange ring to attach to.
  2. That pesky little mirror would need to occupy the same space as the focal reducer inside the camera's light box.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

7y ago

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In practice, no—not on a Nikon DX DSLR with native Nikon F-mount FX lenses. A focal reducer works by shrinking the image circle and effectively shortening the lens’s focal length, but it also requires the lens to sit closer to the sensor than normal. That only works when adapting a lens from a system with a longer flange focal distance to a camera with a much shorter one, leaving physical room for the reducer optics. Nikon F to Nikon F has essentially no extra space, and on a DSLR the mirror box also prevents the optics or lens from protruding inward. That’s why speed boosters are commonly used on mirrorless cameras with short registration distances, not between native DSLR lenses and bodies of the same mount.

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