Until today the only game in town was the Metabones Speedbooster, which for anyone who has looked into it knows, is very expensive. Fotodiox, a popular brand for budget photography equipment and accessories, has announced their own budget “Speedbooster,” called the Excell +1.
Just like the Metabones Speedbooster, the Fotodiox Excell +1 takes your lenses and adds about a stop of light to their max aperture, with the added side effect of shortening the focal length. So, for example, with a x2 crop, a 50mm lens would normally act like a 100mm. But with the speedbooster, the lens would act more like a 70mm, but with an added stop of light.
Fotodiox has said that the new Excell +1 will launch with Nikon G and Canon FD versions of the adapter, which will convert the Nikon/Canon glass to the Micro Four Thirds camera. The really interesting thing here will be the price on these new adapters, which Fotodiox will open at an introductory $139.99 price (only if bought directly from Fotodiox), before going up to their normal retail price of $159.99.
One has to wonder though, with the Metebones Speedbooster costing $400+, can the Fotodiox deliver than same performance (or even close)? Where did Fotodiox have to skimp to get the price down so low? If it was in the glass element, then image quality could be negatively impacted. It will be interesting to test these two adapters against each other to see if the Excell +1 holds up. Stay tuned in the future for a review.
If you are interested in one of these new Fotodiox Excell +1 adapters you can find them over on B&H, the Nikon mount version here and the Canon mount version here.
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What are your thoughts on these new Excell +1 adapters from Fotodiox? Do you think they will be able to deliver the same, or at least comparable performance to the Metabones versions? Leave a comment below.
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