Nikon F to Fujifilm X Smart Adapter

Steelsring is about to release their Nikon F to Fujifilm GFX mount smart adapter. You can see the latest protoype in the image above. On their website here, they write:

Main features:

1. Support Nikon AF-S G and E type lens, and AF-P G type lens contrast based AF in GFX 50s body.
2. Electromagnetic diaphragm of type E Lens can be controlled by GFX 50s body, allows AF in full open ( decided by camera body ) and step down for exposure.
3. Diaphragm of G type lens was manually controlled by aperture ring of adapter in real-time, so AF is conducted in real effective aperture as exposure. AF performance may be bad in low light/contrast, benefits are 1) Real aperture priority, 2) and totally no noise of consistent IRIS moving.
4. Full EXIF info recording. ( For G type lens, only the current max open aperture was displayed and recorded, no way to adjust it ).
5. Lens VR was support and effective on demand.

FX mount version adapter is in design phase, maybe with better performance of PDAF and auto aperture control version for your choice.

Note:

Support to AF-D type lens will be very limited, EXIF may works, but no AF absolutely.

Firmware Updates

Steelsring has a new firmware for the EF-FX and EF-GFX adapters.

Instax Film Shootout

If you weren’t hiding under a rock for the last decade, then you will have noticed that the instant film trend, launched back in 1972 with the iconic Polaroid SX-70 and ended in the nineties, is having an impressive revival thanks to Fujifilm Instax products in recent years.

But how was this revival made possible?

Fujifilm was just about to shut down their entire Instax production just like Polaroid did a few years earlier, when an unexpected event breathed new life into the agonizing market. You can find a more in-depth explanation of the several reasons of the boom here.

Since then, the sales numbers have skyrocketed over anything Fujifilm could have hoped and they passed from 100,000 sold cameras in 2004 to 7,500,000 sales in 2017. In the documentary “How Fujifilm survived the digital age”, a Fujifilm Instax employee says they simply can’t keep production up with the high demand.

The market is under firm control of Fujifilm and even more so the instax film market, which, as Polaroid says, is 99% controlled by Fujifilm, and we can now find endless versions of it, such as the Star Wars Instax Film, Comic Instax Film, Hello Kitty film, Candy Pop, Rainbow and so on and so forth.

Now, the instax-revival has motivated other companies to try to get a piece of the cake, too.

Polaroid (now owned by The Impossible Project) is fighting hard to try to regain their old glory, not only by offering their own Polaroid Instant Cameras and Polaroid Instant Printers, but also by bringing Fujifilm to court and accusing them that Fuji’s latest Instax Square Film design is a rip-off of Polaroids’ own film.

Of course as customers we can only be happy that more choices are available on the market now.

Now DPReview TV compared some of the Instant cameras on the market, which all take Fujifilm’s Instax Mini film:

• Fujifilm Instax SQ6
• Fujifilm Instax Mini 90
• Leica Sofort
• Mint Instaflex TL70

Here is what they say: