Metabones Speed Booster heads to Blackmagic Cinema Camera, hits f/0.74

Earlier this year, Metabones wowed with its "Speed Booster" adapters, which managed to let you reduce the effective crop factor of a camera, and also increase the maximum aperture. Now the company has announced another wave of Speed Boosters, this time for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (BMCC) and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera (BMPCC) — and these will even let you shoot as fast as f/0.74.

The pair of Blackmagic cameras both have Micro Four Thirds mounts, but substantially smaller sensors, giving a 2.39x crop factor on the BMCC and 2.88x on the BMPCC. The new adapters from Metabones allow you to mount Nikon F lenses onto the cameras, and reduce those 1.53x and 1.75x respectively. Both mounts will cost $489 a pop.

For the BMCC, that gives it an effective crop factor on par with APS-C sensors, despite being much smaller. It also adds 1 1/3 stops, to a maximum aperture of f/0.8. According to Metabones, "a 50mm f/1.2 becomes a 32mm f/0.80, and Sigma’s new 18-35mm f/1.8 will become an 11.5-22.5mm f/1.1."

For the Pocket version of the camera, the light limits can be pushed even further, adding 1 2/3 stops, to a maximum of f/0.74, with the company saying "For example, a 50mm f/1.2 now becomes a 29mm f/0.74, and the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 becomes the world’s fastest zoom lens at 10.5-20.3mm f/1.0 with stunningly sharp performance."

The mounts will work with any Nikon DX or FX lenses — but there's no indication if there are Canon or other lens mount adapters in the works. And, even though the Blackmagics use a Micro Four Thirds mount, these adapters won't work on Micro Four Thirds cameras, as they have an element that projects too far into the back.

For a technical look at how well the new Speedbones perform, both EOSHD and Lensrentals put them through their paces — but for a simpler look, check out this incredible video, shot at f/0.74.