Step Down Adapter For The Meike Lens

Order yours here.

More Ancient Stuff: I appears that I have the urge to "trick out" my equipment, as I frequently buy a variety of accessories just to make my cameras look or handle exactly the way I want them to. In the photo community such additions are often called "kluges", the photographer's version of pulling a MacGyver. This linking of disparate parts to improve appearance and performance isn't unique to photographers. For example, consider the heavily modified Mini Coopers and Hondas. Hey, if that trunk-mounted spoiler helps you make tighter high-speed turns even when you're waiting for the light to change, who am I to judge?

Here's where we left off. Notice that the Fuji 27mm lens with its new OEM hood (#LH-XF27, left) is far more compact than the Meike 28mm lens with its attached JJC lens hood (order yours here), which was designed for use on the fixed lens Fuji X-70.  I described the required Male-Male Threaded Adapter (MMTA) in this post. For the record, I already had the hood, so adapting it was, at the time, an economical solution. It has served well, and because the hood is so deep, I never bothered to install a protective filter.

From the get-go it was obvious that the hood on the left is much more compact than the hood on the right. After checking e-Bay, I found the adapter I was looking for: a 49-39mm Stepdown Adapter. Conventional wisdom suggests that the such a reduction in diameter could result in some serious vignetting, but I'm thinking that it just might work because the Fuji lens and the Meike have a similar form factor. 

Hard Dates: This post has been delayed by the unusually long time between my placing the order (Saturday, June 18) and the adapter's actual arrival date (Thursday, June 30 ). I find it interesting that the only vendor for this unusual adapter in the entire eBay world is located in the U.K., or Wales to be precise.  Funny to see that my $10.00 purchase required a Customs Declaration, but after all, it did travel over 5,000 miles, or over 8,000 kilometers. 

I must acknowledge that few situations calling for such a odd paring of threads, but I'm still surprised that getting was so difficult. Perhaps it's because that a stepdown ring this extreme will almost certain cause severe vignetting.

It is apparent that the adapted Fuji hood mounted on the slightly taller Meike lens (right) closely matches the size of the original 27mm F 2.8 Fuji lens (left). I ran an informal vignetting test and found no noticeable change with the new installation.

For the cost of that adapter I have achieved a level of bliss similar to the time I adapted the big hood to the lens using the MMTA, only better. I am happy enough with this kluge to call it "over and out".

Step Up Adapters For The Nisi Filter System

Original Image Source: Click here.

While viewing the posts from photographer / blogger Mattias Burling in April, I stumbled upon one about two favorite accessories for his Ricoh GR III, a compact camera similar in size and performance to the Fuji X100. The post convinced me (no great effort) to purchase the Light Pix Q20. In addition, I bought the NiSi Filter System which was also available for the Fuji X100 series of cameras. It is basically a filter holder that can hold any two (or one) of the four glass filters supplied in the Pro Package: A 3-stop ND filter, a Graduated ND filter, a polarizer, and the cooling filter for taming incandescent light sources when shooting night scenes. All of this filtration goodness was packed in a convenient protective case.

Mr. Burling's description of the polarizer really got to me. This shot that I made in 2021 was my wake-up call on blue sky reflections on water. In this lucky accident, I managed to grab this photo where the sky's reflection added some visual interest to the image. Subsequently, I started to think about how I might better control reflections when they were part of the final composition. 

I took the filter kit and my X100S out for a test drive but couldn't find any suitable reflections, even though I was standing in front of the koi pond in San Mateo's Central Park. Since it was designed for the X100, it was easily threaded onto the camera once the protective bezel ring was removed. Unfortunately, no suitable photograph was produced.

Adaptations For Other Lenses: Since I now own a fleet of compact, manually focused lenses, it seems logical that I have adapters for all of them. For the moment, I am imagining a lightweight walk-about system consisting of three prime lenses with the filter kit and an appropriate collection of adapters. I chose these three because the their aperture and focusing rings are similarly positioned on the lens body, and the directions of rotation are the same.

• TTartisans 17mm F 1.4: 39mm filter threads
• TTartisans 35mm F 1.4: 40.5mm filter threads
• 7Artisans  55mm F 1.4: 49mm filter threads

Step Up Adapters: In an earlier post I explained that a special adapter, a male male 49mm adapter to be exact, would be needed.  This would convert the 49mm female Nisi filter holder to a conventional 49mm male thread. With that done, I purchased some Step Up Adapters to allow the lenses to mount a larger accessory. For these three lenses I would need both a 39 to 49, and a 40.5 to 49  step up adapter. In addition, I bought a 43mm and a 46mm for use with my other lenses. Now I can potentially use any of the four kit filters with any of my manual primes, since none accepts a filter larger than 49mm. 

By adding these simple adapter rings, I added a lot of filtering potential to my manually focusing lenses. So little space, so much potential. Now all I need is some time to test the system out.