Budgie Sony A7-series Shift-and-Stitch Adapter

Still on the road to Lafodis160, I've created yet another open-source, 3D-printable, adapter that facilitates capturing larger image areas with a conventional camera. A week ago, I posted the APSC2 (APS-C Squared) rotate-and-stitch adapter. Now I'm posting Budgie , which is intended for full-frame E-mount (FE) bodies....

Budgie on a Sony A7, with MD 50mm f/1.7 mounted via an MD-to-M adapter

The idea is to use your full-frame Sony E-mount (FE) body to capture images up to 48x36mm -- generously larger than the 44x33mm sensors people are often calling medium format. I argue that's really best considered as multi-aspect 135 film (35mm) format for getting the largest possible coverage sampling using a designed-for-full-frame lens.

Here are a few examples shot in The Arboretum, which is the State Botanical Garden of Kentucky. Each image is taken behind a designed-for-135-film lens, but captures an image area of approximately 48x36mm. They were taken using a tripod and the 2nd prototype Budgie (the current version is the 5th design, which gives more precise alignment than the 2nd while avoiding mounting collisions with the body). The camera was a Sony A7R II with various Minolta SR/MC/MD mount lenses, and images were stitched using Hugin with JPEGs directly from the camera. I didn't note which lens was used for each, but I tried a variety of old lenses from 19mm to 135mm (the 19mm Vivitar vignetted the most). I also shot many wide open to test that the adapter was consistent about focus plane across shifts, but most scenes aren't very flat and thus there's a bit too little DoF and too much bokeh in most shots; still, the continuous bokeh are one of the better reasons to do this, rather than stitching in which the lens is moved with the camera.

Hopefully, the above have enticed you to read further....

Budgie is an adapter for Leica M to Sony FE -- except it does offset shifting and includes a tripod mount. The name comes from the idea that the camera can be budged +/-12mm relative to the mounted lens to capture multiple images for stitching. The diagonal of a 36x24mm full frame is approximately 43.27mm. However, that's with the standard 3:2 aspect ratio. In 1:1 (square) format, a lens that can cover that diagonal also should be able to cover a square with approximately the same diagonal, which would be 30.59x30.59mm. In infinity:1 (the limit on panoramic aspect ratio), a lens covering that diagonal should be able to cover 43.27x0mm. In other words, all aspect ratios are contained within a 43.27x30.59mm capture rectangle -- which easily fits inside Budgie's 48x36mm space. Very few full-frame lenses will produce high-quality coverage of the full 48x36mm capture space, but quite a few will cover more than one would expect; for example, most lenses I've tried can cover a 36x36mm square image. In any case, using a 42MP body, such as the A7R II, stitching two (or better, three) shots will get you an approximately 48x36mm stitched image with about 84MP effective resolution. If you have a body like the Sony A7R IV, combining this with the camera's "pixel shift" will give up to 482MP of image detail! Of course, the image stitching software might give you any number of pixels, but the point is that you can get that medium-format look using your existing full-frame camera and lenses.

Why Leica M? For the same reason the TechArt Pro LM-EA7 uses it: nearly all old lens mounts can be adapted to Leica M, so this adapter is reasonably universal. For example, to use a Canon FD lens, simply mount a Canon FD to Leica M adapter on this and then mount your FD lens on the front. Not only are lots of adapters commercially available, but I've also designed and posted free 3D-printable M adapters for: Argus C3, Minolta/Konica-Minolta AF / SonyA, Canon FL/FD/FDn, Minolta SR/MC/MD, M42, and Kiev 10/15.

More details about Budgie are on Thingiverse , where I've also posted the STLs. It's a pretty simple print, but there are multiple parts. Here's how the adapter itself looks shifting; it simply slides the E part:

Budgie in all three shift positions

And, just for fun, here's what the five different versions it's evolved through look like:

5 tries (so far) to design this simple thing....

There's a reason they call 3D printing "rapid prototyping." I usually don't show the various design stages and prototypes, but I thought it might be instructional. It's also worth noting that I could have stopped with 20210615 if I just wantedone that worked for me, as opposed to one that will hopefully work for everyone.

E Dinkla wrote:

Thank you, looks very interesting. Yes, I felt left out with my A7RII Still do a bit as most of my adapted/converted vintage lenses are either EF or NEX mount now or are native ones for these mounts. But I see there is an EF to Leica M adapter. Have to study whether it may be better to change the design to EF mount.

A lot of folks collected adapters to EF, but I never did. I used to adapt to Minolta AF / Sony A. When I got my NEX-5, I started adapting directly to E. However, when focal reducers were invented, I actually standardized on Canon FL/FD/FDn as soon as I had figured-out how to adapt Minolta SR/MC/MD to it, because it was the most universal mount that had focal reducers available, but very few commercial adapters are available to Canon FL/FD/FDn. Then TechArt came out with the LM-EA7, so M became my universal acceptor. I also have various adapters for my less-used camera mounts: EF, EF-M, and MFT. In sum, I have a heck of a lot of lens adapters -- literally hundreds.

The M mount is very challenging for things like this because it's so short and 3D printing isn't great for thin parts with tiny features (e.g., screws much smaller than 1/4-20), so there would be an advantage to directly using other mounts rather than M....

Anyway first I get a better 3D printer than the one I have now.

These were made on my AnyCubic Linear Plus, which cost $180 new... but unfortunately is no longer in production. It's a delta with linear rails -- you couldn't buy one of the three rails in it as a US-made product for what the entire printer cost, so I'm guessing their profit margin wasn't great even building it in China. Oh well. 

Wow, I wasn't even aware someone managed to figure out MD-> FD. Very impressive. Now I just wish the thin MD -> EF mount wasn't so pricey.

I didn't realise shift adapters could be so simple- too much time spent staring at rack & pinons. Some wise words on image circle capturing, I hope more people can see this.

ProfHankD wrote:

Still on the road to Lafodis160, I've created yet another open-source, 3D-printable, adapter that facilitates capturing larger image areas with a conventional camera. A week ago, I posted the APSC2 (APS-C Squared) rotate-and-stitch adapter. Now I'm posting Budgie , which is intended for full-frame E-mount (FE) bodies....

The idea is to use your full-frame Sony E-mount (FE) body to capture images up to 48x36mm -- generously larger than the 44x33mm sensors people are often calling medium format. I argue that's really best considered as multi-aspect 135 film (35mm) format for getting the largest possible coverage sampling using a designed-for-full-frame lens.

Here are a few examples shot in The Arboretum, which is the State Botanical Garden of Kentucky. Each image is taken behind a designed-for-135-film lens, but captures an image area of approximately 48x36mm. They were taken using a tripod and the 2nd prototype Budgie (the current version is the 5th design, which gives more precise alignment than the 2nd while avoiding mounting collisions with the body). The camera was a Sony A7R II with various Minolta SR/MC/MD mount lenses, and images were stitched using Hugin with JPEGs directly from the camera. I didn't note which lens was used for each, but I tried a variety of old lenses from 19mm to 135mm (the 19mm Vivitar vignetted the most). I also shot many wide open to test that the adapter was consistent about focus plane across shifts, but most scenes aren't very flat and thus there's a bit too little DoF and too much bokeh in most shots; still, the continuous bokeh are one of the better reasons to do this, rather than stitching in which the lens is moved with the camera.

Hopefully, the above have enticed you to read further....

Budgie is an adapter for Leica M to Sony FE -- except it does offset shifting and includes a tripod mount. The name comes from the idea that the camera can be budged +/-12mm relative to the mounted lens to capture multiple images for stitching. The diagonal of a 36x24mm full frame is approximately 43.27mm. However, that's with the standard 3:2 aspect ratio. In 1:1 (square) format, a lens that can cover that diagonal also should be able to cover a square with approximately the same diagonal, which would be 30.59x30.59mm. In infinity:1 (the limit on panoramic aspect ratio), a lens covering that diagonal should be able to cover 43.27x0mm. In other words, all aspect ratios are contained within a 43.27x30.59mm capture rectangle -- which easily fits inside Budgie's 48x36mm space. Very few full-frame lenses will produce high-quality coverage of the full 48x36mm capture space, but quite a few will cover more than one would expect; for example, most lenses I've tried can cover a 36x36mm square image. In any case, using a 42MP body, such as the A7R II, stitching two (or better, three) shots will get you an approximately 48x36mm stitched image with about 84MP effective resolution. If you have a body like the Sony A7R IV, combining this with the camera's "pixel shift" will give up to 482MP of image detail! Of course, the image stitching software might give you any number of pixels, but the point is that you can get that medium-format look using your existing full-frame camera and lenses.

Why Leica M? For the same reason the TechArt Pro LM-EA7 uses it: nearly all old lens mounts can be adapted to Leica M, so this adapter is reasonably universal. For example, to use a Canon FD lens, simply mount a Canon FD to Leica M adapter on this and then mount your FD lens on the front. Not only are lots of adapters commercially available, but I've also designed and posted free 3D-printable M adapters for: Argus C3, Minolta/Konica-Minolta AF / SonyA, Canon FL/FD/FDn, Minolta SR/MC/MD, M42, and Kiev 10/15.

More details about Budgie are on Thingiverse , where I've also posted the STLs. It's a pretty simple print, but there are multiple parts. Here's how the adapter itself looks shifting; it simply slides the E part:

And, just for fun, here's what the five different versions it's evolved through look like:

There's a reason they call 3D printing "rapid prototyping." I usually don't show the various design stages and prototypes, but I thought it might be instructional. It's also worth noting that I could have stopped with 20210615 if I just wantedone that worked for me, as opposed to one that will hopefully work for everyone.

Budgie?  I assume it's going cheep?

DaSigmaGuy wrote:

ProfHankD wrote:

Budgie is an adapter for Leica M to Sony FE -- except it does offset shifting and includes a tripod mount. The name comes from the idea that the camera can be budged +/-12mm relative to the mounted lens to capture multiple images for stitching. ...

More details about Budgie are on Thingiverse , where I've also posted the STLs.

Budgie? I assume it's going cheep?

Cheep. Cheap? It's actually free, as in free beer. 

However, you may have noticed the colored bird on it:

Well, that's in honor of a budgie my family had decades ago. Our budgie was a cyan color, which led to my brother very creatively naming it Cyan A. Bird. So, you see, there's a back story to everything.... 

Well, there's now a new version of Budgie with two significant tweaks:

• It's got an Arca-Swiss-compatible base, which also has 6 threaded 1/4-20 mounting points in case you don't have an Arca-compatible tripod.
• It is now 100% 3D printed material. Instead of using metal 1/4-20 screws to hold the sliding mechanism together, you 3D print a couple of parts that get welded in place with a soldering iron. This primarily was done to solve the problem of screws slowly unscrewing with use, but the 100% 3D printed material aspect doesn't hurt.

Here's what it looks like:

Unfortunately, that's my A7II on it rather than my A7RII, but here's a quick 3-shot full-size stitch from the A7II using it:

It's surprising that the Minolta MD 50mm f/1.7 wide open can cover 48x36mm this well, but many lenses do. Not bad for a lens designed for a 43mm circle to handle 60mm diagonal this well...

Notice that the image isn't quite the theoretical 8000x6000 pixels it should be, but 7907x5957. That's from minor edge misalignments being cropped out by Hugin when it stitched the SOOC JPEGs. It's still over 98% of what the theoretical maximum image area (pixel count) would have been with the A7II.

ProfHankD wrote:

Still on the road to Lafodis160, I've created yet another open-source, 3D-printable, adapter that facilitates capturing larger image areas with a conventional camera. A week ago, I posted the APSC2 (APS-C Squared) rotate-and-stitch adapter. Now I'm posting Budgie , which is intended for full-frame E-mount (FE) bodies....

Budgie on a Sony A7, with MD 50mm f/1.7 mounted via an MD-to-M adapter

The idea is to use your full-frame Sony E-mount (FE) body to capture images up to 48x36mm -- generously larger than the 44x33mm sensors people are often calling medium format. I argue that's really best considered as multi-aspect 135 film (35mm) format for getting the largest possible coverage sampling using a designed-for-full-frame lens.

Here are a few examples shot in The Arboretum, which is the State Botanical Garden of Kentucky. Each image is taken behind a designed-for-135-film lens, but captures an image area of approximately 48x36mm. They were taken using a tripod and the 2nd prototype Budgie (the current version is the 5th design, which gives more precise alignment than the 2nd while avoiding mounting collisions with the body). The camera was a Sony A7R II with various Minolta SR/MC/MD mount lenses, and images were stitched using Hugin with JPEGs directly from the camera. I didn't note which lens was used for each, but I tried a variety of old lenses from 19mm to 135mm (the 19mm Vivitar vignetted the most). I also shot many wide open to test that the adapter was consistent about focus plane across shifts, but most scenes aren't very flat and thus there's a bit too little DoF and too much bokeh in most shots; still, the continuous bokeh are one of the better reasons to do this, rather than stitching in which the lens is moved with the camera.

Hopefully, the above have enticed you to read further....

Budgie is an adapter for Leica M to Sony FE -- except it does offset shifting and includes a tripod mount. The name comes from the idea that the camera can be budged +/-12mm relative to the mounted lens to capture multiple images for stitching. The diagonal of a 36x24mm full frame is approximately 43.27mm. However, that's with the standard 3:2 aspect ratio. In 1:1 (square) format, a lens that can cover that diagonal also should be able to cover a square with approximately the same diagonal, which would be 30.59x30.59mm. In infinity:1 (the limit on panoramic aspect ratio), a lens covering that diagonal should be able to cover 43.27x0mm. In other words, all aspect ratios are contained within a 43.27x30.59mm capture rectangle -- which easily fits inside Budgie's 48x36mm space. Very few full-frame lenses will produce high-quality coverage of the full 48x36mm capture space, but quite a few will cover more than one would expect; for example, most lenses I've tried can cover a 36x36mm square image. In any case, using a 42MP body, such as the A7R II, stitching two (or better, three) shots will get you an approximately 48x36mm stitched image with about 84MP effective resolution. If you have a body like the Sony A7R IV, combining this with the camera's "pixel shift" will give up to 482MP of image detail! Of course, the image stitching software might give you any number of pixels, but the point is that you can get that medium-format look using your existing full-frame camera and lenses.

Why Leica M? For the same reason the TechArt Pro LM-EA7 uses it: nearly all old lens mounts can be adapted to Leica M, so this adapter is reasonably universal. For example, to use a Canon FD lens, simply mount a Canon FD to Leica M adapter on this and then mount your FD lens on the front. Not only are lots of adapters commercially available, but I've also designed and posted free 3D-printable M adapters for: Argus C3, Minolta/Konica-Minolta AF / SonyA, Canon FL/FD/FDn, Minolta SR/MC/MD, M42, and Kiev 10/15.

More details about Budgie are on Thingiverse , where I've also posted the STLs. It's a pretty simple print, but there are multiple parts. Here's how the adapter itself looks shifting; it simply slides the E part:

Budgie in all three shift positions

And, just for fun, here's what the five different versions it's evolved through look like:

5 tries (so far) to design this simple thing....

There's a reason they call 3D printing "rapid prototyping." I usually don't show the various design stages and prototypes, but I thought it might be instructional. It's also worth noting that I could have stopped with 20210615 if I just wantedone that worked for me, as opposed to one that will hopefully work for everyone.

Very nice. It's like you've read my mind! I was thinking about this within the past week, about how I could do something like this (not making the adapter but shifting) my APS-C camera. I was also wondering back then whether or not such method can make for a better result than using the Brenizer method aka "Bokehrama" as has been typically known. I've seen you've already written an explanation somewhere in the text, so I may look at that in greater detail later.
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