Are Canon EF to Sony E Lens Adapters Worth It? (Part 1)

Part one of our Canon EF to Sony E Mount Lens Adapter comparison. Click here for Part 2, and click here for Part 3.

If you are considering switching from Canon cameras to Sony, you may be wondering how well you’ll be able to make your Canon EF and EF-S mount lenses work with your Sony E Mount camera.

In this article, we compare the Metabones V and Sigma MC-11 EF/EF-S to E mount adapters and compare their performance to lenses mounted natively on a Canon camera.



Here at RELATE, our photography/videography inventory has been moving steadily towards Sony. In the past, we primarily shot with Canons, but video is extremely important in our media production, and as we demonstrate and discuss in our recent Focus Test videos on our show Tech Down Over, Sony’s newer cameras have quite an edge in on-site shooting, offering faster, more accurate focus and better contrast in adverse light conditions.

We use the Sony a7R III and the Canon 5DS R in this comparison, which we compared in Tech Down Over Episode 154, using equivalent native 50mm lenses.

In that episode, we mention that the a7R III has in-body image stabilization, whereas the 5DS R does not, and we shoot mostly handheld in the show. In this test, we take each set of shots from a tripod mount, using a 2-second timer.

We have no affiliation with any of the brands represented in this test; all equipment is owned by us.

Our Comparison

We shot three subjects in each set of pictures:

1. A toy owl, which was nearest to the cameras and generally had the lowest contrast (on average, all of our camera-adapter-lens combinations took the longest to focus on this one).

2. A “Robbie The Robot” figure (any "Forbidden Planet" fans out there?). This was the mid-distance target, and was invariably the easiest for the cameras to focus on due to its distinct, high-contrast silhouette.

3. A toy penguin, which was the farthest from the cameras. Two of our lenses struggled with focusing on this target, as we’ll elaborate on later.

Our tests will show crops of each target object, with each camera or camera-adapter combination placed side-by-side.

Because of time constraints, we took the photos in two sessions: the Sony a7R III pictures were in a separate session from those shot on the Canon 5DS R.

Lenses and Adapters Used:

Using our Sony a7R III, we tested out two EF-to-E Mount adapters, the Metabones EF to E Mount Mark V and the Sigma MC-11, and compared those to the same lenses mounted natively on the Canon 5DS R.

For today’s test, we shot all photos using AF-S.

We tested using nine lenses (pictured below):



1. Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG ø82 HSM Art

2. Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC ø72 HSM Art (This is an EF-S/Sigma DC mount lens, therefore we did not test this one on the Canon 5DS R, which has an EF mount.)

3. Tamron 85mm f/1.8 Di VC USD

4. Canon 50mm f/1.4 EF USM

5. Canon 35mm f/2 EF IS USM

6. Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG ø77 HSM Art

7. Canon 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 EF-S IS Nano USM (This did not fit the Sigma adapter, and as an EF-S lens, it does not work with the Canon 5DS R. Hence, we were only able to use this with the Metabones V.)

8. Canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III EF

9. Tamron SP 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC USD

Continue to Part 2 for our results.