Honest Review of Viltrox NexusFocus Autofocus Adapter for Manual Cine Lenses

Somewhere in this setup is potentially camera gear of the year. What am I talking about? It is in between these two lines. And essentially turns any PL mount manual lens into a full-blown autofocus lens with touch focus, tracking, and face detection. Basically, whatever Sony has to offer for the native autofocus system. Now, I don't know if you can tell, I am genuinely excited about this gear because one, I like big, beautiful manual focus lens and I cannot lie, but I shoot way too many run and gun situation and I just don't have a big crew and I hate manual focusing. Two, I try LiDAR. There are limitations with that. Even the DJI focus system with the LiDAR, it's a pretty big setup. And even with the PD movie one I have right here, tried this many times. It's a small setup. However, there are some limitations with these. With the LiDAR system, you can't shoot in full sunlight. And two, you can't fast select subjects that are moving around that are really far away. And with the LiDAR system, you have to precisely calibrate every single lens and that's just a hassle. So I'm happy to tell you with this new system, all those limitation and pain points are just gone. However, there are some new pain points and limitations. So I'm going to go over those in this video. So as usual, I'm going to tell you guys about the pros, but also the cons as in limitation you should be aware of. But I'm not going to just tell you guys the limitation or the problems and complaints, but I'm going to try to see if I can solve these limitations for you guys. So I will go over exactly how this system works and how to set it up. But not only the big setup like this, but also a smaller setup like this. So you can gimbal this. So let's go over it. But first as a disclaimer, this video is not sponsored. Yes, Viltrox did send me these adapters. There's one right here. This is like the early prototypes and this is like almost final production model. And also to tell you, I've been using these devices for almost two months. So a very long time. So I should be able to tell you guys about everything I experienced. Now, if you're not familiar with PD Movie LiDAR system, I have a video right here reviewing it. I suggest you watch that one because you have to understand all the pain points of that device to really appreciate what we have here today. So with that in mind, let's go over the components of this actual device. It's really simple, right? So all it is, is this PL to E-mount adapter. You guys are familiar with this kind of adapter. If you use any kind of PL mount lens with the Sony system, but the size of it, it's pretty compact. It's not going to be much bigger than your regular average size adapter. Only thing you might notice that's a little bit different is that there's an LCD screen on the top. This is where your lens profile is indicated. So we'll go over that a little bit later. But fundamentally, what this device is doing is that it's intercepting the autofocus signal from your Sony camera that's sending it over to the actual lens. And using that information to actually drive the motor to autofocus, which is genius. I don't know why no one's thought of that before, but it works same thing with the aperture. Even zoom motor if you decide to go with that package. But let's talk about the pros of this first. First, it's going to be the build quality. So I appreciate this build quality. Now, Viltrox is not new to making a PL adapter like this one. This is PL to L-mount. Pretty solid. One of the things they have I appreciate is the weather seal. And this is not a flimsy weather seal. It's pretty thick right here. Same thing goes with this one. There is a pretty thick weather seal right here. And one of the pros I would say is just a simple design. And what's cool about it is that you can actually make this work right away. So without even knowing how to calibrate the lens, if you put this motor on with the adapter, with your manual lens and you turn it on, the motor is going to spin automatically back and forth to know where the start and the end point of your focus gear is. Long as there's a hard stop, by the way. So if your lens is linear and has hard stop, technically it'll just start working right away without calibrating. Now, we are going to talk about the calibration part a little bit later in this video because that's very important. But the motor is also very simple. There is a physical button right here, left and right, depending on which side of the camera you mount the motors on. So that is super simple in terms of managing that. And in order to switch the motor to focus or aperture, all you have to do is just hold this button down for a couple seconds and you let it go and the status light will change. So to select the lens profile, which we'll go over how to set that up, but there are two buttons on the side to switch over. It's just short press to go forward and a little bit of long press, like second and a half, two seconds to select. So you can select the brand of the lens and the actual focal length. And once that lens is selected, all you have to do is just reboot the system and you're on that lens profile. So once everything is set up, technically you don't need the app to use it, but it does require an app, which we'll go over later too. But one thing I noticed on the simplicity of this setup, it is very not power hungry. For example, a single V mount battery and just go all day shooting or even the gimbal setup guys. I know I have this sensor open. This makes me nervous. But even the gimbal, I had this tiny little MPF battery. So this will get me at least like about four hours of shoot. And these are so interchangeable. So you just swap another one in and ready to go. But let's talk about the actual autofocus performance because that is the most important part. So here's a really good example. As you guys know, I second shoot for Vu from MVU Films. So this is with the Vespa 2 50mm prime. This is right before we shot the reception and I'm using the Sony a7V. It's actually Vu's. He's letting me use it and look how it tracks. Okay, so you don't think that's cool enough. I know we've seen that kind of shot in a LiDAR. Here is a cake cutting where I'm actually touching the cake and it is track focusing that. Oh yeah, and that's a cakewalk for this system. Here's something that LiDAR cannot do, at least the PD Movie one. This is like way into the reception and people are dancing. A PD Movie LiDAR system cannot distinguish what's in the foreground and the background in terms of which person you're trying to film dancing. I am literally able to just touch the Sony screen and select the person I want to film and it is tracking that shot. Now this adapter is going to literally adapt to the Sony autofocus setting. So if you set your autofocus to like really high and really fast, it's going to follow that speed. I believe in that dancing example that was set to like second highest. So yesterday I went ahead and put the a7IV sensitivity on autofocus to absolute max and the speed to max and this is what that looks like. Yeah, that feels like a pretty decent autofocus lens to me even though it's manual focus. That was the Blazer Mantis by the way. Now is it good as GM autofocus lens? No, you can kind of see there's a little bit of like dampening to it which some people might like that. So that does prevent the lens from like pulsing. And before we go over the con, the juiciness of the negative things, let's talk about the last pro and that is going to be how easy it is to calibrate. I mentioned earlier that you can just start using the lens right away without doing the full calibration, which is true. However, the recommendation is that you do do a whole full calibration before you go on a shoot because if you don't fully calibrate, yes, it will autofocus to whatever you touch. But in between the actual distance, it's not as smooth as where you fully calibrate it, you get that whole entire smoothness focus front to back. So here's an example shot of the Mantis lens. Shout out to Vu from Envofilm for letting me borrow it so I can look cool doing this. Yeah, these shots aren't bad. You can see that there's a little bit of like ketchup, but it's still possible. So here's how easy it is to fully calibrate it. So yes, you do need an app for this section. All you need is the focus chart that they provide. Stick that onto the wall and just follow a simple direction from the app. Basically, it's going to ask you to go to a certain distance to make sure that chart's in focus and you just literally hit a button. Yeah, you don't have to get your ruler out trying to measure exactly the distance from the flange. Like you don't have to calibrate three different distances. Like yeah, this is like the lazy man's calibration. You just sit back and watch the show. It's essentially using the autofocus system from the camera to validate whether that's in focus. It's going to test it at different aperture to make sure that information is valid. So let's talk about the cons. Limitation you should be aware of. If I were to summarize this first half of the limitation is that this system is two motor bias. What I mean by that, in order to calibrate the focus, you have to have the aperture motor connected, which sounds fine. But when it comes to Mantis Lens, this is where it was really tough. Let me show you how close this motor is right now to the actual focus ring. So if you guys can see it, I am clearing that by millimeters. First, I thought I was not going to make this, but long as the camera is directly centered and it's straight, you can make this happen. So that motor is tricky because the inside wall of the motor is a little bit thicker and the outside of the wall, if it's facing this way, is a little bit thinner. So you can't mount this on the other side because of that. So you have to mount it on this side. And in the beginning, I didn't calibrate it because I was kind of cautious of renting this lens from Vu. I didn't want to scratch it. But once I found that exact same spacing, I was able to calibrate this Mantis Lens and it is amazing. And I guess it depends on your cage too. So this is a small rig cage and that motor, this thing spins by the way. So that's barely clearing it. There's like two millimeters space right here. So if you can make the motor fit into the system and you can calibrate it, great. However, I'm more of a gimbal kind of guy. And most of the time I'm going to be using a rig like this. And I'm only going to use one motor. So I told Viltrox this, maybe in the future on the app, they can make an exception where you can just calibrate without the actual aperture motor being there. Because right now you get an error message like this. But in terms of actually using this device, you don't have to have the aperture motor attached. Once the calibration is done, you can just take out the motor and you can be on the way. Now we'll revisit that two motor bias towards the end of the video. Because I really want to go over this gimbal setup, which is really tricky. But since I have this setup all ready to go, let me show you guys the next point. And that is going to be, there is no manual focus override. Now in a professional setup, autofocus sure is nice. But sometimes you want to just jump in and take control and do manual focus. So currently there's no follow focus system paired with this. So you can do that. Technically, yes, you can go from autofocus to manual focus just by hitting the button. So I have one of these button custom to manual focus to autofocus toggle. So you can do that. But in the future, I would love to see like a follow focus system that can pair with this. Now there is a workaround in the app. I forgot to mention that during the actual calibration process before that, you do have to tell the app how far your infinity focus is, how far your minimal focus distance is. Same thing with the aperture. You do have to manually enter those units. But that could work towards your advantage because you could technically set an A point and B point on the focus and you can go back and forth from that. I guess the drawback of that scenario is that it's going to focus back and forth really fast. So maybe in the future, Viltrox, you can put that feature in there where you can go from A to B and you can adjust the actual speed of the focus. That'd be cool. Now the next con is going to be the fact that you're going to need more gear and more cables. So I know some of you guys are like, yes, I need more gear. But I have to tell you, I have to buy a bunch of things. For example, the USB-C cable that Viltrox provides, it's a straight cable. So there is one problem. If you're using cages, for example, this is a small rig cage, right? Or even any cages that I have, this is a Tilta cage. It's the same problem. This right here comes out from the body. So this protrudes into where the USB-C cable should go. So problem is that a straight cable, you just cannot make it there without bending it. So I had to get this right angle USB-C cable so I'm not bending the pins. So it is dodging the cage right now and going downwards instead. And I did find a pretty good USB-C cable. So I'm going to put everything that I have on here in the description below as usual. So this cable came in clutch. It's sleeve, it's nice quality. And the way you can tell it's a good quality, when you put this cable in, it clicks in. And this cable is going to save me one more time later on when I talk about the gimbal setup. So that's one thing you do have to get in addition if you're going to use a cage like this. And I mentioned that this system is two motor bias. So ideally, this is the kind of rig that you want to have. This is the standard 15mm rod rig by FOCA. It's pretty budget-friendly. I like this one because it has this Arca Swiss plate on the bottom. So I can just put it on most of my tripods. And even though it's kind of small, it can hold pretty big rigs. So this is the same rig I used for the LAWA sunlight review video. So it can hold that lens. It does already come with this lens support bracket. But if you have a huge lens like the LAWA sunlight, you do want to get something like this to make sure that you hold that 1.25 down plus the actual camera. Otherwise, yeah, it's going to swivel. Because this motor that comes with this Viltrox system, the torque on this is pretty impressive. Right now, I have this torque set at the lowest setting because anything higher than that, it does actually wiggle the whole system around. So if you have a huge lens and huge rig, yeah, I don't think you're going to have any problem with this motor torque. So again, everything that you see in this rig, I'm going to go ahead and put the link in the description. But one thing I do want to mention is that you're going to need a touch-enabled focus monitor because all of a sudden, your manual lens is touch-focused. So just in time, Portkeys actually sent this to me. So this is the Portkeys 5.4-inch monitor. Let me go ahead and turn on the whole system so I can show you this. I love this monitor because it has a physical actual slider switch turn on. You don't have to guess how many seconds you got to hold down the power button. You go ahead and turn the camera on. And it's going to calibrate the distance of the focus motor and the actual aperture motor and give it a couple seconds. And it is ready to go. Enable touch focus on. This is the track focus. Let me see if I can go ahead and touch the camera you're seeing right now back to this light stand. All right, let's see if I can focus on that chart. There you go. There's that tracking. And let's see if I can focus on something closer. There you go. That's the camera. How cool is that? Now, is the tracking as good as like a Sony monitor screen? No, it's a little bit delayed, just slightly. But having that option to touch focus is huge. This is not a review about this monitor. I will do a separate video, at least a shorts on this monitor later. One of the things I do appreciate that is that there's also an HDMI out on this. So if I wanted to attach like a wireless video transmitter, this is perfect. Before I undo this system and set up this gimbal setup, one more thing I want to mention. You guys already saw it. There is a boot up time to this, right? So if you're filming a wedding, for example, and your camera goes to sleep and you want to like get that shot real quick, you got to wait for the whole system to initiate first and then you're ready to go. So there is that drawback. So let's talk about that gimbal setup because that is kind of huge for me because I'm mainly a gimbal user. So YouTube style switch up. So this is what the gimbal setup looks like. I know it looks super complicated, but I'll explain this in a second. This is a single setup motor. It'd be so much bigger and complicated. There's a second motor here. And I also didn't want to carry like a V mount battery with my gimbal. I like to go nimble on my gimbal, you know. So there is an additional components with this setup and this is called the power box. So this power box is not a battery, by the way. Now with the CERN F1 package, this power box is going to come with it. The reason why you have this is that you cannot just power regular USB-C to the actual motor. So this motor is very picky about this power source. So if you were to provide regular USB-C power to the motor, when the motor is not moving, for example, the subject is too still, the battery will just go on power save and the motor will just fall asleep. So that's the problem with this. So they have this power box to make sure that one, you get a clean feed of the power that the motor is really picky about. And then also it doesn't actually let the motor fall asleep. So I had to search up and down on the internet to find a proper power source that's small enough so I can gimbal. So this little thing right here, let me take this out, is a NPF battery to USB-C like a little converter that's small enough. And if I were to put this in, it provides power to this power box. Let me go ahead and turn this on. I'm going to hold down this power button for a little bit. I should see a little green light come on. So once you see that green light light up, you can go ahead and turn on the camera and it's going to test the travel. Yeah, you see that boot up time. All right, let's check the focus, close focus, far focus. Hey, editing say here, interrupting real quick, because I understand I just talked about a bunch of power options. I know it can be a little bit confusing, but I want to stress that the best experience you're going to have with the system is going to be V-mount using the D-Tap directly. Now, I am using this small rig, basically a power strip. It has other D-Taps on here. But if you plug into that, sometimes this rig has hard time waking up when it goes to sleep. So I want you to be aware of that. Also, I am starting to offer membership to the channel. I know it's about time. There are two tiers, but the highest tier I'm offering at a pretty low rate. You get to watch all the deleted scenes, including starting with this video. So there's tons of information I just cannot fit into one video. So I'm going to be uploading that separately and starting offering that to the membership. So there's going to be a little join button down below. So check that out, guys. Thanks so much, guys. Back to Thursday. So this setup isn't the smallest setup I use for gimbal. So you're going to need a pretty hefty gimbal, such as the one I'm using in this example is Zhiyun Crane 4. So do I wish there was less of this clutter to have a nice gimbalable setup? Of course. Remember, I am coming off from this tiny little LiDAR motor. So gimbal setup wise, this is the ideal size. So Viltrox, I know you can do it in the future. If you could somehow put a battery inside the motor for gimbal friendly setup, that would be like so awesome. And oh yeah, remember that right angle USB-C cable was going to come in clutch. Let me go ahead and turn the camera off. So one of the drawbacks of this exact adapter is that this plug right here. Yeah, that USB-C port is so deep. Regular USB cable just can't reach the end of that. I know it's a problem. So the only cable that I found out, this right angle USB-C cable by Asun. Yeah, that one's long enough that it actually clicks in. So most of the limitation or the flaws, I was able to work around it. And I just cannot be happier now that I can use manual focus lens, such as this Mantis. It's such an awesome lens with autofocus now. Now there is a little missing piece right now. So I currently do not know how much this device costs. I know this happens a lot in my video. So the truth is, the way this works, when I contact the brand, it's like contacting Genie. You get three wishes or three questions. And those questions take almost 24 hours or more to come back and forth because, you know, I'm in US, they're in China. So yeah, I kind of ran out of time and the questions. So I didn't get to ask how much this thing costs. I'm hoping it's under $500. I know conveniently, I'm going to ask you to check out the link in the description below to check the price. But honestly, guys, I just ran out of time. But Viltrox is saying that this would be a pretty budget-friendly device. So I'm really hopeful. All right, guys, that's it for me today. Thank you so much for watching to the end. And special shout out to David, Zao, and Vu for helping with this video. This video is a massive test in itself. So thank you. Until next time, I can finally say, stay focused with manual lens.