Pinefeat has designed an EF/EF-S lens controller and adapter for the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera, compatible with Canon lenses, and implementing full electronic control of autofocus and aperture.
Canon EF (Electro-Focus) and EF-S (Electro-Focus Short Back Focus) lenses are designed for the company’s DSLR cameras with an EOS (electronic autofocus system). They have great optics, built-in motors taking care of focusing, and also handle aperture electronically. Pinefeat is a fan of the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera, but it requires manual focus and aperture adjustment, and that’s why he created a controller and adapter compatible with Canon EF/EF-S lenses.
The kit is comprised of the following components:
- Canon EF / EF-S lens to C-mount camera adapter with a plastic housing and some metal components (66 x 26.5mm)
- Lens control board
- Camera I/F – 15-pin MIPI CSI-2 FFC/FPC connector
- Camera mount – C-mount
- Lens mount – Canon EF or EF-S
- Host interface – I2C and Serial/UART
- Power Supply
- +3.3V through the camera CSI connector or serial cable
- +5.0V through RPI GPIO header
- Dimensions – 38 x 38 mm
- Flex camera cable
- 8-wire lens cable
- 2-wire power cable
- Accessory kit – standoffs, screws, and nuts
The controller integrates directly into the libcamera stack, which means that autofocus works right out of the box using rpicam-apps and no custom code required. Aperture control relies on the V4L2 (Video4Linux2) API from the Raspberry Pi. The solution is said to be especially useful for macro, wildlife, or even cinematic projects requiring precise control.
Besides the Raspberry Pi HQ camera adapter, Pinefeat also created a similar adapter for the Arducam IMX708 Camera Module using an M12 Mount.
The kernel driver, configuration, and calibration tools can be found on the cf168 GitHub repository, where you’ll also find documentation, including a getting started guide and more advanced instructions.
The “EF / EF-S Lens Controller & Adapter for Raspberry Pi High-Quality Camera” is sold for 85 GBP (~ $114) on the Pinefeat store, and the Arducam variant for 87 GBP (~$117).
Via Reddit
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I don’t know optics, but why can’t the adapter place the sensor closer (further?) in order to have the image fill the 35mm frame instead of being cropped?
Optics, the lens has a fixed point where the image would be in focus moving the image circle forward or backward to fill the sensor size would never achieve focus.