p.3 #3 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
I haven't seen anything by the Minolta 100mm F2 that can't be matched by the Canon EF 100mm F2 USM. Maybe higher quality control? Their respective reputations are certainly different. The Canon is routinely dismissed while the Minolta is revered.
My copy of the Canon is very sharp, focuses very quickly, and is/was considerably less expensive. The Minolta is heavier and longer despite the lack of motors or distance encoder. The Minolta also extends to focus. The Canon is still a current product.
p.3 #5 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
QuietOC wrote:
I haven't seen anything by the Minolta 100mm F2 that can't be matched by the Canon EF 100mm F2 USM. Maybe higher quality control? My copy of the Canon is very sharp, focuses very quickly, and is/was considerably less expensive. The Minolta is heavier and longer despite the lack of motors and distance encoder. The Minolta also extends to focus. The Canon is still a current product.
I owned the Canon, I think it’s renders a bit flat and I didn’t find too much special about it—though it’s very competent. Most 100/2’s test well, even 30-year-old designs.
The Mino (and even ZA 135 and 85) are beloved for the renderings. The 100/2 I find to be unusually rich and attractive. Most Minolta’s (like the 58/1.2 or 200 2.8) aren’t going to technically best glass still in production.
The best a-Mount glass has been technically surpassed, though it will still perform well, especially stopped down.
p.3 #6 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
QuietOC wrote:
I haven't seen anything by the Minolta 100mm F2 that can't be matched by the Canon EF 100mm F2 USM. Maybe higher quality control? Their respective reputations are certainly different. The Canon is routinely dismissed while the Minolta is revered.
My copy of the Canon is very sharp, focuses very quickly, and is/was considerably less expensive. The Minolta is heavier and longer despite the lack of motors or distance encoder. The Minolta also extends to focus. The Canon is still a current product.
p.3 #8 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
I can agree with this. The impression I get is that Minolta chased color and bokeh and Canon and Nikon chased sharpness.
nehemiahphoto wrote:
I owned the Canon, I think it’s renders a bit flat and I didn’t find too much special about it—though it’s very competent. Most 100/2’s test well, even 30-year-old designs.
The Mino (and even ZA 135 and 85) are beloved for the renderings. The 100/2 I find to be unusually rich and attractive. Most Minolta’s (like the 58/1.2 or 200 2.8) aren’t going to technically best glass still in production.
The best a-Mount glass has been technically surpassed, though it will still perform well, especially stopped down.
p.3 #10 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
For A mount glass, there aren't a ton of primes available like there were in manual focus mounts, but there are quite a few zooms. Here's some lenses I think are interesting in A mount, that might be useful if you like the rendering of old manual focus lenses but want proper AF. Here's some Screw Driven Minolta lenses that I think are worthy of consideration now
Primes:
16mm f2.8 fisheye (built in filters)
20mm f2.8 (non rotating ront element and internal focus)
24mm f2.8
28mm f2
35mm f2
35mm f1.4 (small for a 35 1.4)
50mm f1.4
50mm f2.8 macro (very cheap for a 1:1 AF macro)
85mm f1.4
100mm f2
100mm f2.8 soft focus (not many soft focus AF lenses)
100mm f2.8 macro (very cheap for a 1:1 AF macro)
135mm f2.8 (more complex design than most all 135 2.8 manual focus lenses)
200mm f2.8 (superb lens and runs very cheap)
200mm f4 macro
300mm f2.8 screw drive
400mm f4.5
500mm f8 reflex (an AF reflex lens)
600mm f4
Zooms:
24-50mm f4 (very small)
28-135mm f4-4.4 (good IQ stopped down and quite cheap)
35-70mm f4 (very small)
35-105mm f3.5-4.5 (good rendering)
70-210mm f4 (known for good rendering)
80-200mm 2.8
100-200mm f4.5 (one of the smallest tele zooms around)
100-300mm APO 4.5-5.6 (a very compact tele)
100-400mm APO 4.5-6.7 (good range and fairly inexpensive)
I have experience with some but not all. Generally I think the lenses are pretty good, obviously not all will compare to modern glass. But again, if you like the look of old manual focus primes then these have similar optical formulas and you should be able to get good AF with them now on an r4 or a6600.
p.3 #12 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
For the earlier Minolta AF lenses, yes. As the later variants came out (like the -D lenses), it was better corrected. Which is why I am not a big fan of the D lenses. They were just more sterile and flat. The exception is really the 85/1.4, which is a nice lens with good rendering. I prefer the 100/2 rendering though.
Fred Miranda wrote:
So, the Minolta is less corrected for SA?
p.3 #13 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
zhangyue wrote:
Great move! This doesn't make much financial sense for Sony (especially consider moderately asking price, I would think) but do show Sony care about customers.
A small, said to be true, story involving Ingvar Kamprad, the I and the K in IKEA since he founded it. He once said to the board that they should sell hot dogs at IKEA stores for 5 Swedish Kronor (SEK). A hot dog at the time often costed 20 SEK normally. The board off course thought he had a bad idea, why sell hot dogs at almost loss prices? And Ingvar replied that people in general don't know what furniture costs but they do know what a hot dog cost and if we sell them at 1/4 of what others take, they will assume we have done the same price cut on our furniture.
It is similar with this adapter and you have to see the larger picture. If it helps to sell E-mount bodys to A-mount users that today haven't chosen a mirrorless system then in the short run they get the profit up on the body sales. And in the longer run they make those A-mount users stay with Sony and probably they also will be buying other E-mount stuff like native lenses, slowly converting them into E-mount. Again getting the volume and profit up.
So this adapter is just a bridge/enabler tool and it should be sold as cheap as possible for that sake as well.
p.3 #14 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
The LA-EA5 also creates some goodwill for Sony, because they can be seen to care about the A-mount legacy. This is hard to meassure in money, but it’s still there.
The Sony 85/2.8 SAM should also become a nice small option with this new LA-EA5 adapter. The lens formula is the classical five element Sonnar type.
p.3 #15 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
Here are a couple of examples of the Minolta Maxxum 100/2. Now, these were unused so they aren't PP'd by much at all. Just general adjustments in LR a few years ago.
p.3 #16 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
I can hardly see much goodwill coming from A mount lens users after several years of lack of attention. The lens mount is dead and the writing was on the wall since Sony released slt range of camera bodies.
I used A mount lenses on first A7R body version and the solution was awkward - small, kind of unconfortable body, a bit wobbly and plasticky adapter and then the lens attached to it. Worked but provided neither the small size promise nor the pleasure of using robust solution. And now the price difference between used natively supported lenses and old A mount lenses is probably not as much given so many mirrorless lenses available on second hand market.
p.3 #18 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
Jonathan F wrote:
If Nikon doesn't follow through with their own screw drive Z adapter, I'm hoping the 3rd party backwards engineer's the LA-EA5 and makes a Nikon AF/AFD to E-mount AF adapter. Nikon has way more screw drive lenses that are still amazing on modern bodies.
I can only pass along and overinterpret what I've read and mis-remembered - others will know much more about it...
Nikon lenses have (in general) never adapted well to Sony E mount.
There are already a few E mount adapters for the non-screw-drive Nikon lenses available (they might all just be the same adapter, rebranded - I forget). But they are very very inconsistent - a few specific lenses work OK in autofocus, while most are pretty terrible - only barely working at all, very very slowly and unreliably. It's unwise to buy a Nikon adapter in blind hope, unless you've seen people specifically saying that it works well (enough) with the exact lens you need to use on your Sony camera. Because many don't work well at all.
Again, this is a garbled old memory of 2nd-hand info (given the bad reputation of the adapters, I never bothered trying one)... but I seem to recall the explanation being that the communications between Nikon bodies and Nikon lenses is somewhat hodge-podge. Different Nikon lenses talk to the camera in different ways. It isn't quite as much of a consistent, same-in-all-lenses protocol as Canon lenses and bodies use. Nikon camera bodies have a lot of arbitrary, lens-specific information stored on them in some kind of big look-up table ("ah, the user has fitted the 200mm f/2? OK, we need to talk Welsh today!") to be able to communicate with each of the varied Nikon lenses in their different quirky ways. There's no "one size fits all" adapting procedure/protocol in the Nikon lens/body firmware. So some lenses work OK, by luck, and others adapt terribly.
It may also be the case that, for whatever reason, no third party has ever tried hard enough to really, thoroughly, comprehensively reverse-engineer things to get Nikon lenses to adapt well to the E mount. Perhaps there is much more work involved because of the quirks of Nikon-lens communication. Maybe it can work a lot better, but nobody has put in the investment. Perhaps because it's more difficult... perhaps because there are fewer Nikon lenses out there than Canon lenses (is that the case? Just guessing), and hence a smaller market of potential customers to sell an E-mount adapter to.
In a way we're lucky that, at least, Sigma and Metabones have put the R&D investment and polish into their pretty good Canon adapters. At least we have that much. It's remarkable that they did so.
Anyhow (and apologies for however much of that is cobblers) - in the circumstances, it seems unlikely that someone will make some great new Nikon --> E mount adapter that not only works less terribly than the currently available best, but also has a screw-drive. They haven't even made a decent adapter without that feature, yet. It's as if it's either too expensive to do the R&D, or, just by chance, nobody has tried it yet (and if not by now, then when? Maybe never).
p.3 #20 · Introducing LA-EA5 | Mount Adaptor | Sony | Accessory
nehemiahphoto wrote:
I ordered a cheap mint 200/2.8 HS this morning off eBay
I see it now EVERY time either a new product is announced which appeals to some lens types (as here) or when YouTubers "review" specific lenses and show their benefit - in a matter of hours sometimes prices double and go higher. Depending on what kind of lens it is, it might take several months to level down. The more viewers a specific post or video has, the longer it takes. I believe it is also used these days to push people to purchase an item for a higher price from the same person who just reviewed it in the video.
