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The future of a-mount lenses

XKAES

By XKAES,
in Sony A-Mount System

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XKAES Experienced

XKAES

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Now that it appears (tell me if I'm wrong) that Sony will no longer produce any more a-mount cameras, that they will also not produce (or have produced) more a-mount lenses -- at least not any newly designed a-mount lenses.

Although there is, currently, a GREAT supply of a-mount lenses (going all the way back 36 years to 1985) still available, now might be a good time to think about a-mount lenses that you want to have.  As time goes on the available supply will diminish, and prices for certain models will likely increase.

The exact same thing happened when Minolta created their first a-mount cameras.  They put the production of their manual-focusing lenses on the back burner.  Consequently, many of their best and unique lenses are now very hard to find, and much more expensive than they originally cost!

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XKAES Experienced

XKAES

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I should have added in my original post that there are lots of non-Sony, non-Konica Minolta, non-Minolta Maxxum, full-frame, a-mount lenses out there.  At this point that includes new and used lenses.  Who knows if any are actually still being made?  I doubt it.  But a lot of them have unique features, and can usually be found very inexpensively.  I recently could not resist a Quantaray (actually Sigma) 70-300mm, LD, macro, full-frame, a-mount zoom for $5.  It was new, in the box. 

I never look a gift horse in the mouth.

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thebeardedgroundsman Proficient

thebeardedgroundsman

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All my lens are 2nd hand - as are my A68 and A99. I think I have the range and quality that I want, but continue to browse MPB and other respected used suppliers.

I recently discovered that Hasselblad re-packaged the A99 in an upgraded body with an RRP of £11,500! (the workings are exactly the same as the A99. I spotted one on the used market for £1,500 (it had already been sold). But hey, at least I can boast that I've almost got a Hasselblad!

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    • XKAES
      JPEG options?

      By XKAES · Posted

      I'd suggest you start by running a simple test.  Take pictures of a typical scene/subject and each of the JPEG settings your camera offers.  Then compare them in the output that you normally produce.  You may or may not see a difference.  I normally shoot at the highest JPEG level and save that file -- but make a smaller file (lower resolution) for normal/typical use. There's plenty of editing that you can do with JPEGs on your computer -- depending on your software -- and there are features in your camera that can help out, as well.  That depends on your camera.  Put them together, and it might meet your needs.  For example, your camera probably has several bracketing features that will take the same shot with different settings with one press of the button.  Then you can select the best JPEG to work with on your computer.  I frequently use this feature to control contrast.
    • Cameratose
      JPEG options?

      By Cameratose · Posted

      If you set up some basic presets in your processing software and use batch processing, you don't need jpeg at all. I shoot RAW only, use (free) Faststone Image Viewer which will view any type of image file to cull my shots, and batch process in Darktable. I can start with 2000-3000 shots and in a matter of a few hours have them culled, processed, and posted. A handful of shots, say a couple hundred from a photo walk, are done in minutes.  This saves card space, computer space, and upload time.  The results are very good for posting online. When someone wants to buy one or I decide to print it, I can then return to the RAW file and process it individually for optimum results.  I never delete a RAW file. Sometimes I'll return to an old shot I processed several years ago and reprocess it. I have been very surprised how much better they look as my processing skills improved.  
    • Pieter
      JPEG options?

      By Pieter · Posted

      If you're only publishing small-sized photo's or viewing on a phone / computer screen, 12-ish MP should be more than enough for your needs. Since with JPEG, the ability to 'fix' stuff on the computer is very limited anyway, you're not giving up much except the ability to crop/recompose after taking the shot. If you tend to crop often or might print large, shoot fine quality instead as JPEGs don't take up a lot of space anyway. I tend to shoot RAW+JPEG. After a trip/shoot, I download my photos to my computer and quickly scan through my JPEGs to select my keepers. The JPEGs are fine for 90% of my needs but at times there are one or two 'WOW'-shots that I might one day print large. I'll edit the RAW of these photos to my hearts content, generate a JPEG, then delete all RAWs to clear up space.

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