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How good is manual focus with Minolta Alpha lenses?


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Hi, 

 

I was thinking of buying a small set of Minolta AF lenses to use it on a A7r II (or whatever it will be called the new body), specifically:

 

- 20 or 24mm f/2.8

- 35mm f/2

- 50 f/1.4 or 1.7

- 100 f/2.8 macro

 

I'm going for the alpha and not the MD for the rare occasions in which I need AF, rare but still present.

 

But given than most of the time I would be using them in manual focus my biggest concern is: how "good" is the feel of manual focus with said lenses? I mean: do they feel, manually focusing them, like you were sliding a cheap plastic ring on top of another plastic ring like the new Nikon?

 

In other words: how the manual focus feels compared to a good old school manual focus only lens, like Minolta MD ones or Contax?

 

I hate focus by wire, otherwise I'd go for the native lenses. That said, if they are better in this regard than the Minolta I'll try them.

 

Thanks!

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It depends on the lens (short answer).

 

You will also need the LA-EA4 adapter as all the old Minolta AF lenses are the screw type AF.

 

Earlier today I was using the Minolta 100mm 2.8 Macro RS, both with auto focus and manual focus. The focus ring is at the end of the lens and a little small and for me a little to sensitive.

 

However, the lenses don't have a standard focus ring placement or width or resistance.  They will ALL feel different from the MC/MD manual lenses.  But that is an outcome of the different designs.

 

Also keep in mind the old lenses can be large and added to the end of the LA-EA4 adapter, it can change the feel of the package.

 

EDIT: I forgot to add, the native E-mount lenses, all have a much nicer manual focus feel.  The lenses, generally speaking, are much sleeker, don't have extra buttons and the focus rings are all very similar.  Of course there is variation, but less than the A mount gear.

 

In terms of overall manual focus experience, the E mount lenes are superior, on average.

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EDIT: I forgot to add, the native E-mount lenses, all have a much nicer manual focus feel.

 

Thanks for your answer.

 

So the focus by wire is actually implemented so well as to feel like a "real" (i.e. mechanically coupled) focus ring?

 

I am a bit wary of focus by wire after the absolutely abysmal experience with the Fuji X100 implementation.

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The Minolta Alpha lenses were really designed for auto focus. The manual focus rings tend to be narrow, stuck out on the snout of the lens and fractions of a turn from close focus to infinity. If you haven't seen them, take a look the specific lenses you're considering at Dyxum:  http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/index.asp

 

Most lenses designed for a MF camera will be better manual focusing than most of those designed for AF.  If you're considering Minolta AF lenses for special cases needing AF, then for the smaller subset of those needing MF, the Minolta AF glass seems like it will work just fine. However, if you're primarily MF, then vintage Minolta MC/MD, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Vivitar, etc lenses would seem to be the ticket. Unless you're shooting action, focus peaking and magnification make MF easy, better than an old split screen IMO. The nice part about vintage glass, AF or MF, is that you can likely get everything your heart desires for the cost of one of the more expensive new native E mounts.

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The Minolta Alpha lenses were really designed for auto focus. The manual focus rings tend to be narrow, stuck out on the snout of the lens and fractions of a turn from close focus to infinity. If you haven't seen them, take a look the specific lenses you're considering at Dyxum:  http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/index.asp

 

Most lenses designed for a MF camera will be better manual focusing than most of those designed for AF.  If you're considering Minolta AF lenses for special cases needing AF, then for the smaller subset of those needing MF, the Minolta AF glass seems like it will work just fine. However, if you're primarily MF, then vintage Minolta MC/MD, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Vivitar, etc lenses would seem to be the ticket. Unless you're shooting action, focus peaking and magnification make MF easy, better than an old split screen IMO. The nice part about vintage glass, AF or MF, is that you can likely get everything your heart desires for the cost of one of the more expensive new native E mounts.

 

Thanks for the infos. 

 

I already have a pretty well furnished "stable" of nice manual focus glass (mostly Contax and Leica) I use on a Nex 7 (I passed on the A7r being first generation so hopefully they will fix the little nagging faults on the next one). I wanted an "af option" for those occasions in which, for the low contrast of the subject or the light levels not particularly bright (not nighttime, more like misty days etc.) my own eyes struggle a bit in finding the focus, other than for action shots. And I know that in those same conditions an af system as well can have troubles, but if it works can be a life saver.

 

Especially with the new ultra-high res cameras nailing the focus will make a hell of a difference.

 

I've used extensively, in the past, the old Nikon af glass and they weren't that bad it this regard, but obviously they will not focus on a Sony camera so are out of the question.

 

I guess I'll have to buy the cheapest lens of my list and try if I like it    :)

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In my optinon the feel of the E-mount focusing rings is nicer, but the focus by wire drives me nuts and I prefer the feel of coupled AF lenses like Sony's SSM lenses a lot.

 

That's what I'm afraid of, what is keeping me to buy into the FE system: I've never had a good experience with focus by wire...

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I've enjoyed Minolta AF lenses on A7ii with LA-EA4 adapter. AF seems quick and precise, even in lower light. 50mm f1.7 was getting reacquainted with an old friend. Doesn't sound like you're zoomy, but for the use you're describing, 35-105mm (1st version ca '80's) is useful FF range, sharp in the prime neighborhood, and color better than some primes, but not as fast.

 

I believe the focus mechanism in the LA-EA4 comes from the A65. Seems likely that phase detect AF is still better than the hybrid in the A7 series cameras.

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I've enjoyed Minolta AF lenses on A7ii with LA-EA4 adapter. AF seems quick and precise, even in lower light. 50mm f1.7 was getting reacquainted with an old friend. Doesn't sound like you're zoomy, but for the use you're describing, 35-105mm (1st version ca '80's) is useful FF range, sharp in the prime neighborhood, and color better than some primes, but not as fast. I believe the focus mechanism in the LA-EA4 comes from the A65. Seems likely that phase detect AF is still better than the hybrid in the A7 series cameras.

 

Nice to hear from someone who knows first-hand that the af is fast with the adapter.

 

Yeah I'm not that zoomy (absolutely loved the definition    :D ), and I've already got two zooms that, when needed, fit all of my needs. Besides, I think that for handheld use I will continue employing the Nex 7; not much to gain from 50Mp if the camera is not sitting on top of a sturdy tripod (that is, unless they put IBIS in it!), and shooting fast action the 10fps from time to time come in handy.

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Nice to hear from someone who knows first-hand that the af is fast with the adapter.

 

Yeah I'm not that zoomy (absolutely loved the definition    :D ), and I've already got two zooms that, when needed, fit all of my needs. Besides, I think that for handheld use I will continue employing the Nex 7; not much to gain from 50Mp if the camera is not sitting on top of a sturdy tripod (that is, unless they put IBIS in it!), and shooting fast action the 10fps from time to time come in handy.

 

 

Glad I tickled your fancy.

 

Gotta believe that all A7 series will have IBIS going forward, and that it will leak over to the Nex7 style, but who knows. They've generally done a nice job spreading technology across the product line. LA-EA4 will work on your Nex, so it's a twofer. I have no idea how any of the old Minolta glass, or most anything for that matter, will hold up at 50mp. What do you think? We're a long way from the A100 where it was clear the kit lens out resolved the sensor.

 

Suppose they'll do an rii @36mp and rii+ or something @50mp? What do you think about timing? On the one hand, as long as the A7ii is flying off the shelves as fast as they make them, they're just taking money out of their pockets by upstaging it. OTOH, the accelerated product release cycle is what is giving them the opportunity to get out from under the CaNikon boot, and they need to exploit it. Seems Canon's 4 month pre-release announcement on 50mp to try to freeze the market is a measure of the pressure they're feeling, and should tell us something about what to expect from Sony. Be interesting to be a fly on the Sony wall these days. They are taking a real hard run at cameras.

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Glad I tickled your fancy.

 

Gotta believe that all A7 series will have IBIS going forward, and that it will leak over to the Nex7 style, but who knows. They've generally done a nice job spreading technology across the product line. LA-EA4 will work on your Nex, so it's a twofer. I have no idea how any of the old Minolta glass, or most anything for that matter, will hold up at 50mp. What do you think? We're a long way from the A100 where it was clear the kit lens out resolved the sensor.

 

Suppose they'll do an rii @36mp and rii+ or something @50mp? What do you think about timing? On the one hand, as long as the A7ii is flying off the shelves as fast as they make them, they're just taking money out of their pockets by upstaging it. OTOH, the accelerated product release cycle is what is giving them the opportunity to get out from under the CaNikon boot, and they need to exploit it. Seems Canon's 4 month pre-release announcement on 50mp to try to freeze the market is a measure of the pressure they're feeling, and should tell us something about what to expect from Sony. Be interesting to be a fly on the Sony wall these days. They are taking a real hard run at cameras.

 

The Nex 7 pixel density is the same as a 50Mp sensor, and at least in the limited area of the Aps-c image circle I've found a few cheap lenses I have to perform exceptionally well (Minolta MD 50/1.7, 135/3.5, Yashica ML 50/1.7, 28/2.8, 28-85, Jupiter-3 m39 version 85/2, Pentax Super-Takumar 50/1.4). I stacked them against Canon L and Contax glass (with some of the Contax you can practically shave for how ridiculously sharp they are), and they not only held their own but in some case performed at the same level!

 

Actually I've just posted about this a couple days back:

 

New 120Mp sensor from Canon

 

Are sensors outresolving lenses? Keep reading

 

Cliff-notes, to spare you the long readings: because of how physics work, if you pair a 50Mp sensor with a 50Mp-capable lens you will not get a 50Mp image, but more something around 35 real Mp. So oversampling in the lens department or in the sensor department will give us better (sharper) images anyway. So even if our lenses are just capable of delivering, say, 35Mp on paper to really do so they will still have to be used on an over-35Mp sensor.

 

Besides, the testers at an organization called http://lenscore.org(no affiliation whatsoever) have found that pretty much every lens they tested (included relatively cheap zooms) will be able to exploit in some way a 50Mp sensor (they used a 200Mp sensor for their tests). The difference with better lenses it is that these will exploit the added resolution at large apertures as well, and that they will still gain from even more resolving sensors.

 

Basically we are getting back to the film days, when (with medium and large format) the lens was the weakest link and not the "sensor". In my book this is an exceptional good thing: we can all stop wining about newer and better cameras and start taking pictures again    :D

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Wow! Thank you. You have directly answered a couple of questions I have been struggling with, and provided links to chase for more.

 

So the pixels in my A65, 24mp APS-C sensor (similar to the Nex7) are a little less than 4 microns, and in the A7ii slightly less than 6. You extend area to ff @ 50mp and come up with pixel sizes like APS-C at 24mp. Makes sense.

 

The picture on your site is pleasing, it resembles the assortment of old glass I have accumulated. Entirely unscientifically I went back to Kodachrome days, essentially grainless and lots of color. It seemed to me that lenses had to be pretty good or Kodachrome (even at 35mm) was going to tell the tale. Translating old lens ratings to modern measures is in some ways a mugs game, so I've more eyeballed it than calculated. But, the answers seemed to be that some of the old glass, and not necessarily the expensive stuff (but that often doesn't hurt), can be pretty good. It is nice to see that your analysis is consistent with that.

 

I've not been able to answer my questions about those relationships among my current sensors and old lenses. I think you've got it with:

 

"Basically we are getting back to the film days, when (with medium and large format) the lens was the weakest link and not the "sensor". In my book this is an exceptional good thing: we can all stop wining about newer and better cameras and start taking pictures again :D"

 

Let me go read and come back and ask some questions please. Regards, Lefty

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Wow! Thank you. You have directly answered a couple of questions I have been struggling with, and provided links to chase for more.

 

So the pixels in my A65, 24mp APS-C sensor (similar to the Nex7) are a little less than 4 microns, and in the A7ii slightly less than 6. You extend area to ff @ 50mp and come up with pixel sizes like APS-C at 24mp. Makes sense.

 

The picture on your site is pleasing, it resembles the assortment of old glass I have accumulated. Entirely unscientifically I went back to Kodachrome days, essentially grainless and lots of color. It seemed to me that lenses had to be pretty good or Kodachrome (even at 35mm) was going to tell the tale. Translating old lens ratings to modern measures is in some ways a mugs game, so I've more eyeballed it than calculated. But, the answers seemed to be that some of the old glass, and not necessarily the expensive stuff (but that often doesn't hurt), can be pretty good. It is nice to see that your analysis is consistent with that.

 

I've not been able to answer my questions about those relationships among my current sensors and old lenses. I think you've got it with:

 

"Basically we are getting back to the film days, when (with medium and large format) the lens was the weakest link and not the "sensor". In my book this is an exceptional good thing: we can all stop wining about newer and better cameras and start taking pictures again :D"

 

Let me go read and come back and ask some questions please. Regards, Lefty

 

In a sense we are all newbies with digital, because it is a technology that is evolving as we speak. We are essentially living in the modern equivalent of the post-collodion days at the end of the 1800 and the birth of the gelatin emulsion based film.

 

For this reason the questions you're referring to are pretty much the same for everyone else, so I'm glad to share an answer when I find one!   :)

 

BTW, do not discard "old glass". A large portion of the optical schemes we are still using have been formulated 150 years ago...so "old" doesn't necessary mean "poor performing".

 

Like I wrote in my previous answer I've bought an old (late '50s) Russian Jupiter-3 85mm f/2 in m39 version. It is a Sonnar (late 1800s scheme, if I'm not mistaken a tweak of an even older design) copy, and it should be just a mediocre lens on paper. In fact I bought thinking of using as a "special effects only" lens, because of the exceedingly pleasing bokeh it produces. Turned out it is an extremely sharp lens.

 

I was so shocked when I saw its performance that I ended up testing against a Contax Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 100-300 that beat the c*** of all my Canon L series lenses. Guess what? The Jupiter is almost as sharp, but it is an f/2 lens compared to the 4.5 Zeiss!

 

Bottom line: never discard old glass just because of its age   ;)

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First, I admire your site and your work. Second, I finally had a chance to dig into this some. Lenscore varies remarkably from DxO Mark, I like the abstract lens measures on Lenscore, but there's also something to be said for DxO's measurements on actual cameras. Standards were ever thus.

 

Here's where I ended up, does it make any sense? My lenses (too many) are mostly Minolta and 3rd party A mount accumulated over 25 years, plus an assortment of MF lenses, mostly Minolta and old Vivitar. What I've been trying to sort out is how they hold up on FF. The results look pretty good to me, but I am worried that I'm fooling myself. The highest rated lens on Lenscore is a Zeiss 85/1.4 Otus at 1647 with your inference of 107mp. A Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 rates at 787 and 51mp. That implies a roughly linear relationship between Lenscore and sensor MP.

 

To try to get back to my mortal 24mp FF world, I constructed a crude scale from your numbers, with pairs of Lenscore/MP values:  1500/100_  750/50_    575/36_    350/24_    175/12 (sorry those number pairs don't want to display nicely).

 

I then found a couple of Lenscore ratings of older common Minolta lenses that Sony essentially rebranded without many changes. One was 50/f1.4 @ Lensmark 775, and the other 28-75/2.8 @ 665 that was itself a rebranded Tamron. The 50 comes out at around 50mp and the zoom about mid way between 36 and 50mp.

 

Both seem to be easy matches for the 24mp sensor in the A7ii and other FF cameras with similar sensors like the A99. I understand that there are a lot of measures that go into the overall Lenscore, and that older lenses, zooms especially, can have more defects and fall off. However, It seems that my older glass can produce decent results on current cameras, and that, for example, I won't see a big difference between a Minolta 50/1.4 resolving around 50mp and a Zeiss at 100mp on a 24mp camera. Also, that 50/1.4 @50mp will do well on my 24mp FF camera.

 

Do my numbers make sense, will my $50 lens purchased ca 1989 perform close to as well as a $1,000 lens today? Please tell me doctor, can these calculations cure my seemingly insatiable, Sony marketing department/Zeiss mfg cabal fueled lens lust?

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First things first: thanks, a lot, for your appreciation. You're way to kind :)

 

Now down to business. I'll try to split what I want to say in a list, to keep the arguments and my thoughts in some kind of order.

 

1) both Lenscore and DXO, in my opinion, while useful to have a rough idea of the resolving power of a lens and to "dumb down" the complexity of the matter, have at least two technical fallacies in their reasoning and an "artistic" one.

 

a) lenses, for the little I understand of optic, do not see a fixed amount of megapixels (or of detail, in general); they have, instead, an MTF function. In more layman terms, this means that they transmit a x/% of the amount of contrast and detail in a scene based on the amount of detail the medium in able to register in the first place. I am no engineer, so I could be well talking bull****, but if I'm right then a lens that DXO rates at, say, 18Mp on an A7r (so not a great lens, being able to resolve just 50% of what the medium is capable of) should then be able to resolve around 50Mp on a theoretical 100Mp sensor anyway (this avoiding troubles like smearing etc. that are specific to the interaction between a lens and the sensor cover glass and microlenses; this is a different can of worms)

 

b)like we just saw a lens technically transmit contrast, what we then call fine detail being just the "smallest" possible contrast. Older lenses are mostly behind current ones in terms of anti-reflection treatment IMHO, but not in terms of optical scheme proper. And the low contrast stemming from a not-state-of-the-art multicoating not only can be "esthetically" beneficial, especially if you shoot in bw, but can also helping overcome blown out highlights acting as a fill-in for the shadows and letting underexpose slightly (in comparison to a lens with perfect anti-reflection treatment). Basically what Nikon, Canon, Sony etc. call D-fill or something like that, but automatically and without the need to lift the shadows via software and so without boosting noise.

 

c) if you didn't like low contrast in film days you were stuck with what you got (unless you printed for yourself, obviously). Now there is the clarity slider in PS and LR that is basically a "remove fog" filter. With modern lenses you have to use it in moderation, with older lenses you can often crank it up to 100% and all that it does it is just removing the low-contrast given by the old-style multicoating. (see point 2 for this)

 

c) general image rendering and bokeh of a lens, in my book, overcome anyway its sharpness, within limitations. I mean that as long a lens is "sharp enough" I then start looking at the way it renders highlights, colors, 3d transitions and out of focus areas (bokeh). I think it was Vincent Versace who said that we should concentrate less on sharpness and more of what occupies 80% of our images, i.e. out of focus areas (obviously this will depend on your style as a photographer!)

 

2) for a more direct demonstration of the arguments above, a series of tests made with Minolta MC and MD glass on A7 & A7r & Nex 6 cameras, you should definitely take a peek at this site (no affiliation whatsoever): 

http://artaphot.ch/minolta-sr/objektiv-vergleiche

 

It's mostly in German but some pages are in English, and you can always use Google translate. When you see the examples download the crops and just play with the clarity slider (or use the unsharp mask function with a small radius, let's say between 10 and 35, and a large-ish amount around 150% and zero threshold). There is an example in particular in which this guy compares the 50/1,4 Minolta MD against the Sony Zeiss 55/1,8. If you look at the pictures straight out of the camera the Minolta looks like s****; if you add clarity, though, the details pop right out and you can see that even on a A7r a 30$ lens it is almost on par with a 800$ (way overpriced IMHO, it's a 50mm after all) lens.

 

And the old Minolta 21, 28, 24-50 and 35 all basically destroy the new Zeiss 16-35 ZA even without post-processing.

 

Like I said, most of the supposed optical advancements of the last 30 / 40 years (with the exclusion of aspherical lenses, that were already available then anyway, just less diffused) I think basically boil down to better coating. Besides, what has changed it is the kind of optimization done to a lens, that now is often for sharpness at maximum aperture, while before you had to close a couple of stops.

 

This does not mean, though, that you get a sharper lens at maximum aperture AND at smaller apertures as well. For example, if you compare the latest 50/1,8 AF-S Nikon (aspherical) to the old 50/1,8 AF (plain old design) the new one is way better at full aperture, but the old one crushes it from one / one half of a stop down.

 

3) zoom lenses are often an all different bag of problems, but less the manual focus ones than the af. Given the tolerances in construction (higher in af lenses to help speed up the focusing) a zoom will sometime exhibit different sharpness at the same setting based on the distance of the subject (in an higher degree compared to a prime lens), the focal length and the weather   ;) . MF ones are more consistent IMHO.

 

4) Lastly, there is cheap and there is cheap. A 135 Tokina or a 28-70 Centon it is a cheap lens now as it was when new, price-wise and performance-wise. A Contax Vario-Sonnar 100-300*, a Minolta 24 or 50 MD etc. are cheap now because people want af (yes, want; very few actually "need" it in my opinion), but were built to be pretty expensive lenses (I should know, I lusted after some of them for years) and that shows in how well they perform even today. Same thing for Hasselblad: these days you can buy an entire set for 450€: does it means it performs the same as a plastic Lomo Bellview? No way in hell.

 

Sorry for the long answer, but yes: I think that your 50$ lens will be more than able to keep its own against a 1000$ modern lens. So the doctor prescribes more MD glass   :D       

and is out on *bay to get a bit of the same medicine for himself!

 

 

*To give you some perspective. A Minolta 24 used to sell for 710 mila "lire", that now translates in "real" (see my comment for the Contax lens next) 700€, a 50/1,4 for the equivalent of 450€. The Tokina 135/2,8 was sold for the equivalent of 120€. A Contax Vario-Sonnar 100-300 now sells for about 500/600€. When new it costed 2,5 millions "lire"; this translate in a straight "exchange rate" conversion in 1.200/1.300 €, but the reality is that in real purchasing power is more like 2.400 € (yes, we got basically scammed when we adopted the €, hence the crisis)

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