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Hello to the forum!  I've lurked for nearly a year.  Been watching anything photography related on Youtube... Tony Northrup, Jason Lanier.. even DigitalRev.  Today I graduated from my iPhone camera to a Sony a6000.

 

Pulled the trigger Monday and ordered a refurb kit from Secondipity.  Arrived today.. like new.  Excited!

 

A couple of months ago I stopped in a pawn shop and they had a Minolta MD 50 1.7... offered ten bucks (USD) and walked out with a 30 year old lens for which I had no camera!  A week after that I bought a JC Penny 135 2.8 (Japan) off eBay for another ten bucks.

 

This is my first shot ever with something other than a cheap point and shoot.  I don't know where this photography obsession is leading but it's fun right now...

 

Minolta MD 50mm f1.7 1/160 iso400

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Enjoy!  You could drop 1,500 bucks for the current equivalents to those lenses. Amazing huh? 

 

Earnestly, current lenses are not much better optically than the ones you have. But, they do get improvements from better contrast, mostly through modern coatings. You can get most of that easily in post processing with a quick flick of the contrast slider, if you find you need it, and it doesn't seem the pics you posted do.

 

Have a good time, it's a wonderful world, 'nanna,' nanna...

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Thanks for the encouraging words!  Both the lenses cost next to nothing but of course they're not stabilized.  I made the kids be still long enough with the 50mm to get so good shots of them in the dying light of the afternoon but the 135mm is tougher to nail down.

 

After using nothing but my iphone for the last couple of years I've been amazed what the a6000 can do with a $10 lens.  Quite literally I took the camera out of the box, flipped through the menus to put it in MF mode, turned on the red peaking and shot the picture of the bananas on the counter.

 

I'm going to try to use both a lot through the Easter weekend.  If my newb skills render anything of interest I'll post it...

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Neat. Peaking and magnification sure make manual focus easy don't they? Takes all the guess work out of it. If you get the inclination to try a native E mount lens, the 16-50mm is a good range, collapses so the camera will slip into a pocket, and is available used inexpensively. 

 

Here's a link to one at KEH.  https://www.keh.com/359901/sony-16-50mm-f-3-5-5-6-e-pz-oss-black-e-mount-autofocus-lens-40-5  They're image stabilized so it's easier to catch the kids, and available in either black or silver. The in camera software makes very nice quality images from them. It cleans up the defects that some of the reviews fuss about. It is not fast glass, you'll want your MF lenses for low light. FWIW, my experience with KEH is that they grade conservatively. Excellent really looks pretty much new. I've gotten lenses they list as Bargain and they have been in great shape.

 

 

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Here's a shot I took with it this afternoon.  The sky was cloudy and the wind was gusting to 20 because of a front moving through...  I don't have a light source other than mother nature right now so this is probably laughable by some standards here..  

 

An off-camera flash (and the know-how to use it) or a better lens than the 2 kits and 2 cheapos I have?  Which would benefit me more for stuff like this?

 

A6000

Minolta MD 50mm 1.7 1/1000 iso100

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Here's an example of the Minolta 50mm MD stopped down.  No surprise it gets a lot sharper.  Again I wished I had an off-camera light to illuminate them.  

 

....Several Cadbury eggs were offered as sacrifice to coerce 3 children to remain still all at one time...

 

Minolta 50mm MD, f5.6, 1/1000, iso100

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  • 2 weeks later...

The kid pix are really cute, but I'm trying to figure out why they aren't sharper. At f/5.6, anything in the DOF should be very sharp with this lens. The jpeg artifacts are strong, so I'm wondering if this has been compressed multiple times during post processing and/or uploading to the forum. It could be your focus was a bit off, but with the jpeg artifacts it's difficult to tell. You should be able to get stunning photos with that lens if it's in good condition.

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I believe you're going to have a lot of fun with your new camera and old lenses. I use several old Minolta lenses with my Sony alpha cameras, but I also have a couple of modern Sony lenses.  I suspect it won't be long before you want more modern lenses for your a6000.

 

And no, I doubt that anyone else ever bought two old lenses for a camera he didn't yet have.

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