On Jan 26, 2014, at 4:03 AM, Steve Cottrell <[email protected]> wrote:
> Full frame mirrorless experiences with a Pentax 35/2... > <http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6018399843/using-third-party-lenses-on-the-sony-a7-a7r> Hmm. To my ear, this guy is making noise about things which are completely inconsequential. Most of what he calls problems are not, and the notion that it is difficult to manual focus with an EVF that has excellent focus peaking and magnification like the A7 implies that his expectations are that the camera will do all the work for him. To me, that's simply the wrong attitude: don't waste your time with lens adaptation and ANY camera if that's your expectation. But, eh?, he's a writer looking to make a buck and it's DPR. 'Nuff said. I bought a Sony A7 specifically to use with my kit of Leica R and Nikkor SLR lenses, a "one-size-fits-all" body that can take any SLR mount (as well as some RF mount) lenses via adapters. I know these lenses, ancient tho they are, can produce the imaging magic I wanted, and I conjectured that I need the format to see it. While I've been adapting them to other formats for a long time and they work well, they simply don't work as well as they do on their native format. I figured the format must have something to do with it. I specifically chose the A7 body over the A7r body. I figured 24 Mpixel is enough, 36 is likely too demanding for my old lenses and unnecessary anyway, and that saved me $1000. I wish they'd done the same all-magnesium construction on the A7 too, but they went composite on the front panels. Oh well. Yesterday was my first shooting walk with the camera. I'd spent time before it arrived reading the manual and figuring out how to set it up, yesterday I had two goals in mind: shake out the configuration and see how well it did with the Leica R 50 and 90 mm lenses. I shot mostly with the 90mm lens, and made some adjustments to the configuration as I went along. Aperture priority doesn't work in the context of Auto-ISO? Nonsense, it works fine. It just has a fixed floor exposure time for pushing up the ISO, and it's a little low for longer lenses. So switch to Manual then, or shutter priority (same thing with adapted lenses). Actually, Manual exposure mode is VERY usable with this camera and Auto-ISO. It's very much like TAv mode on the Pentax bodies: you set the Auto-ISO range limits, pick your shutter and aperture settings, and go shoot. The sensor is quite clean, you can easily use 100-6400 without even thinking about it, and head further into stratospheric sensitivity without worrying too much. That's six stops range on Auto-ISO, minimum. And you have EV compensation, up to 5 stops +/-, to work with. The way I've got it configured now, I only very rarely need to go into the menus and fuss about … a good thing given the crappy menu system. All the controls I need are now accessible quickly through external button presses (sometimes a bit weirdly positioned, but my fingers can adapt) or turning dials. The EVF is almost as good as the one in the E-M1 … I think the Olympus EVF optics are better. I can flip the focus magnification and peaking assists on and off easily, I can set the ISO, focus, aperture, shutter time, and EV compensation all directly, etc. The way I have the camera set up, it feels for all the world like I'm shooting with my favorite old Nikon FE2 with MD-12 motor drive—but smaller, lighter, handier, and with instantaneous viewfinder feedback pre-exposure and post-exposure review. The shutter even sounds similar. And the results? My hunch is so far working out … I think the A7 24Mpixel sensor is an very good match to the Leica R and Nikkor SLR lenses (and probably by extension to Pentax, Olympus, Canon FD, Minolta, etc, lenses). I compared some exposures made on film with the Leicaflex SL/Summicron-R 90mm combination to similar photos made with the A7 by imaging them on my full 27" computer screen. They have the same look and feel, something I didn't see adapting these lenses to smaller formats, and the corner/edge renderings (where you see the most problems with adapted lenses on FF sensors) are near-to-identical on lateral CA, 'smearing', etc. The Summilux-R 50/1.4 does about the same. I'll be testing the 24mm soon, hopefully that will hold up as well, and after that I'll be testing some of my M-mount lenses (I expect more issues as the mount registration is much shorter, adaptation is fussier*). At this point in time, I have little but praise for the A7 used for these purposes. Sure, it's a clunky little POS in some respects, and Sony would do well to hire a couple of photographers to aid in the design of camera ergonomics and menu layout, but the bottom line is that it can be configured to work very nicely indeed, and the image quality is indeed delightful. * I hear that three of my M-mount lenses do perform well on it: the Ultron 28mm f/2, the M-Rokkor 40mm f/2, and the M-Rokkor 90mm f/4. If this is true, given that the mount adapter is much shorter and these lenses much shorter than the SLR lenses, it seems I will then have my long-sought-for digital equivalent of a Leica CL back in hand. I'm just waiting for that mount adapter to arrive... :-) Godfrey --- "The fact that nobody understands you doesn't make you an artist." -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
