M. Gilden
Canon DSLR Moderator
There was a thread a while back about using the A7S as a stills camera, where I recall the biggest complaint (after deciding the 12mp resolution was, in fact, enough for most things) was the lack of FE lens options. Since this is predominately a film-making forum, the conversation has more-or-less petered off. But I'd like to share some things I know now that I wish I had read here earlier.
Sure, we can all easily adapt lenses for video, but if you wanted autofocus for stills (or even occasionally video, event coverage, etc) you need to cough up a pretty penny for some FE native glass. If you are like me, coming from photography systems where sharp 2.8 zooms and 1.4 (or faster) aperture primes are fairly affordable, its hard to justify spending $1200-$1400 on f/4 zooms, or $950 for a standard 1.8 prime, and not having any options beyond that (even if those FEs happen to be Zeiss optics).
That is, until I discovered A-mount. A friend doing photography pointed out that while the FE mount is still an early-adopters compromise, the older Sony and Minolta A-mount is an extremely mature lens ecosystem. And the LA-EA4 adapter from Sony makes them act like native lenses on an FE mount camera. In fact, not only does the adapter let me use all their full frame A-mount glass, it actually gives my A7S phase detection AF (as opposed to the slower contrast based one), which means it can sometimes AF faster and more accurately than the native FE lenses can! EVEN IN VIDEO!
This blew me away, as I was just looking for something to keep me from missing my Canon for the occasional stills shooting. I wanted to share this with the group here as an option, as I didn't seem to find much about this when I was looking for alternatives to FE lens prices.
This system isn't perfect, there are pros and cons. The pros are that you have excellent options not yet available in FE mount (Sony 2.8 Zeiss zooms, a legendary 135mm f/1.8 zeiss prime, plenty of f/1.4 and Tamron/Sigma/Sony 2.8 zooms), as well as extremely affordable classic Minolta screw-drive focus glass on the dirt cheap. I picked up a Minolta "beer can" 70-210/4 for around $60, and a 50mm f/1.7 for another $50. Both have accurate autofocus, although the screw-drive system is a noisy and not always as instant as internal silent AF motors found on modern DSLRs, but the point is that you HAVE OPTIONS! You can get a Sony SAM A-mount lens that will AF quickly and silently if you wanted to, or go cheap if you just want something in the 70-200 range that is a fraction of what Sony is asking for an F/4!
The cons are that they don't offer OSS, as the Sony A bodies have IBIS. No so much a deal breaker for stills, but for video that might be a concern at the 200mm end. Meanwhile I handed the A7S with a 50mm minolta on autofocus to my 9 year old daughter, and she was able to follow me around the house as I documented how to fix something, perfectly in focus and with a clip on lav mic to avoid focus noise.
The cons are that it makes the camera more similar to a DSLR. It now has a translucent mirror, which means slightly bigger and heavier, (although arguably any adapter for SLR lenses adds the size to the front for flange distance), supposedly the translucent mirror also steals a 1/3 stop of light for the focus system, although in my tests so far it has really made a negligible difference (also not much concern on a low light monster sensor like the A7S). The other con, and maybe someone here knows more about this, but if setting up AF continuous in video, the camera does not allow M, A, or S exposure. It defaults to P, and sets my aperture to 3.5 or 4 (depending on the lens I mounted), and will let me adjust via the ISO or exposure dial only. Shutter and aperture become fully auto, which I'm not crazy about. Then again, when I'm shooting autofocus for video, its usually the sort of thing I can live with. But I'd like to figure out how to turn that off if possible, as this adapter pretty much satisfied my desire for an FE lens otherwise!
Sure, we can all easily adapt lenses for video, but if you wanted autofocus for stills (or even occasionally video, event coverage, etc) you need to cough up a pretty penny for some FE native glass. If you are like me, coming from photography systems where sharp 2.8 zooms and 1.4 (or faster) aperture primes are fairly affordable, its hard to justify spending $1200-$1400 on f/4 zooms, or $950 for a standard 1.8 prime, and not having any options beyond that (even if those FEs happen to be Zeiss optics).
That is, until I discovered A-mount. A friend doing photography pointed out that while the FE mount is still an early-adopters compromise, the older Sony and Minolta A-mount is an extremely mature lens ecosystem. And the LA-EA4 adapter from Sony makes them act like native lenses on an FE mount camera. In fact, not only does the adapter let me use all their full frame A-mount glass, it actually gives my A7S phase detection AF (as opposed to the slower contrast based one), which means it can sometimes AF faster and more accurately than the native FE lenses can! EVEN IN VIDEO!
This blew me away, as I was just looking for something to keep me from missing my Canon for the occasional stills shooting. I wanted to share this with the group here as an option, as I didn't seem to find much about this when I was looking for alternatives to FE lens prices.
This system isn't perfect, there are pros and cons. The pros are that you have excellent options not yet available in FE mount (Sony 2.8 Zeiss zooms, a legendary 135mm f/1.8 zeiss prime, plenty of f/1.4 and Tamron/Sigma/Sony 2.8 zooms), as well as extremely affordable classic Minolta screw-drive focus glass on the dirt cheap. I picked up a Minolta "beer can" 70-210/4 for around $60, and a 50mm f/1.7 for another $50. Both have accurate autofocus, although the screw-drive system is a noisy and not always as instant as internal silent AF motors found on modern DSLRs, but the point is that you HAVE OPTIONS! You can get a Sony SAM A-mount lens that will AF quickly and silently if you wanted to, or go cheap if you just want something in the 70-200 range that is a fraction of what Sony is asking for an F/4!
The cons are that they don't offer OSS, as the Sony A bodies have IBIS. No so much a deal breaker for stills, but for video that might be a concern at the 200mm end. Meanwhile I handed the A7S with a 50mm minolta on autofocus to my 9 year old daughter, and she was able to follow me around the house as I documented how to fix something, perfectly in focus and with a clip on lav mic to avoid focus noise.
The cons are that it makes the camera more similar to a DSLR. It now has a translucent mirror, which means slightly bigger and heavier, (although arguably any adapter for SLR lenses adds the size to the front for flange distance), supposedly the translucent mirror also steals a 1/3 stop of light for the focus system, although in my tests so far it has really made a negligible difference (also not much concern on a low light monster sensor like the A7S). The other con, and maybe someone here knows more about this, but if setting up AF continuous in video, the camera does not allow M, A, or S exposure. It defaults to P, and sets my aperture to 3.5 or 4 (depending on the lens I mounted), and will let me adjust via the ISO or exposure dial only. Shutter and aperture become fully auto, which I'm not crazy about. Then again, when I'm shooting autofocus for video, its usually the sort of thing I can live with. But I'd like to figure out how to turn that off if possible, as this adapter pretty much satisfied my desire for an FE lens otherwise!
