Best Sony lenses for LA-EA2's continuous autofocus?

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seven.b

Well-known member
Hi guys, I'll be ordering up an FS700 as soon as they're available, which means I'll need to ditch my m4/3's glass and my GH2. Since I shoot action sports, I'm longing over the slow motion and high quality continuous AF while recording.

Is this possible with Canon lenses + metabones? If not, what Sony lenses should I look at (w/ LA-EA2)? How's the Sony 70-200 f2.8 compared to Canon's?

Thanks!
 
seven.b said:
Hi guys, I'll be ordering up an FS700 as soon as they're available, which means I'll need to ditch my m4/3's glass and my GH2. Since I shoot action sports, I'm longing over the slow motion and high quality continuous AF while recording.

Is this possible with Canon lenses + metabones? If not, what Sony lenses should I look at (w/ LA-EA2)? How's the Sony 70-200 f2.8 compared to Canon's?

Thanks!
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Don't know if I'm right.. but seems like if you want to have both: Autofocusing with LA-EA2 adapter and Image Stabilization on Somy FS-700, you may need to get Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG APO OS HSM for Sony lens / Sigma 120-400mm f/4.5-5.6 DG APO OS HSM Autofocus Zoom Lens for Sony lens...

....with Canon 70-200 mm f 2.8 IS you will NOT have autofocus option and with Sony 70-200mm F2.8 you will NOT have Image Stabilization :)
 
There's a site: kurtmunger that has some great sony alpha lens reviews. well worth a read.

The Sony Zeiss ZA zoom lenses (1635 and 2470) are very nice. They're SSM so focusing is fast and pretty quiet. The manual focus rings have about 120 degrees of travel and feel very nice, there are soft stops at either end - so not chance of ripping the lens off the mount with an over enthusiastic follow focus pull.

A lot of the older sony range have SAM autofocus which is a screw driven focus (the LA-EA2 can do this) but they're quite noisy which could be an issue.

I assume the 3rd party sony lenses (sigma etc,.) have their own internal focusing motor likes SSM, but don't know for sure. I've always found sigma (on canon) to have quite short focus throws when doing manual.

The Sony G 70-200 is supposed to perform really well, i don't have one, but reviews are very good. It's SSM too. The only problem i have with it - it's white! But even so i may grab one. The website i mention above compares it with sigma's offering

cheers
Paul
 
paulcurtis said:
A lot of the older sony range have SAM autofocus which is a screw driven focus (the LA-EA2 can do this) but they're quite noisy which could be an issue.

cheers
Paul
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SAM is not screw driven focus. SAM is a motor inside the lens. The difference between SAM vs SSM is that SAM is (relatively) slower and noisier than SSM. The cheaper lenses , all under $300, (like 18-55, 55-200, 50mm F1.8, 35mm F1.8, 85mm F2.8 etc) are all SAM. More expensive lenses are SSM (Zeiss 16-35, Zeiss 24-70, Sony 70-400, 70-300). All these expensive lenses are also full-frame, so they are larger too. I think 16-50 is an APSC lens and SSM.

The older lenses are screw driven (these are neither SAM nor SSM).
 
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You can always use the kit 18-200 zoom. It has the zoom range for sports. I use mine for shooting lacrosse tournaments. That's about as fast moving as a sports event can get. Plus, it has OIS.
I keep mine on auto focus, and it does a very good job. This is about the only time I use AF.
 
Metabones responded to my email saying they are developing an autofocus for their EOS to Nex adaptor.

With that said, I believe Sony uses Phase detection which is more advanced than Canon's Contrast detection, so I have a feeling even if Metabones were to get that working, the Sonys will probably autofocus better since it's just more advance technology.
 
gene_can_sing said:
Metabones responded to my email saying they are developing an autofocus for their EOS to Nex adaptor.

With that said, I believe Sony uses Phase detection which is more advanced than Canon's Contrast detection, so I have a feeling even if Metabones were to get that working, the Sonys will probably autofocus better since it's just more advance technology.
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DSLR lenses don't work well with CDAF AF system. The E-mount (and m4/3 native) lenses are made from scratch for CDAF AF system. That's not true for Canon DSLR lenses.

Even if metabones adapter make AF working with Canon lenses, the continuous AF would still be unusable in practical sense.
 
If anyone has a SIGMA lens with stabilization, I would like to know if the stablization works during autofocus at f3.5. Thanks.
 
evilthought said:
SAM is not screw driven focus. SAM is a motor inside the lens. The difference between SAM vs SSM is that SAM is (relatively) slower and noisier than SSM. The cheaper lenses , all under $300, (like 18-55, 55-200, 50mm F1.8, 35mm F1.8, 85mm F2.8 etc) are all SAM. More expensive lenses are SSM (Zeiss 16-35, Zeiss 24-70, Sony 70-400, 70-300). All these expensive lenses are also full-frame, so they are larger too. I think 16-50 is an APSC lens and SSM.

The older lenses are screw driven (these are neither SAM nor SSM).
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Are you sure, i was under the impression that SAM is a slot driven AF with the motor in the camera body, or in this case the LA-EA2. I've tried googling but not found a definitive answer. I can't remember where i saw this but was fairly certain. I don't have the LA-EA2 in front of me to look but sort of remember seeing a slot type thing on it. I'm prepared to be wrong though...

The Sony Zeiss 85 f1.4 is SAM, as is the 135 f1.8

cheers
paul
 
paulcurtis said:
Are you sure, i was under the impression that SAM is a slot driven AF with the motor in the camera body, or in this case the LA-EA2. I've tried googling but not found a definitive answer. I can't remember where i saw this but was fairly certain. I don't have the LA-EA2 in front of me to look but sort of remember seeing a slot type thing on it. I'm prepared to be wrong though...

The Sony Zeiss 85 f1.4 is SAM, as is the 135 f1.8

cheers
paul
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Yes, I am sure. SAM are noisier than SSM but they are not screw driven.

Zeiss 85 f1.4 and 135 f1.8 are screw driven lenses. They are not SAM. 18-55 kit lens is SAM.

So there are three kinds of Alpha lenses

(1) SSM: quieter and relatively faster but usually higher end/expensive lenses. Full frame Zeiss 24mm F2.0 is SSM
(2) SAM: noisier than SSM but the motor is still inside the lens. 18-55 kit lens is an example.
(3) Screw-driven lenses. These lenses don't have AF motor. The AF is done by the motor inside the camera body (LAEA2 has motor built-in). These are noisy too.
 
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evilthought said:
Yes, I am sure. SAM are noisier than SSM but they are not screw driven.

Zeiss 85 f1.4 and 135 f1.8 are screw driven lenses. They are not SAM. 18-55 kit lens is SAM.
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I live and learn, i don't have any SAM lenses then, the noise of the 85 was bugging me and putting me off looking at SAM. Seems a shame that 2 nice zeiss primes are slotted, odd choice it seems. I'm sure there's a good reason.

cheers
Paul
 
paulcurtis said:
I live and learn, i don't have any SAM lenses then, the noise of the 85 was bugging me and putting me off looking at SAM. Seems a shame that 2 nice zeiss primes are slotted, odd choice it seems. I'm sure there's a good reason.

cheers
Paul
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These two Zeiss lenses are older, among the first two Zeiss AF lenses for A-mount. If they were done today, they would probably be SSM.

By the way, for manual focus only, there is this 135mm "STF" lens too, that is known as having best bokeh

http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps-c-lens-tests/390-sony_135_28
 
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