I Bought the LA-EA3 Adapter!

[VidThreeNorth]

Long ago, well, maybe around 15 years ago, I obtained a dead Maxxum (film camera) with two lenses. The lenses were in perfect shape. One was a prime and one was a short zoom. The prime was probably a 50 1.7, but I have no idea about the zoom. It looked like a 28-70'ish lens.

Around 10 years ago, I moved into my Condo. Unfortunately, shortly after moving in, I had a break-in and since everything was (and still is) a mess here, I never did get a good inventory of what was taken. I have no idea if I still have the Maxxum and lenses.

B&H has a special going for the Sony LA-EA3 adapter, which can be used to mount those Maxxum lenses on my a5000. I lose "auto-focus", but that's ok. Really, the lenses just duplicate others that I have already adapted, except that if I use the Maxxum lenses on the a5000 through the adapter, then I should get EXIF data, and that is a big deal for me. As some of you might have noticed, I like having the information in the files -- and the lenses should be pretty good too.
[2017-12-09 Grammar and style corrections]

Anyway, I ordered it, and it has arrived. But I still have not seen the Maxxum and the lenses. I cannot take the place apart looking for this stuff because I am very busy. This is really frustrating. . . .
:-|

 

[dxqcanada]

... so you bought the adapter, even though you are not sure if you even have a lens to use with it ?

 

[jcdeboever]

... so you bought the adapter, even though you are not sure if you even have a lens to use with it ?

Well those old lens are cheap enough. I highly recommend the mini beer can 35-70 f4, and the regular beer can, 70-210 F4.

 

[VidThreeNorth]

I'm looking at this as an experiment about thinking "really positive thoughts."

 

[Derrel]

Long ago, well, maybe around 15 years ago, I obtained a dead Maxxum (film camera) with two lenses. The lenses were in perfect shape. One was a prime and one was a short zoom. The prime was probably a 50 1.7, but I have no idea about the zoom. It looked like a 28-70'ish lens.

Around 10 years ago, I moved into my Condo. Unfortunately, shortly after moving in, I had a break-in and since everything was (and still is) a mess here, I never did get a good inventory of what was taken. I have no idea if I still have the Maxxum and lenses.

B&H has a special going for the Sony LA-EA3 adapter, which can be used to mount those Maxxum lenses on my a5000. I lose "auto-focus", but that's ok. Really, the lenses would really just duplicate others that I have already adapted, except that if I use the Maxxum lenses on the a5000 through the adapter, then I should get EXIF data, and that is a big deal for me. As some of you might have noticed, I like having the information in the files -- and the lenses should be pretty good too.

Anyway, I ordered it, and it has arrived. But I still have not seen the Maxxum and the lenses. I cannot take the place apart looking for this stuff because I am very busy. This is really frustrating. . . .
:-|

AT MY LOCAL area pawnshop that specializes in photography gear, there are a pretty high number of older AF lenses for Minolta's Maxxum AF cameras...at LOW prices! Really LOW prices! Perhaps you could look into the used lens market and see if you could buy some nifty used stuff for the older Minolta mount?

I agree with the EXIF information stuff, and maybe your raw developer software could read EXIF and apply lens profile corrections, like auto-distortion removal and automated light fall-off and CA reduction?

 

[jcdeboever]

Long ago, well, maybe around 15 years ago, I obtained a dead Maxxum (film camera) with two lenses. The lenses were in perfect shape. One was a prime and one was a short zoom. The prime was probably a 50 1.7, but I have no idea about the zoom. It looked like a 28-70'ish lens.

Around 10 years ago, I moved into my Condo. Unfortunately, shortly after moving in, I had a break-in and since everything was (and still is) a mess here, I never did get a good inventory of what was taken. I have no idea if I still have the Maxxum and lenses.

B&H has a special going for the Sony LA-EA3 adapter, which can be used to mount those Maxxum lenses on my a5000. I lose "auto-focus", but that's ok. Really, the lenses would really just duplicate others that I have already adapted, except that if I use the Maxxum lenses on the a5000 through the adapter, then I should get EXIF data, and that is a big deal for me. As some of you might have noticed, I like having the information in the files -- and the lenses should be pretty good too.

Anyway, I ordered it, and it has arrived. But I still have not seen the Maxxum and the lenses. I cannot take the place apart looking for this stuff because I am very busy. This is really frustrating. . . .
:-|

AT MY LOCAL area pawnshop that specializes in photography gear, there are a pretty high number of older AF lenses for Minolta's Maxxum AF cameras...at LOW prices! Really LOW prices! Perhaps you could look into the used lens market and see if you could buy some nifty used stuff for the older Minolta mount?

I agree with the EXIF information stuff, and maybe your raw developer software could read EXIF and apply lens profile corrections, like auto-distortion removal and automated light fall-off and CA reduction?

Yup, good call. My local, used camera store has a few of them as well. Cheap. They have a 16mm 2.8 that is under $100 but it suffers from fungus, so I walked away. I like the colors from the old Minolta Maxxum lenses, they remind me of Fujifilm colors on the digital. Very different from old Nikkor glass but the micro contrast seems to be a little better on Nikkors. I don't know, just appears that way.

 

[VidThreeNorth]

I decided that I want to give this adapter a try-out, and headed to a camera store and got a used Minolta 28-100 F3.5-5.6 Autofocus D zoom lens. If you do not recognize this, it was an inexpensive "semi-kit" zoom. I think it was one of the last of lenses that came out under the Minolta name. I tried it out with the LA-EA3 adapter and everything seems to be working. I'll post more about this in the "Lenses" area.

see: "Konica Minolta 28-100mm f/3.5-5.6 D AF Zoom" Konica Minolta 28-100mm f/3.5-5.6 D AF Zoom

 

[VidThreeNorth]

Sometimes things are better than I think:

I started using the adapter with older pre-SAM lenses and yes, when using this adapter on the a5000, those are Manual focus only. However, I did pick up the 18-55mm (version 1) SAM zoom a while back. I have been using it the same as the other adapted lenses -- manually. Today I was looking for something in my a5000 manual, and I ran across the notations for the various adapters, and I noticed something odd. Some lens combinations were listed as Single Auto-Focus on all the adapters. Yes, the SAM and SSM lenses are autofocus even through the LAEA3 adapter on my a5000. I tried it and it works -- sort of. It isn't very reliable. It sometimes misses focus, but, ok, it's better than nothing. Since the slightly newer a5100 has hybrid autofocus, this lens and adapter combination should work better on all the currently available bodies. It's definitely better than I thought . . . .