Newbie with an A350

[withavee]

Hi All thought I would justsay Hello from Leicester England. After many years of film photography I spent the years my kids were kids with compacts, film and digital. 4 years with an 828 and I have now gone to SLR and the excellent A350. A couple of months in and I am looking to expand my kit bag (after promising I would not).

My favourite lenses used to be prime so I wondered about picking up some older primes and wondered if I can use any manual focus on the A350?

Any advice much appreciated.

Cheers All

Peter

[OldClicker]

Peter,

Welcome to the digi-world and PhotoReview. I also am a happy A350 owner.

The old AF a-mount Minolta lenses work with full use of auto-focus and aperture control.

The SR (MD, MC) mount lenses that came before those require an adapter. They work with as manual focus and aperture. Unfortunately the adapter has to set the lens a little bit forward of its design position and so acts like a short extension tube. This limits its ability to focus at distance. I have one MD lens and it will only focus out to about 6 feet (fine for macro though). Some adapters have optics in them to refocus and give you full range, but the glass quality is not up to the job. Minolta did make an adapter with good optics, but it was a 2x teleconverter. They can be found used. Bottom line - unless you have some old very nice SR glass it probably isn't worth it.

Another option is old manual focus lenses with the screw-in type mounts. They can be narrow enough so that the adapter puts the lens in the right position. The problem here is that everybody knows it and these lenses aren't really all that cheap.

Here is a cut & paste of some info that I posted a while back for someone with an A200:

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All of the old Auto-Focus (AF) Minolta lenses - also known as the a-mount or, now, the alpha-mount - will work on your A200. Older Manual-Focus Minolta lenses with the SR-mount (mostly labeled MD or MC) will not fit on the camera. Here is a data base of the AF lenses.

http://www.mhohner.de/sony-minolta/lenses.php

And this one has most everything for the Minolta Maxxum/Sony a-mount systems.

http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/index.asp

The kit lens is certainly capable of taking great photos, but it is not the best - even among the lower grade lenses. If you work with it, learn its limitations and how to get around them, you will have learned a lot about photography. Most alpha owners pick up a Minolta 50mm f/1.7 early on because they can be cheap and provide a good low-light start. Some used lens places:

http://www.keh.com/OnLineStore/Produ...&GBC=&GCC=&KW=

http://www.keh.com/OnLineStore/Produ...&GBC=&GCC=&KW=

http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?o...us&cat3=Lenses

http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?o...al&cat3=Lenses

http://www.photographyreview.com/Com...2847/KBID/3790

And, of course Ebay (but be careful).

Here are a few Guides - take them for what they’re worth.

http://reviews.ebay.com/The-Best-Max...00000000911239

http://reviews.ebay.com/Maxxum-70-21...00000000751723

http://reviews.ebay.com/How-To-Detec...00000001005542

http://reviews.ebay.com/Top-Minolta-...00000007572656

http://reviews.ebay.com/LENSES-amp-A...00000001549787

http://reviews.ebay.com/Sony-Alpha-M...00000004652715

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TF

[withavee]

TF, thanks for the the very full reply, this will help save me some $$. I went for the 16 - 105mm lens as I like the extra width for landscapes and it seems to perform very well indeed. I also picked up a 70 - 200 Tamron for the odd long distance shot. I used to have a very nice 90mm f1,8 for my film slr which was wonderful to use, so I think I will look out for a 50mm standard lens to take its place. All I need to do now is get my head round Photoshop I still tend to think that it all ends when you press the shutter release :-)

Peter

[SmartWombat]

Welcome Peter, good to see another brit !
Just as it didn't end with the shutter release when you used film, there's plenty to do in the digital darkroom if you want to do it yourself.

[Anbesol]

Ah - you say 828 - I presume you are speaking of the Sony DSC-F828. Do you still have that thing? Great point and shoot to keep on you.