Sony Alfa lenses

[Milanos]

One friend of mine has just bought a Sony Alfa DSLR and was wondering about my mf lenses. He as well wants to buy some of these but I really do not know what will fit his body.

What type of bayonet should I look for and what adapters are mountable to Sony body?

Thanks a lot in advance.

[ManualFocus-G]

The easiest to fit are M42 screw mount lenses...beware though, all Sony alpha cameras need an adapter with a chip in, in order to use Aperture Priority mode (A) - except the a100 and a700 which can do without.

You can also adapt Tamron Adaptall lenses either via a Tamron -> M42 mount and then M42->Sony adapter or directly using a Tamron -> Sony adapter.

[tkbslc]

Looking at the mount register distances, Sony should be able to mount nikon, olympus, Pentax K as well as many others, yet looking at the available adapters it appears all of those require correction lenses.

Why can canon mount everything, yet Sony cannot when they are both some of the shallowest dslr mounts? Canon is 44 and Sony is 44.6 and the rest listed above are at least 45.5mm. Is it the mount diameter?

[Seele]

First I want to apologize if I am going OT, or even thread-hijacking, but I think it would be appropriate for me to ask a probably academic quesstion, in the hope that Minolta/Sony AF/Digital experts can mull over.

When Minolta introduced the first autofocus generation starting with the 7000/Maxxum/Alpha, it got into a legal wrangle with Sigma as the latter produced compatible lenses, and Minolta said that its patents were infringed. As if to prove that it had no need to steal Minolta's technology, Sigma produced the "Sigma AF 1.6X MD-MA Multi Converter". It fits between the Minolta body and a MD lens, you set the maximum aperture of the lens on a scale, and then it offers full autofocus and exposure automation function. As far as I know, only one batch of this was made, and I have one example.

A very old thread in the German Minolta forum, it was said that, while this converter works very well with the original Minolta autofocus series, Minolta changed the electrical wiring in the subsequent models and this converter ceased to work. But then, the xi generation also made further changes in the connections but it was later reverted to an earlier form.

The first question is: among the current Sony, and pre-Sony Minolta digital reflex cameras, would there be any which can indeed use this Sigma converter?

Then, I also have an old, plain metal adapter for using M42 lenses on Minolta AF mount cameras. As Shrek said, it should be able to be used on the A100 and A700 Sony models, but was there any earlier Minolta models which can take advantage of it?

Thanks in advance.

[Milanos]

Great info, just a short question. Will M42 lenses focus to infinity, or he has to pick up adapter with correction lens?

[Arkku]