- Joined
- Jun 16, 2014
- Messages
- 262
As you may or may not have seen in my other thread, I've recently "upgraded" from my a6000 rig to an a6500 AND an A7Rii. I'm sure most of you have been in this situation before: You have a clear (or maybe not so clear) goal, but once you buy the gear, your focus shifts. My goal since the beginning of this journey 6 or 7 years ago was to use by manual focus lenses on a digital body. Once I had a NEX-6 (after a short stint with an NEX-3) I astarted accumulating even more adapted glass. At the time, I was still using a Canon DSLR as my main camera for "serious photography." (as serious as any amateur can get - weddings, baptisms, kid pictures, etc.) The Nex-6 was used primarily as a creative tool - I didn't even have any native glass for it.
Fast forward to 2017 and I was planning a trip to Italy. I wanted to take some great photos and couldn't fathom carrying a Canon 60D all over Italy. Thanks to many suggestions here, I picked up an a6000, Zeiss 24mm, Samyang 12mm/f2 and BOTH kit zooms for the a6000. I brought all 4 of those lenses to Italy and fell in love with both the Samyang and the Zeiss. Since I got back, over two years ago, I don't think I spent much (if any) time with my adapted glass other than moon shots with the 1000mm Rubinar and some other 500mm mirrors. I picked up the Zeiss 24-70/f4 last year in anticipation of going full frame (so i'd have some native glass for it). So when the a6000 seemed to start to act a little wonky recently I figured this is it...it's time for full frame! Being the thrifty (not cheap) guy I am, I ended up with a used A7Rii and a used a6500 to replace my a6000/NEX-6 combo as well as a Zeiss 55mm. I'm actively looking for a Zeiss 35mm 2.8 as well as a Sony 85mm/1.8. My thinking with still picking up the a6500 was that it's small and I can still use the Zeiss 24mm. So over the past few days, i'm reading Ad's thread on upgrading to an A7Riv and someone asks about adapted glass. That got me realizing that I need to start using mine more. It's literally 100% of the reason I got into E Mount in the first place!
So having the two bodies, I'm assuming that there would be times to use one vs the other. For example, i'll probably keep doing moon shots on the a6500 to keep the resolution on that crop. Cropping that A7Rii to APS-C size would still be nice, but i'd get higher resolution just using the APS-C body. Then I have lenses like the Tamron 51B (17mm). I think I used that once or twice on the crop body and then never used it again. Being a bit distorted and the equivalent of 25.5mm, it ends up not really being wide angle and just not useful on the a6000. On full frame, though, I think it might be cool. Are there lenses that people like for crop and not full frame? Full frame but not crop?
For other advantages, namely IBIS and higher megapixels, are there times this could negatively affect any of these older lenses? Ad mentioned that if a lens was sharp on the R2, it seems as though generally it will be sharp on an R4. Would that hold true if we were comparting, say, an A7II vs an A7RII? Does that translate to "a lens is either sharp or it isn't?" I am already assuming that some lenses I love and seem sharp across the frame on my a6000 will disappoint on the R2 as they'll be soft in the corners (which were cropped out on the a6000).
And finally, for those of you who shoot with adapted lenses, what custom buttons do you find most useful? Both the A7Rii and the a6500 have more user assignable buttons than I had before. I'm sure i'll tweak and change several times before I come up with something that works for me, but does anyone have some suggestions on what works for them?
-james
Fast forward to 2017 and I was planning a trip to Italy. I wanted to take some great photos and couldn't fathom carrying a Canon 60D all over Italy. Thanks to many suggestions here, I picked up an a6000, Zeiss 24mm, Samyang 12mm/f2 and BOTH kit zooms for the a6000. I brought all 4 of those lenses to Italy and fell in love with both the Samyang and the Zeiss. Since I got back, over two years ago, I don't think I spent much (if any) time with my adapted glass other than moon shots with the 1000mm Rubinar and some other 500mm mirrors. I picked up the Zeiss 24-70/f4 last year in anticipation of going full frame (so i'd have some native glass for it). So when the a6000 seemed to start to act a little wonky recently I figured this is it...it's time for full frame! Being the thrifty (not cheap) guy I am, I ended up with a used A7Rii and a used a6500 to replace my a6000/NEX-6 combo as well as a Zeiss 55mm. I'm actively looking for a Zeiss 35mm 2.8 as well as a Sony 85mm/1.8. My thinking with still picking up the a6500 was that it's small and I can still use the Zeiss 24mm. So over the past few days, i'm reading Ad's thread on upgrading to an A7Riv and someone asks about adapted glass. That got me realizing that I need to start using mine more. It's literally 100% of the reason I got into E Mount in the first place!
So having the two bodies, I'm assuming that there would be times to use one vs the other. For example, i'll probably keep doing moon shots on the a6500 to keep the resolution on that crop. Cropping that A7Rii to APS-C size would still be nice, but i'd get higher resolution just using the APS-C body. Then I have lenses like the Tamron 51B (17mm). I think I used that once or twice on the crop body and then never used it again. Being a bit distorted and the equivalent of 25.5mm, it ends up not really being wide angle and just not useful on the a6000. On full frame, though, I think it might be cool. Are there lenses that people like for crop and not full frame? Full frame but not crop?
For other advantages, namely IBIS and higher megapixels, are there times this could negatively affect any of these older lenses? Ad mentioned that if a lens was sharp on the R2, it seems as though generally it will be sharp on an R4. Would that hold true if we were comparting, say, an A7II vs an A7RII? Does that translate to "a lens is either sharp or it isn't?" I am already assuming that some lenses I love and seem sharp across the frame on my a6000 will disappoint on the R2 as they'll be soft in the corners (which were cropped out on the a6000).
And finally, for those of you who shoot with adapted lenses, what custom buttons do you find most useful? Both the A7Rii and the a6500 have more user assignable buttons than I had before. I'm sure i'll tweak and change several times before I come up with something that works for me, but does anyone have some suggestions on what works for them?
-james