<\/p>\n
For a long-suffering victim of the notorious Sony (A mount\/E mount) bait and switch, lenses have been both a sore point and an important topic.\u00a0 Specifically, much thought had to be given to what strategy would allow you to get the kind of photos you wanted now but minimize the cost of eventual lens duplication when Sony finally got their act together and produced a native version.\u00a0 I could go on and on about adapters for every lens mount known to photography, manual lenses of all description from the cheapest old 50mm nifty fifties made with radioactive thorium coatings to top of the line Leica glass costing in excess of $10,000.\u00a0 We could discuss the perils of using wide angle rangefinder lenses on the very short e-mount registration distance and we could discuss the tradeoffs between the slower AF speed of the LAEA3 vs the light loss of the translucent mirror in the LAEA4.\u00a0 We could talk about these things but let\u2019s not.\u00a0 All of these work arounds are like those very old moving pictures from the turn of the 19th<\/sup> century that chronicled the failures in aviation that preceded the Wright Brothers.\u00a0 There were planes that flapped their wings like birds.\u00a0 There were giant corkscrews that pitched around like a top until they toppled over and vibrated apart.\u00a0 And there was that glider with three levels of wings mounted on a bicycle that collapsed as soon as it reached the bottom of the ramp it was on.\u00a0 All these horrors are relics of the past.\u00a0 The only reminders for me are a few modified Contax G lenses and a few adapters for them still hanging around my photography room (very sad).<\/p>\n Now that Sony has gotten around to filling out the FE lens line up to a pretty convincing degree the lens decisions that a Sony photographer has to make are much closer to the decisions that a Canon or Nikon shooter makes.\u00a0 Native or third party?\u00a0 Manual or autofocus?\u00a0 Fast, large, heavy and expensive or slow, small, light and cheap?\u00a0 Interestingly, if you\u2019re short of cash and go for the more reasonably priced choices you sometimes end up with a very satisfactory lens.\u00a0 For instance, the Sony FE 55mm and 28mm lenses are among the least expensive in the line-up but are both very good performers.\u00a0 But there is no getting around the fact that gear acquisition syndrome (G.A.S.) is a very common and seductive disease.\u00a0 I know because I am a sufferer of this disorder.\u00a0 Oh well.<\/p>\n So how do you go about choosing the lenses you should buy?\u00a0 Well, even before you talk about budget, decide on what lenses you do and do not need to do the kind of photography you plan on doing.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a portrait photographer, you won\u2019t need a 10mm wide angle lens.\u00a0 If you shoot high speed sports like motor cross racing you probably want good autofocus capability and a manual focus lens will have limited application.\u00a0 One thing I find interesting is what I find myself using in real life as opposed to what I own.\u00a0 I have a Minolta 200mm macro lens that I typically use on a manual focus adapter.\u00a0 Well actually it\u2019s an LAEA3 and can autofocus but not with a screw drive lens which the Minolta macro is.\u00a0 Anyway, although the primary mission of this Minolta lens is for macro, I find myself using it for all sorts of things.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very sharp lens and I like it for landscape, portraits and even cityscapes.\u00a0 Another example of what I actually use vs what I have is the 35mm focal length.\u00a0 I have the Sony f\/1.4 and f\/2.8 35mm FE lenses.\u00a0 Without a doubt, the f\/1.4 lens is the better lens and in a darker indoor environment it should be my preference.\u00a0 But it is a much bulkier and heavier lens.\u00a0 So, suppose I\u2019m going to a family occasion and want to enjoy myself but still take a few photos.\u00a0 I take the f\/2.8.\u00a0 It fits much more conveniently in my jacket pocket and along with the high ISO capability of the Sony A7S does a very nice job without the extra stop of light.\u00a0 And how about autofocus for landscape photography?\u00a0 You might say who needs it?\u00a0 Just set it to infinity and have at it.\u00a0 An interesting question comes up.\u00a0 What if the infinity stop is off by a small amount?\u00a0 Would a good mirrorless autofocus camera be able to correct for this?\u00a0 These are questions that come up.\u00a0 There are some very high quality manual focus lenses now available for Sony e mount.\u00a0 Zeiss and Voigtlander both have some interesting wide angle manual choices.\u00a0 These lenses tend to be much smaller than the autofocus lenses of the same focal length.\u00a0 Should they be an alternative for you?<\/p>\n So, I\u2019ve made some broad statements here that taken alone are pretty meaningless.\u00a0 In the succeeding parts of this sries of posts I\u2019ll concentrate on specifics and some things I think I\u2019ve learned about lens choices for Sony FE cameras.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a long-suffering victim of the notorious Sony (A mount\/E mount) bait and switch, lenses have been both a sore point and an important<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21,22,33,20,32,18,605],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","tag-lenses","tag-minolta-200mm-f4-macro","tag-mirrorless","tag-sony","tag-sony-a7-cameras","tag-sony-a7s","tag-sony-lens-choices"],"yoast_head":"\n