bees from 4 metres Sony a99ii sigma 500 4.5 20 year old lens a-mount

[spudhead]

so decided to test some old a-mount gear when I had a few minutes yesterday lens is 20+ years old minimum focus distance on this is 4metres

• ILCA-99M2
• 300mm F2.8
• 500.0 mm
• ƒ/4.5
• 1/2000 sec
• ISO 4000

• ILCA-99M2
• 300mm F2.8
• 500.0 mm
• ƒ/4.5
• 1/2000 sec
• ISO 2000

• ILCA-99M2
• 300mm F2.8
• 500.0 mm
• ƒ/4.5
• 1/2000 sec
• ISO 2000

• ILCA-99M2
• 300mm F2.8
• 500.0 mm
• ƒ/4.5
• 1/2000 sec
• ISO 2500

 

[spudhead]

Nice shots!

The exif confuses me. What does "300mm F2.8 - 500.0 mm f/4.5" mean? What does the 300mm refer to?

yes capture 1 has no profile for that lens so it and indeed many other older lenses so it defaults to another lens in this case Sony 300 2.8, I have contacted them many times and asked them to add the profiles for this and minolta lenses and of course they say they are not popular anymore, I will look for a work around and yes it bothers me as well. How is the minolta 500 are we going to see some more shots?

 

[spudhead]

yes its the second in the list the ex I had the older third down bought on ebay and it turned up with fungus in so was returned rapidly , I have never seen a copy of the dg version, the one I have as an issue in that I feel the lens hood which is of course standard but has always seemed a bit short for my liking, this thing weigh approx 7 pounds so is a hand full but i love prime lenses. I will post more from this lens soon

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

Nice shots. These lenses still cost a good bit, but good to see they work well.

 

[spudhead]

So, how many of those old A-Mount primes do you have?

I have the Minolta 200 2.8 hs a tiny lens great with teleconverters and the sharpest of the Minolta line in my opinion , Minolta 300 2.8 apo, Minolta 400 4.5 hs, with matching teleconverters in 1.4 only sigma 500 4.5 hsm ex and 1.4 x , Sony 100 2.8, and of course the Sony 300 g 2.8 ssm and 1.4 x and 2x but the 2x iq is not great which came as a shock to me, I had the Minolta 100 rs and wow that was way better than the Sony 100 2.8, I had the sigma 300 2.8 apo and sigma 300 ex dg and Tokina sd 300 2.8 and they all fall way short of the Sony 300, I had the Minolta 300 f4 hs and wish I still had it, its compact and a great performer even with the 1.4 x so I have tried many of the primes that were made. The Minolta primes have great colours and I can only imagine that the Minolta 300 2.8 ssm would have better colours than the Sony version and maybe that is why they still command a high price point compared to the Sony version

 

[spudhead]

Not to hijack the thread, but I took the Minolta 80-200/2.8 APO HS G out last night. I'll post some more shots when I get time, but wanted to show an example. It's a SOOC jpeg, handheld.

See the storm on Jupiter that looks like an eye? The a7-IV kept focusing on it!

View attachment 21194

As I said these excellent lenses and colours are great well done

 

[spudhead]

Thanks!

Color rendering on Minolta lenses was always exemplary, it seems they stand up just fine under today's standards.

I read somewhere that its what is in the old glass that renders the great colours at the risk of sounding crazy I read that they added arsenic and selenium to the glass and I have just googled that at it seems to be true

 

[spudhead]

Probably. I've pretty come to realize that anything I like will end up killing me!

I've heard that some old lenses are radioactive. Of course, no more so than eyeglasses that change color.

Interestingly, Minolta pioneered the use of multicoated lenses way back. I don't think many people are aware of the many, many contributions Minolta made to the industry, some of which are still in use today, this being a good example. I could never figure out why Minolta never got the market share that Canon and Nikon did. Perhaps if they had they could've ridden out the lawsuits and stayed afloat. I am thankful though that Sony picked up the baton and ran with it.

yes they were pioneers of lenses and af in the days when I was a Pentax guy, its sort of like micro 3/4 thirdS great kit but only Panasonic and Oly went that way in a big way and it grinds on me that people just knock it without having tried it, but of course because its a small sensor and low megapixels on many models it just can not be any use, big under estimation