When I first got my Nikon, the only lens I had was a standard 18-55mm kit lens. I soon found that my dad had an old film camera and two lenses: a Sigma 70-300mm and a Phoenix 22-105mm. The lenses were both Minolta AF-mounts. They went with a Minolta camera, but after Sony bought Minolta, Sony A-Mount cameras fit the Minolta lenses. I was curious to see if the lenses could work with my Nikon, so I started looking for an adapter that would fit.
At first I found nothing, but with a little more searching, I came across this product:
I decided to give it a try and when it arrived I was exited to try it out. The first lens I tried was the 70-300mm. It fit perfectly and worked just as I had expected. I started taking pictures at 300mm, exited to finally have a lens that zoomed further than 55mm; but I immediately noticed a problem. The photos were blurry and of bad quality.
I thought it may be a problem with how I was focusing it, but the focus looked fine in the viewfinder and LCD screen. Eventually, (thanks to the help of a good friend) I discovered that it wasn't the focus, it was the shutter speed. I learned a very useful thing that I should have already known: the longer your focal length, the faster your shutter needs to be. I began shooting with the shutter speed at 1/400 or 1/640 of a second when I was anywhere between 200-300mm. This helped solve most of the issue. You can also shoot on a tripod to help with the camera shake, but even with a good tripod, because the lens is so long it can still shake, you will still need a fast shutter unless you have something else supporting the lens.
The next problem I noticed was grain and noise in the images. Even with a low ISO, any post-processing used on the images would bring out noise in the image.
There isn't much that can be done about this. The lenses are older than the camera, and so they interact with each other differently than if the lens was around the same age as the camera. This can cause image quality to suffer at times. It can be fixed by using a low ISO and then using noise reduction in post to erase some of the noise caused.
The adapter I got comes with an aperture ring so you can adjust the aperture since all the controls will be manual with the adapter. This aperture ring is very useful as the lenses themselves don't have one. I've had the lens adapter for a while now and there have been no other issues that came up with it. It functions perfectly.
Even with the few problems that arise, you can still get some great results with older lenses. You just have to learn how to use them. So, if you have any old lenses laying around gathering dust, you might think about getting an adapter so you can use them again. It can be a lot of fun to try out some old lenses on a newer camera and if you don't need to print your photos in big prints, it can be a great alternative to buying expensive lenses.
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