Sony E-Mount, A-Mount Lens Adapter Buying Guide

It is common and practical to many to own a Sony A68 alongwith a Sony Mirrorless camera. Sony A68 many a times the first camera to many of the buyers. As we explained before, there are not many lenses for Sony A68. Also, it is not prudent to buy lot of APS-C lenses. As for upgrade on the body of the camera, E-Mount, A-Mount lens adapter is a common need. Buying lens adapter not exactly easy work. We do not suggest to buy lens of any mount just thinking of future plan of purchase – one should have both the cameras in hand. A mount lens can be mounted on E mount camera. E mount lens can be mounted on A mount camera. But the manufacturers can suddenly change a specification.

Too Many Sony E-Mount, A-Mount Lens Adapters Too Choose

Most of the mirrorless cameras with lens mount adapters achieve infinity focus. Adapters essentially a hollow tube spacers. Sony a7 series fullframe mirrorless cameras has adapters in the market which (peculiarly) convert the fullframe image to APS-C. Those adapters usually bear some fancy name like “speedy”. Apart from Sony themselves, there are quite good number of standard brands which manufactures lens adapters such as Voigtlander, Novoflex. Of course there are local brands and made in China products.

Sometimes it demands good experienced hand to properly adjust the exposure triangle for a particular lens. For this reason, we suggested not to but lot of APS-C lenses for Sony A68 when there is plan to buy a full frame in future. Sony’s own adapters such as Sony LA-EA3 A-Mount adapter has decent reviews. For Sony to Sony lens conversion, it is practical to consider Sony’s adapters after checking the reviews well. But that is not the end of the topic. Sony’s adapters usually help most of the lenses within common focal lengths.

Also, these adapters give the ability to use a wide array of third-party lenses. More compact and shorter registration distance practically opens the gate to mount any lens with quite longer FFD. There are adapters which allows to physically attach lenses to camera bodies with a longer FFD. These adapters will not help to achieve infinity focus as the corrective element in the adapter itself by default absent. But they will have the ability to focusing distances less than infinity.

Lens adapters can be more sophisticated and maintain the electronic data communication between the lens and body, some adapters are capable of retaining autofocus and image-stabilization capabilities. Full manual adapters will not convey any data between the camera and lens, forcing to manually focus. In such case, aperture-priority mode on the camera is better to use.

We will suggest to avoid cheap China lens adapters. FotodioX is a nown mid-range brand. Metabones is another known brand. Since a long time, I own a Voigtlander adapter for Leica lens to Sony A mount. It costs huge but quality really good. Both the mechanical stabillity and electronic connection works great. Probably any adapter will work for the lightweight, short focal length manual leneses. But for the heavy, costly lenses, it is practical to buy an adapter of the brand which has some review available.

Some adapters have significant light loss. Standard brands usually have information of how many stops light adjustment needed. If the adapter allows no data exchange with camera (and/or camera fails to recognize), the lens will become manual focus. Some lens adapter can make the lens stuck. There are really matters which never make any adapter just like native mount for all the lenses. Focus Peaking is a great tool of Sony cameras to confirm focus with manual focus lenses. It takes some time to practice and get used.