Photoclubalpha

New to the Sony system, but impressed with results so far from my A7R, I have gone further and experimented to find the best tele-zoom I have available. I also bought the A6000, following the suggestion from David Kilpatrick that he found the tele more functional on the A6000; I needed a second body anyway and that camera's smaller size provided other advantages.
So, with a Minolta 100-300 APO mounted via a LA-EA4, a Nikon 70-300 via a nikon- e-mount adapter and a Sony SEL18200, I have compared their performance at almost infinity, focussing manually, tripod mounted and hand-held. I have endeavoured to keep shutter speeds above the critical range to avoid the 'shutter shake' so well documented.

And the results? The Nikon is good when it is good, but, perhaps as the heaviest and everything manual, it is difficult to get consistent sharp images. The Minolta is better but the Sony is the best. Generally, the A6000 is the better of the 2 cameras, except with the Sony; when the smaller image from the A7R/Sony 18200 is enlarged to the same image size as the result from the A6000, it is MUCH better, even hand held.

I am surprised by these findings and wonder if others have made the same observations.

artHarris wrote: And the results? The Nikon is good when it is good, but, perhaps as the heaviest and everything manual, it is difficult to get consistent sharp images. The Minolta is better but the Sony is the best. Generally, the A6000 is the better of the 2 cameras, except with the Sony; when the smaller image from the A7R/Sony 10200 is enlarged to the same image size as the result from the A6000, it is MUCH better, even hand held.

I am surprised by these findings and wonder if others have made the same observations.

Newer lenses are better suit to digital, that is why you find the Digital optimized 18-200 better than the well regarded Minolta Apo 100-300 or the Nikon.

I tried my trusty old Minolta 100-300 APO on my A77 and was a little disapointed. It performed better on the old A100 so I sadly sold it on.

Mike

I am still playing with the Sony APC-S 18-200 zoom on my A7R.
I am finding it very useful, as the quality of the images seems, to me, to be very good and as long as I avoid the dreaded 1/80 - 1/200 speed range, I see no shake.
However, this morning, looking at some last chance autumn colours shots ( before the wind and rain remove all the leaves), I noticed that the framing from the smaller lens frame isn't symmetrical. See the attached image: the frame is narrower towards the bottom.
I didn't have this on other shots, which were taken at maximum zoom; these recent shots were taken at 85mm, low on the zoom range of the lens.

Is this a sign of something not quite right somewhere?

Added later: this turns out to be a non-problem! The edge of the image which seemed to be the site of the problem turns out to be a very dark part of the image. I upped the exposure of the image in Aperture and detail emerges from the blackness. So - sorry if I have wasted anybody's valuable time, but I will leave the contribution here for others to see how mistakes can be made.

mikeriach wrote:I tried my trusty old Minolta 100-300 APO on my A77 and was a little disapointed. It performed better on the old A100 so I sadly sold it on.

Mike

The A100 is so only 10mp -- perhaps the newer sensors are more revealing?

On my N x-6, the 100-300 APO has less contrast than my newer lenses, but it's still sharp. Go figure.

My set of telephoto zooms are perhaps greater including the Nikkor 80-200 f2.8 ed, Canon 70-200 f2.8 is, 100-400 L, Minolta 70-210f4, Sony 70-300f5.6G, 70-400G, Sigma 70-200 OS, FE 70-200f4. Of which Minolta 70-210 turns out to be a surprise of being sharp and small. The native mount FE f4 is not so great.