M42 to A mount

Hi all,

I am thinking of purchasing a;

Meyer Optik Gorlitz Oreston 1.8/50mm lens for my A500.

Has anyone had any issues with this lens or indeed M42 to A mount converters in general?
Is it worth paying slightly more to get the focus confirm type converter?

Stephen.

Get yourself an AF confirm adapter. Not much more expensive than the simpler ones, but let's you use the A500's A mode.

Some M42 lenses are really great. From Meyer Goerlitz, I have the Meyer Orestegor 200/4. Very sharp even wide open. I think the 50/1.8 will be very usable.

Yes because the A560, which I own myself, allows shutter release with no lens (= with non AF confirm adapter). You can enable that in the A560's menu. The A500 does not allow you that. It will only work in M mode. With AF confirm adapter it will also work in A mode.

Chipped adapters are OK, but more expensive than unchipped - chipped gives you focus confirm and anti-shake. key thing with both is to make sure they give infinity focus.

Don't want to rain on your parade, but there still may be some challenges. First, at least with my A200, I find that aperture priority auto mode does not provide accurate exposures, for whatever reason. I get an overexposure with large apertures, then underexposures when stopping do. With the chipped adapter you will also get SSS, but only for the focal length you specify when you purchase the adapter. If you use it with other lenses, you'll need to turn off stabilization. The focus confirm is helpful, but not absolutely perfect in my experience. After purchasing several chipped adapters (chips fell off one of them), I have moved to the unchipped. I did that because I find manual mode more accurate for exposures and to give me more control when wanting to underexpose or compensate in any way. BTW, focus confirm will still work in manual mode as will stabilization when using chipped. One thing that will no doubt burn you at some point with a chipped adapter is when changing from one of you more modern AF lenses. In aperture priority mode, you will need to always remember to turn the aperture setting all the way to max (f/1.4 on my adapters), otherwise you'll get a full stop overexposure for every stop it's set above that. Pay attention to that one because it isn't immediately obvious when you first start doing the manual lens thing. Again, the camera must always think it's at the widest opening the setting will allow.

I've never had much concern about coatings, and in fact tend to like the older lenses. It's only occasionally that I get flaring and only in predictable situations.

EssexUK wrote: Thanks again for all the interesting points of view. My lens and adapter arrived today (Saturday). The lens is 1.8 and the adapter is 1.7 although in A mode I could turn it down to 1.4 on camera. So if I'm following the above advice correctly step by step I; 1: Put camera in A mode 2: Set aperture to 1.7 on camera? 3: Do I then control aperture via camera or lens? Sorry for the newbie questions but I am a newbie

No, no. This is what screwed me up when i first started the adapter thing... and one of the reasons I use manual and unchipped adapters. Anyway, read above again. Whenever in A-mode, you must set the aperture to f1.4 which is the widest the adapter will allow. The reason is because the camera will never know what lens is attached or what aperture you select; it will always think you're at f/1.4 from what the adapter chip tells it. So that being the case, if you set the reading at anything more than f/1.4, the auto exposure will adjust by the difference and give you an overexposure by that amount. i.e. if you set the aperture reading at f/4 you'll get a three full stop overexposure. This because the camera will think that the lens will be stopped down a further three stops at moment of exposure, but of course it won't. Whatever aperture you set your LENS to is what the camera thinks it's reading at f/1.4. Hope this cleared up more than it confused further.

Now, something to watch out for is when switching between your AF lenses and this adapter. If the last aperture you chose while in AF and A-mode was greater than f/1.4, it will remain at that setting, so unless you remember to change it, it will provide the overexposure by whatever amount. With my camera, an A200, if the overexposure is too great it causes an error and I have to turn the camera off and on again.