E-Mount (NEX) adapters

Just wondering if anyone has come out with and adapter that can communicate exif data (specifically "focal length") to the camera.
I see that Fuji sells their "M adapter" that lets the user pre-program up to 6 m-mount manual lenses into it so the exif data is captured.

I believe there are only 2 Sony adapters, LA-EA1/2

The LA-EA3 adapter is supplied with the new full-frame VG900 video camera; Sony say that the LA-EA3 adaptor 'lets photographers use full-frame A-mount DSLR lenses at their designated focal length'.

I am a full time Alpha user. I am loathe to change to any other system. But I find the NEX design philosophy, which enables lenses of many manufacturers to be used successfully on NEX camera bodies, to be highly attractive.

If Sony developed a professional Alpha camera body which would incorporate the Alpha and the NEX lens interfaces, I would be an eager customer.

Can the A77 and A99 designs be foundations for this?

Jocelynne wrote: I am a full time Alpha user. I am loathe to change to any other system. But I find the NEX design philosophy, which enables lenses of many manufacturers to be used successfully on NEX camera bodies, to be highly attractive. If Sony developed a professional Alpha camera body which would incorporate the Alpha and the NEX lens interfaces, I would be an eager customer. Can the A77 and A99 designs be foundations for this?

A77 & A99 look like pure-Alphamount bodies. No sign of NEX or NEX-like functionality, in regards adapting other lensmounts (though the focus-peaking is nice!).

The "flange distance" (space from the lensmount to the plane of the sensor (or film)) is the critical point: for the Amount, it's a HUGE distance, and other mounts (needing equal or even lesser distance) adapt poorly. For the Emount, it's very short and most other lens-mounts need just a simple tube (with appropriate bayonet/screwmount/etc at each end of tube) of whatever lenght stretches the NEX's flange distance to that of the adapted lens" a tube can add distance, but nothing can create negative distance for the Amount. :-(

So far as I know, there've been occasional rumors of some sort of Amount/Emount hybrid camera, but nobody has been able to say what such a beastie would look like, or how it would be constructed... Sort of a NEX body, maybe, with a built-in/zooming adapter? But the differing bayonets just look like an overwhelming design-challenge for today's tech.


- Steve S.

@Jocelynne:
Any "smart" lens, with a chip that delivers EXIF data &c, can -- potentially -- give info (via a sufficiently-smart adapter) to the camera; Metabones, for example, has IIRC recently announced a Canon-EF-to-NEX-E "smart" adapter that supposedly gives not only full EXIF but full bi-directional functionality, including electronic aperture control, focus-distance info, focal-length of zooms, and the rest... Supposedly, the NEX acts like a Canon camera, so far as the lens is concerned!

The Alpha mount, however, has one of the longest flange-distances of any 35mm-film format camera. This means that most lenses (including Minolta's own manual-focus line) need glassed adapters to work; these inevitably act as mild teleconverters, reduce contrast, and otherwise have various negative impacts on many measures of final IQ.

Jocelynne wrote: I owe you a goodie, or two, or three, or four....

Just consider me as another part of Dyxum, or even of the Internet-at-large... when you find a situation where YOU know something that someone else wants help/info, just "pay it forward." Me? You don't owe me anything. I helped because I wanted to, because someone once helped me, because this is Dyxum and answering where I can helps ME to meet my own (vast) accumulated debt that I need to pay forward...


- Steve S.