La-EA5 adapter +zeiss 135 1.8

I took the new combo (a7r4 and la-ea5) with 400mm f4.5 to a sunny day field trip for a zoofari. It worked great but it was a sunny day and most of the time, I was focusing on animals at far.


But indoors, a completely different story. Same lens, I noticed significant hesitation on difficult subject.

The speed of rotation with adapter is nowhere comparable to a99 II's drive. I also see adapter works much different, performing lots of micro tuning. A99 II is very confident and jumps to the correct AF spot without any hunting.

I guess this concludes that for screw drive lenses, a99 II is still the best out there.

In my experience, the LA-EA5 (on A7R4) has plenty of torque/speed, but its brain, or the camera's, or their combined efforts, do struggle in low light at longer focal lengths. I do not know what the AF sensor specs were on the A99 II, but I found my Tamron 70-200/2.8 more confident on the old A900 (!) with the f/2.8 center cross AF, than the A7R4+LA-EA5 combo -- only in low light, and when photographing low-contrast targets. This resource indicates the A99 II has some cross-type sensors: https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/support/ilc/products/ilca-99m2/en/af_s.html.

Something I read about, and now cannot find the reference: on the A7R4, the AF 'points' are phase-detect line sensors. And I think they are rated more around f/5.6. Anyway, being line sensors, they are all oriented left-to-right across the sensor in landscape orientation, and if your target has no high-contrast vertical lines, focus will struggle in low light at wide apertures. So I found that holding the camera in portrait orientation resulted in faster focus locks, and sometimes you could lock focus in portrait orientation and, in AF-C mode, rotate the camera back to landscape, with a decent chance of keeping your target in focus (or you could use AF-S and try not to wobble too much as you return the camera to landscape orientation).

Meanwhile with the same 70-200/2.8, my A900 would focus on a blank plaster wall.

Since I don't photograph blank walls a lot, I was able to get by for awhile with the LA-EA5 and the old screw-driven lenses. But I very much wanted to see whether E-mount native lenses would perform better, and really the AF was not good enough in low light for professional work at wedding receptions. So I did upgrade, first to the FE 135mm 1.8 GM, and later to several other FE lenses, including the FE 70-200 2.8 GM II. Fast forward to today, and I have almost no complaints about the indoor, low light, AF performance of any of my lenses on the A7R4, and I suspect they'd perform even better on an A9, A9 II-III, A1, etc. I do remember, though, being less than fully pleased with the Tamron + LA-EA5, which had previously been my workhorse wedding lens. In good light it was fine, but you need the AF to work in low light, even if you're going to use flash, because otherwise you can't get your subjects in focus.

Made some tests under low light conditions (evening indoors). All for static object at various distances (5ft to 20ft), some object are hard to focus like fridge with lights.

1. A7R4 + SEL70200GM2 Fastest without a question
2. A99II + Minolta 80-200 It felt definitely fast. No issues to focus but of course not as fast first combo.
3. A7R4 + LA-EA5 + SAL2470Z Tested at 70mm. No issues to focus, I felt speed wise very similar to A99II combo
4. A7R4 + LA-EA5+ Minolta 80-200
Focused but struggled. Definitely the slowest combo and only one had trouble to focus.



In my opinion, A99 II is still not replaceable for old minolta lenses. I guess that's why it is still selling close to $2000 while a7r II is selling for $650. I was hoping to sell my a99 II but now I am not so sure.

Edit:
Fixed several typos.

Edited by Simurg - 13 June 2025 at 20:43

neilt3 wrote: Simurg wrote: 4. A99II + LE-EA5+ Minolta 80-200 Focused but struggled. Definitely the slowest combo and only one had trouble to focus. A99ii and an LE-EA5 ? "LE" ? Curious to know how you mounted it , duct tape ? With the lenses I've got , I'll also be keeping my a99ii , even though I also have the a7Riv and now an a9 along with the LA-EA5 adapter.

I'd guess that the last one (#4) was intended to be A7R4 + LA-EA5 + 80-200. Too many numbers and letters.

I'll tell you how I arrived where I am, for my photography setup. Everyone will have a different starting point and different preferences, but I will share my reasoning.

As I mentioned, I had an A900. I also had the Minolta AF 85/1.4, Tamron 70-200/2.8, Tamron 90/2.8 macro, Minolta AF 50/1.4, and Minolta AF 24/2.8. I essentially needed to sell the A900 to afford the A7R4, but for a time I had them both and could compare. I bought the LA-EA5 at the same time I bought the A7R4, because I did not have any full-frame E-mount lenses (I previously had a Nex 5N and a Sigma lens, both of which I had sold off).

The A900 had poor AF-C performance. I could not rely on it to keep a walking person in focus. I have many years of experience, so I could just use zone focus and other methods to get my shots, and the A900 was otherwise a beautiful camera. If I had had an A99 II, the AF-C performance might have been adequate. But the AF-C and subject eye focus on the A7R4 perform very well, and the AF is fast... The AF-C and eye focus were even useable in most situations with the LA-EA5. But at 200mm, f/2.8, in bad light, the Tamron was letting me down. Since I mainly shoot candid photos as a second shooter for weddings, I needed a reliable, fast telephoto lens, for low light. I could not afford the $2,800 70-200 GM II.

So I evaluated my lens lineup. How to get more reliable, faster AF by selling a couple of lenses, but without spending $2,800? (really over $3,000 once taxes are added). I quite liked the images I'd seen from the 135/1.8 GM, and found a used copy for something like $1,200. That was my first E-mount lens, and the AF on that lens is superb. Note: I had borrowed the Zeiss 135/1.8 before, and knew it to be heavy, and the AF was slow on the A900 (even after some firmware updates). The 135GM was amazing, and I simply zoomed with my feet. It's been downhill (or uphill) from there, and now I have the 50/1.2 GM, 70-200 GM II, etc.

One other thing: I have a number of Minolta film cameras, but for Manual Focus I prefer the old SR-mount X-700 cameras that I have. I have twice purchased Minolta 7's only to discover each one had the aperture mechanism problem. So if I'm going to do 'slow' film photography, I'll go to SR mount every time. And if I want to shoot with AF, then I'm going to go to E-mount every time. This was a factor in deciding I don't need the Minolta AF-mount cameras and lenses at all, as none of the lenses I owned were ever pleasant to focus manually. I do not use film for professional work (alas), so I do not need the most expensive MAF lenses. I have even contemplated selling my LA-EA5. The only thing that stops me from selling it, is the fact that I can use my remaining Minolta AF lenses as backups if one of my E-mount lenses should fail. All I have left are the Min 50/1.4 and the Min 24/2.8.