Your First A-Mount Camera

Hmmm, for an DSLR I would go for an A900/A850 as these dropped below $/€500,- making them very interesting: a sensor you can use up to 1600iso (barely), the double cross centre focuspoint and dual card slot (overflow only). And of course the wonderful viewfinder!

I have an a-mount lens but no a-mount bodies.
As the questioned was initially asked 8 years ago I assume it's since been expanded to e-mount.
I have two e-mount bodies APSC & FF obviously both Sony
I've also just ordered an old V-mount body/lens but I'm still not quite sure why.

edom31 wrote: I just got here in 2021. Got myself a nice looking A35 (mainly to adapt my Minolta AF lenses) but it also shipped with a few Sony kit zooms (18-55 and 50-200 SAMs I believe). Looking forward to the results. Bought with kit lenses for resale purposes in case I am not convinced.

Hello there! Both kit lenses (at least the later versions of them) are very good for kit lenses, and will do a lot of things well. Both focus quite close - and stay sharp near MFD - so will work well on flowers/etc where some more expensive lenses won't.
As with all kit wide-zooms, the 18-55 has poor corners wide open at the wide end but if you stick with jpegs in camera and leave corrections on, results elsewhere will be pleasantly sharp.
Hope you have fun with your A35 on the other lenses. Get yourself a spare battery too..

Maybe your lenses suffer from "oily blades"? It means they don't close quickly enough and result in over exposed pictures. Don't know about the A35, but in my experience Sony cameras have a tendency to under-expose, not over expose.

What do you mean by RTM? Read the manual?

Yes, it is unlikely with several lenses - but Edgar mentioned Sony lenses and that "aperture priority is not so in-tuned with the minolta glass" I assumed it is just the Minolta lenses and not the (newer) Sony lenses. They should work identical.

I tried the metering of my A7r2 against my Canon EOS R and I saw between no and 1/3rd stop difference, with the Sony having longer shutter times in A-mode. Until I realised that my A7r2 is set to +0.3 Ev. So they are identical and if anything, the Sony should be darker.
Like I said, in my experience Sony cameras tend to under expose and this quick test confirmed this. (though the difference could be completely due to the different sensors)

Edited by addy landzaat - 05 April 2021 at 07:51

addy landzaat wrote: Yes, it is unlikely with several lenses - but Edgar mentioned Sony lenses and that "aperture priority is not so in-tuned with the minolta glass" I assumed it is just the Minolta lenses and not the (newer) Sony lenses. They should work identical. I tried the metering of my A7r2 against my Canon EOS R and I saw between no and 1/3rd stop difference, with the Sony having longer shutter times in A-mode. Until I realised that my A7r2 is set to +0.3 Ev. So they are identical and if anything, the Sony should be darker. Like I said, in my experience Sony cameras tend to under expose and this quick test confirmed this. (though the difference could be completely due to the different sensors)

How did your test confirm this? Surely Sony cameras comply to the ISO standard?
How light or dark an image appears cannot in itself be used to evaluate the exposure.

addy landzaat wrote: I checked the metering at 100iso, I did not check the resulting picture.

But you say the exposures were identical. How do you conclude that Sony "underexpose".