I just couldn't resist this Sony Alpha A7, it's perfect for my type of photography. I love using older (and newer) legacy manual focus lenses on modern digital cameras. And this is principly the reason I purchased the A7. A bonus for the camera is the E mount which allows you to use all the native E mount lenses on the market today, albeit at a lower resolution. By lower resolution I mean 15MP files which is about the same as the best M43 camera on the market today, and with those you can safely print a 45cm x 30cm size but how often do you print at those sizes? So any smaller prints are going to be exceptional. Sony are planning on bringing out their FE lenses for the Alpha system but I'm not planning on aquiring any of those except the 28-70 I bought with the camera. I like at least one native lens for each system just to see how it actually performs with those lenses mounted.

Be careful when using rangefinder lenses on these Alpha models, just as you had to be careful what you used on the Nex-7. Colour shift will hapen with these lenses at focal lengths of 35mm ond wider. SLR lenses don't cause this problem and you have a lot of lenses to chose from. Everyone has their favourites and mine are C/Y and Pentax which have proved to be excellent on other systems.

However, that doesn't mean these lenses will perform well on the Alpha cameras because they are of course full frame. With the other systems the sensors used are either APS-C or M43 and using the sweet spots of the lenses, the central portion. Problems normally occur at the edges where smearing can be seen and testing each lens before use is a must on these cameras. I like using a 50mm lens, hence my purchase of the Zeiss Planar 50 f2 which performs very well on the A7. I thought I would pay a little more for one lens which I could use for years to come and no further purchases would be necessary. I will report back with some images from this lens when I have the time.

I think one thing should be said here about the Sony Nex family of cameras and that is the name Nex has been retired and no more Nex cameras will be brought to market. The Nex cameras have only be renamed Alpha cameras so we may see another Nex camera come to market only it will be called an Alpha.