rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

A very good way to learn composition and technique is to purchase a 50mm lens. That is aimed at full frame photography. I have no idea what size your sensor is, but the equivalent of an FX 50mm for your camera would be a very good way to go. As I mentioned, it will teach you composition and technique.
--Bob

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

You can use these adapters, but they come at a cost in function.
1) You have a mirrorless, why add all that weight?
2) The AF and some other electronic functions are slower and/or not there at all depending on the adapter.

These lenses have been out for enough time now that they are available used or refurbished at a lower cost. If I was committing to mirrorless, I would build my mirrorless lens collection. Sigma is also making nice e mount lenses as well.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Good general assessment... There are a few great specific use cases for adapters, such as using Canon EF-L lenses or Sigma ART lenses in Canon mount WITH a MetaBones SpeedBooster on a Sony or Panasonic or Olympus camera. But most folks balk at $650 SpeedBoosters.

I decided NOT to adapt any of my old film Nikkors to my Lumix GH4. Lens designs have improved tremendously in 3-4 decades, and those lenses would be frustratingly manual - no auto ANYTHING.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

You mean even the shutter is now manual???

Only one cup of coffee and my "inner smart alec kid" is still in charge.

I pick up one of my old film cameras and wonder how I ever got along without all the new stuff.
But then at the end of my teaching career I had the same thoughts about the electronic/computer rollbooks with their automated totals and conversions of letter grades to % vs HOURS of work with a 10 key adding machine coming up with grade totals my first 20 years of teaching.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Off topic, but all those electronic roll books and we still don't have enough gathered data to track the progress of age cohorts! If we did, we could actually evaluate the added value of individual teachers. But just try to put the testing data and the roll data together! It is frustrating to the extreme. Yet Wallmart could tell you what is going on down to individual checkouts in all their stores in real time!

Pardon the rant.

Bugfan Loc: Toronto, Canada

Some years back I found two Nikon lenses from the seventies at a garage sale for five dollars. Eagerly I carried them home excited to see how they performed.

Well, I mounted one on one of my DSLRs and couldn't understand why it wouldn't focus. After some fiddling I remembered that these weren't autofocus lenses. Blush! Then came exposure, the aperture didn't set either but then why should it? That lens was made long before my DSLR.

I thought about this and realized that it was different in those days. The right hand held the camera and controlled the shutter while the left hand held the lens, set the aperture and handled zoom. I then spent time practicing a well known procedure and in time relearned how to handle a manal camera and lens.

Are we better off with all our automation or were the "good old days" better? I wonder if our new budding photographers could handle a manual everything the way we did and whether it actually matters. I agree that in some respects those were frustrating times and yet at the time they seemed perfectly natural. They are frustrating today because our cameras now do just about everything for us.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Mild to what many teachers say about the system.

One of the main problems is that teaching is more or less an "art" with many different styles (not to mention the "learning styles" of students) - but at the same time if you use the "science" approach and have all teachers follow a rigid formula then you would still have differences - and different results.

Yes with computers we could match the teachers to the students (ie visual learners with a teacher strong on visuals) and also divide the students by knowledge level instead of age - but that is "tracking" and now forbidden in general so you get classes with students whose skill levels are all over the place together because of age or grade level. (Also it would take administrators who knew how to do matching and had the time to do it, as opposed to doing reports and going to meetings.)

And please don't get me started on the "miracle methods" that come and go in a cycle with a few changes and a new name.

Plus the credentialing process is out of wack. You have a "feminine studies" major (Social Studies/History field) who gets assigned to teach World History or US History and in many areas of the course knows so little he/she doesn't even realize how ignorant they are.

You also have the fact that ratings for teachers are often a "popularity contest" so many of the new teachers are out to be "liked" by their students. I knew one man who was a really nice guy and a great tennis/softball coach who also taught World History - every single lesson plan was role playing or a game that often took a day or even 2 or 3 to cover what a teacher who used the guided use of text book and lecture/story telling methods would cover in 15 minutes. Results, the kids loved him, they knew a lot about very little and when the achievement tests came around they were lost in huge sections of the tests.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Which is why being able to see the level the kids were when they entered the influence of the teacher and (along with the tracking of the other teachers involved) the level when they left using techniques like envelopment analysis would allow an estimate of the degree to which a teacher influenced change. Education is a transnational process with uneven inputs measured against confusing and often unclear goals from policy makers.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

There are problems with that also. What if you get a student with a reading level of 1st grade* in a 10th grade history class using a book written at the 8th grade level? Does the teacher give the rest of the class busy work and teach reading to the one student, or what? For a time reading levels were so low on average that those of us teaching 8th Grade US history were told to read the book out loud to the classes. Now, you are an 8th grade boy, what do you pay attention to - the teacher reading a poorly written text book or the cute girl in the next row of desks?

* my last 20 or so years about 70-80% of my regular 9th and 10th grade classes had at least on 1st grade reader and 100% of them had someone 3rd grade or below. Even some of my gifted classes had readers 5th grade and below.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Shutter can be auto, but Aperture becomes “stop down method with no preset ring.” Back to 1950s! No AF. No ILIS. Inferior coatings. Heavy...

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Well that is sort of up to the teacher, now isn't it? But, with the proper records, that reading level is a know variable rather than hidden.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

There is NO functionality loss with the SIGMA adapter - it is AUTO everything ! - and it is $250 ....

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

I guess all those reviewers got wrong then. Most say the Sigma EF mount lenses do very well through bthe converter to e mount while Canon EF lenses have slower AF functionality. The phrase that comes up a lot is "hunt" as in the AF seems to "hunt."

But, they (around 10 reviews I looked at) must be wrong. Thanks for clearing it up!

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

You can ONLY use Sigma EF mount lenses with the Sigma adapter AFAIK - to get max functionality.

repleo Loc: Boston

First 'technical' review I've seen for the AOny FE 24-105mm F4.0 G OSS. This might be your best 'starter' for your collection.

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/sony-fe-24-105mm-f4-g-oss-lens-detailed-comparative-review/