advice on a lens adapter?

DavidRGillespie

I am planning to buy a lens adapter to mount my Nikon and Sigma lenses on my Sony alpha 6000. Does anyone have experience and/or advice?
Which brand might work best?
do the adapters support zoom (i.e., not prime) lenses?

ziggy53

Yikes! Without knowing specifically which lenses it's hard to know what to recommend. It's also beneficial to you to describe your expectations for the system. (How you might use the system and what you are comparing to.)

I also have a Sony a6000 body but I don't have a Nikon/NEX adapter (yet), so I can only relate my research regarding that combination, plus my experience with an EOS-EF/NEX adapter. (Plus a limited experience with Pentax M42/NEX and Pentax PK/NEX adapters.)

For autofocus Canon EF mount lenses, I am using a "Commlite Autofocus Adapter EF-NEX". Since this adapter supports some electronic connection and functions, I had hoped that it might be useful to leverage my collection of EF mount lenses (including Canon "L", Sigma "EX"). Sadly, while the Commlite adapter got better user reviews than the Metabones adapter, which was the closest competitor, AF speed is sad. AF accuracy was OK, except indoors and low-light outdoors when the AF typically would not lock. Aperture control worked well.

From this page: http://briansmith.com/nikon-lens-adapters-sony-e-mount-cameras/, Brian Smith suggests that Nikon AF is no better than my experience with Canon AF, so a Nikon AF-S "G" series lens is just going to be frustrating. He gives his individual experience with popular Nikon/NEX adapters on that page.

For manual lenses, when you have time to carefully manual focus and manually set aperture, the experience is very much like the old "preset" lenses of old. In other words, you can get the job done but you don't get much assistance from the camera. It's best to just use the a6000 in full manual mode and with an external exposure meter. Focus can be helped with the a6000 Live View and magnified.

My honest opinion is that if you have a decent set of Nikon "F" mount lenses and you want good productivity, it's best to stay with a good Nikon camera body. I use the Nikon D7200 body with my AF-S, AF-D and even old AI manual lenses, and it's a pretty rewarding experience. I'm probably not going to get a Nikon F/NEX adapter for my a6000 because it really doesn't gain me anything.

BTW, if you want to test your lenses on your a6000 body I believe that a few lens rental places do have an appropriate adapter to rent inexpensively.

DavidRGillespie

Thank you so much for your advice and insights. My plan was to use my Sigma 18 - 250mm lens as a travel lens on the Sony 6000, mostly for simplicity (i.e. avoiding carrying multiple lenses). I am getting the feeling that this is false economy. Although I like my mirrorless, and am happy with the quality and performance, my collection of Nikon glass has been build up over many years, and am not going to start investing heavily in Sony e-mount lenses. I will take your advice and rent an adapter to try one out.

Hackbone

I've got the sigma mc11 for my canon glass and it works pretty good. Now it is a third party in the mix so not all functions work at 100%. I've shot several NCAA Lacross tournaments with the 6300 and a canon 70-200 and it worked like a charm. The canon 50mm was quirky and the 85 worked fairly well just had to be a tad patient on the focusing.

b08rsa

@Hackbone said:
I've got the sigma mc11 for my canon glass and it works pretty good. Now it is a third party in the mix so not all functions work at 100%. I've shot several NCAA Lacross tournaments with the 6300 and a canon 70-200 and it worked like a charm. The canon 50mm was quirky and the 85 worked fairly well just had to be a tad patient on the focusing.

Hackbone, would you think that this may be a better solution to get distance out of a lens. I am hating the fact that the Sony 100-400mm is @ $2500. I sometimes shoot outdoor soccer, so since I went from a Sony A77ii, to Sony A7ii, I am trying to minimize cost in lenses.
Looking at the MC-11 as well, then to use Canon EF mount for per say 70-300mm range or better?

b08rsa

@DavidRGillespie said:
Thank you so much for your advice and insights. My plan was to use my Sigma 18 - 250mm lens as a travel lens on the Sony 6000, mostly for simplicity (i.e. avoiding carrying multiple lenses). I am getting the feeling that this is false economy. Although I like my mirrorless, and am happy with the quality and performance, my collection of Nikon glass has been build up over many years, and am not going to start investing heavily in Sony e-mount lenses. I will take your advice and rent an adapter to try one out.

Wondering if you ever rented the MC-11 ? If so, how did you like it? I am looking at going down this path, just on the fact that Sony lenses are so darn expensive.

DavidRGillespie

@b08rsa - time ran out, and I never did rent the adapter. After much traveling with either my Sony A6000 with the 16-50 mm and 55 - 210 mm lenses, or my Nikon D7100 with the Sigma 18 - 250, I have to give the Sony the edge as a travel camera. Overall, the Sony is light, inconspicuous, and the low light performance is great. Switching lenses for a bit of telephoto is a pain, but the combined weight and bulk of the camera, two lenses and a flash is less than the D7100 and the Sigma 18 - 250. I thought about getting one of the longer Sony lenses, but lugging 5 lb of glass sort of defeats the purpose of the mirrorless camera for me.