Techart Unveils the World’s First AF Adapter for Manual Focus Lenses

[Lou_Meluso]

<p>Techart PRO now offers an adapter to achieve AF from manual focus legacy lenses for Sony E-mount. An interesting development-<a href="http://techartpro.com/">HERE</a><br>

Base price $349 plus lens adapter</p>

 

[yockenwaithe]

<p>Wasn't there a camera years ago that had autofocus capabilities for manual focus lens by way of a moving sensor [or a moving film back], but it was terribly unwieldy? This looks like it may be similarly fragile, and only using expensive M mount lenses may be a problem for some. Not to bash it it looks absolutely great, especially with the inherent quality of M lenses. Looks like this will convince some that adapters aren't all bad, or convince more that they were right about adapters in the first place</p>

[bebu_lamar]

<p>I think it's the Contax AX that AF by moving the film plane. It works but limit the range of possible AF. </p>

[Michael R Freeman]

<p>Hardly "world's first". Nikon did this 30 years ago for manual focus telephoto primes via a 1.6X teleconverter.<br>

:-)</p>

[shawngibson]

<p>I've been following this on the Sony Rumours site. To ask a very dumb question, would this work with something like a 600mm Nikon AIS or 500mm FD 500/4.5 (i.e., not af) mounted on a tripod? Obviously the camera, not the lens, would move in such a case, and I can't imagine such a small movement working on such a long FL. Would it work as a 'fine focus' after getting coarse focus manually via the lens?</p>

[shawngibson]

<p>BeBu - my fading recollection of that ingenious idea was that it 'barely worked'. I could be wrong, but I don't have positive memories of what I read about it. On that note, I miss my Contax S2.</p>

[Jochen_S]

<p>I guess the 4.5mm draw of the adapter will work the same wway with a really long lens like they can be used stacked with a Leica lens for close up range extension. - I suck at math but would hope Techart works for keeping something like a slightly moving teacher or singer in focus with a wide open long lens. - Anyhow maybe there is hope they 'll give a next sturdier rather universal SLR mount (EF maybe?) version more focusing range?</p>

[bebu_lamar]

<p>4.5mm is too little to focus a long lens like 600mm. Most of these lenses have internal focusing with which the elements don't have to move a lot but since the adapter can't do that it has to move a lot to focus these lenses. So I would say it wouldn't work.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>This adapter is meant for manual lenses, and would probably work well with shorter Nikon primes if there were a suitable adapter. For now, it is limited to lenses with a Leica M mount, which includes Zeiss and Voigtlander. With a draw of 4.5 mm, a 50 mm lens would be about the maximum.</p>

<p>Do not dispair. There is an auto-focus adapter (see below) for Nikon AFS lenses. Since it uses the focusing motor in the lens, there is no limit on the focal length. It is compatible with the A7ii and A7Rii for both phase and contrast detection focusing.</p>

<p>http://briansmith.com/worlds-first-nikon-f-auto-focus-adapter-for-sony-e-mount/</p>