Adapting Manual Lenses on my Sony Camera

In this video, I share with you guys why I'm switching to manual, how we found a way to turn these manual lenses into autofocus lenses, and what the hell are we doing with a bunch of Leica lenses on our Sony bodies. All of this in May's edition of Hashtag Too Much Gear, please shop responsibly. By the way, if you see random flashes of thunderstorm, that's because we're in Singapore right now. I know it's kind of hard to tell because of the blurred mess in the background, but we're very excited to be here. Stay tuned for Singapore content coming out throughout this entire month of May. So lately, Vivian has been getting into film photography, and I saw how incredibly tiny and lightweight some of these manual lenses are. And you guys know me, how much I'm into tiny and lightweight stuff. Couple of these lenses right here are f1.4, f1.5, might I add, which got me thinking. With all the traveling that we do right now, I don't actually shoot too many things that require fast autofocus. Let's think about it, right? Landscape, cityscape, nighttime, long exposure stuff, maybe some casual portraits from time to time. Pretty much a bunch of still life stuff. And even with videos, especially my gimbal stuff, I don't often shoot too wide open. I don't really like to use ND filters as much nowadays, so I would stop down to like f8 anyway. With the exception of these YouTube talking head aero shots right here, I would still prefer the background to be blurred out at f1.4. That's because we stay in hotels and Airbnbs, and sometimes they don't have the best background, so I would prefer to blur that mess. I mean, you can kind of see right here that Vivian is still currently sleeping right now. It's 5 a.m. in the morning. We're still incredibly jet lagged. But anyways, in playing with Vivian's film cameras for the past couple of months and just a few days with some of these right here, I've really been enjoying the manual lenses, but particularly how incredibly lightweight and tiny they are. It's ridiculous, almost too comical, especially when you're coming from the bigger autofocus lenses. All right, so let's go ahead and check out some of the lenses that we have right here. So we got a variety of Zeiss lenses right here. We have the f1.550, the 1.435, the f250, and the f235. And even though the f1.5 ones are obviously much bigger in aperture, the sizing difference between them and the f2s aren't too crazy. And right next to these bad boys, we have a set of Leica lenses. We have a 28 millimeter, the 35 millimeter, the 50 millimeter, all in f2. And just look at some of these sample shots right here. They are beautiful. They are gorgeous. Shot on the a7S III and the a7IV in vivid color profile, and they just pop. Shit, some of these make me feel like I'm a pro street photographer or something. Like I said, we're still early on in our Singapore trip right here. Did you see that? That was a thunderstorm right there. Like I said, we're very early on in our trip right now, so we'll be having more shots with these lenses soon. Follow along and stay tuned for my follow up experiences using the Leica and the Zeiss M mount lenses on our Sony bodies. Now I know what you're thinking. Damn, Jay flexing on us on these Leica lenses here. Like I said, Vivian has been getting into film photography if you haven't caught on to the second channel vlog stuff. Recently, she actually picked up a Leica M6 to try out, and out of curiosity, we found out Zeiss made some lenses for the M mount, so we wanted to see how the Zeiss lenses compared to the Leica lenses. So all these lenses right here are on a loaner basis. Thank you, Zeiss and B&H for letting us play with these so I don't have to sell my zero body organs that I have left to continue funding our expensive camera hobbies. With the exception of the M6, we bought that use ourselves. How much did you spend on this again? I'm gonna check the credit card statement. 3000. I know how you feel every time I buy a new piece of camera gear. So obviously she just has a one Leica body. Thank God. So obviously she can't use all the lenses at the same time, so I decided to use some of these on my Sony bodies. And how I'm adapting them is with these adapters right here. The Metabones M2E and the Fotodiox M2E autofocus adapter. Now the Metabones is just a straight adapter, but the Fotodiox one is actually very interesting. It actually provides autofocus capabilities to these manual lenses here. I know, it's funny. I say I'm switching to a majority manual and here I am trying to use them with an autofocus adapter. But hey, I mean, come on, it's very interesting to be able to turn these manual lenses into autofocus lenses. That definitely piques our curiosity. And surprisingly it works decently okay. So what you would have to do is to set the lenses to infinity for the best results. And what the adapter would do is push the lens back and forth physically to achieve focus. It works both in autofocus single and autofocus continuous, but I find that it's best when it's an autofocus single because I have a higher chance of getting sharper results. Autofocus continuous is all right, but obviously it's no insane 120 autofocus auto exposure calculations per second that we're used to on the A1 and the G master lenses. Either way, the point is it is slow, but the mere fact that we can autofocus with these manual focus lenses right here is pretty insane and it works well enough. And some of you have actually commented on my 500 millimeter lens video, letting me know such an adapter exists for manual lenses. So thank you for that. We're happy to be trying out with these M mount lenses right here. Now the actual experience of using the autofocus adapter for 2.8 and beyond, I want to say it works great. I'm getting some decent hit rates in terms of focus. Unfortunately, I don't remember what aperture I shot most of these in. A few I remember, but unfortunately it doesn't transmit that kind of metadata over to the images. And on the screen here, it will say I'm perpetually shooting at F 1.4 for whatever reason. With that said, I do find that it's harder when it's an F 1.5. My chances of getting sharp focus with this autofocus adapter isn't that high. I actually get better hit rates just simply manual focusing myself and I actually prefer it that way. So I kind of now know why some folks out there are still so in love with manual lenses. Manual lenses allows us to slow down and take our shot. Instead of machine gunning three to five consecutive shots with my autofocus lenses like nobody's business, I now have to manually focus and check my framing before taking it. And this is partially inspired by my friend, Professor Hines when we were filming our ultimate guide to street photography, which will be coming May 15th, by the way, if this video ends up being uploaded first. But he incorporated the Zeiss Loxia manual lenses into his street photography and said it really made him enjoy photography a lot more and helped him become more in the moment with his images. And of course, with Vivian's newfound love for film photography means we can't be freely snapping away. It's not like an SD card where we can just fill up and wipe every time. So it's taught us to be very mindful when it comes to taking pictures. And your boy was thinking about getting into film photography himself, maybe sometime very soon. But for now, I really want to explore these manual lenses on my Sony bodies to see if they are right for me. The fact that they're much smaller and lighter is a win and my back is literally thanking me right now. With that said, now I'm still gonna be using autofocus lenses like the 24 G Master for my YouTube talking head stuff. Again, the F 1.4 just blurs the unflattering background that we're in at these hotels and Airbnbs. And I also brought with me the 14 G Master here. I actually bought this lens with the sole intention of capturing Singapore even before booking our flights here. And I bought this last year. I've always known they have amazing architecture here. So it would be a crime if I didn't bring the lens that I bought for this single purpose. Mainly to be used on a gimbal though, but aside from that, gonna be all manual for photography. So yeah, these are the reasons why I decided to give manual lenses a go. I'll have more follow-up videos while we're here in Singapore. So if there's anything specific you want to see from this kit, comment down below. Thanks for watching guys. And here's a word from our lovely sponsor, Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform to create beautiful websites. No coding knowledge whatsoever. Perfect for people like me because I just want to make YouTube videos for you guys and not have to worry about coding my entire website. Simply just select one of their templates to get started. Every aspect is easily customizable with their drag and drop feature. Whether you're in need of a portfolio, an e-commerce store or even a simple blog, design it with Squarespace. Use my link down below to test it out. And when you're ready to launch your first website or domain, use my code Jason Vong to save 10% off. Guys, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.