{"id":1454,"date":"2010-09-20T01:37:51","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T01:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/?p=1454"},"modified":"2010-09-20T01:37:51","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T01:37:51","slug":"24-to-the-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/?p=1454","title":{"rendered":"24 to the 50"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nOkay, so I broke my resolution to buy only one A-mount lens this year. Technically, this is the only A-mount lens I have bought this year, but I originally intended to buy another lens.<\/p>\n


\nThis is the Minolta 24-50mm F4 Original! What does it mean by Original?<\/p>\n


\nThese are the original Minolta AF lenses. From left to right<\/b>: Minolta 24-50mm F4, Minolta 50mm F1.4<\/a>, Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They all look alike, with diagonal ribbed zoom rings, and tiny ribbed focus rings.<\/p>\n


\nLeft to right<\/b>: Vivitar 24mm F2.0 OM mount (modded to A-mount)<\/a>, Minolta 24-50mm F4 Original, Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you notice, the later Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D) has a new styling, with a thicker focus ring and different zoom ring rubber design. The Minolta 24-50mm F4 Original was an external, extending focusing design while the Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D) was an internal focusing design.<\/p>\n

The Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D) also has a focus clutch, and a very geary manual focus action of which I am not fond of.<\/p>\n

You might ask, why have two lenses in a redundant focal range? Simply – the Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D) had a minimum focusing distance of 50cm, while the Minolta 24-50mm F4 Original had a minimum focusing distance of 35cm. This was the [b]shortest MFD of any Minolta standard zoom at that time![\/b]<\/p>\n

The Carl Zeiss 24-70mm F2.8 SSM focuses to 34cm close, just 1cm better. The Konica Minolta 28-75mm F2.8 beat that at 33cm.<\/p>\n

Everything else back then, like the Minolta 20-35mm F3.5-4.5, 24-85mm F3.5-4.5, 28-85mm F3.5-4.5, 28-105mm F3.5-4.5, 35-70mm F3.5-4.5, 28-135mm F4-4.5, 35-70mm F4, 35-105mm F3.5-4.5 – none of them focused to anything closer than 50cm (and the 28-135mm was a 150cm distant champion.) Some of them had a Macro switch which allowed them to focus closer, but in manual focus only! (I did not count the F3.5-5.6 zoom lenses because I was not looking for darker aperture lenses. I also did not consider F2.8 zooms because of the size and weight.)<\/p>\n


\nAt maximum extension.<\/p>\n


\nMy first outdoor shot with the 24-50mm on the A900! The vignetting is pretty spectacular, and an effect I’d like to leave in. The classic Minolta color is all there in all its glory.<\/p>\n


\n35cm is showing its benefits.<\/p>\n


\n24mm F10.<\/p>\n


\nAnother 24mm F4.0 close range shot.<\/p>\n


\nThis lens supposedly has better bokeh than the Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D). I am just seeing a fair bit of barrel distortion, which always happens on the wide end of a zoom especially at close focus.<\/p>\n


\n50mm F4, at MFD, giving a maximum magnification of 1:5.55x. While the Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D) does slightly better, at 1:5.49x maximum magnification, I I would rather have the close focus capability at 24mm, than the magnification at 105mm. The 24-50mm is already very versatile when shooting at close range, like stuff on your table, or food on your plate – I don’t have to lean back excessively in order to focus anymore!<\/p>\n


\nThe lens has a decent amount of contrast, but not too much to kill it for the sensor. Then again, the A900 has always had excellent dynamic range.<\/p>\n


\nAnd here’s a street shot.<\/p>\n

Oh and of course, the shots of the Sony SLT-A33 and Sony E 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 Active OSS<\/a> were all taken with this lens!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, so I broke my resolution to buy only one A-mount lens this year. Technically, this is the only A-mount lens I have bought this year, but I originally intended to buy another lens. This is the Minolta 24-50mm F4 Original! What does it mean by Original? These are the original Minolta AF lenses. From […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","category-pictures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}