A history of Sony Alpha - Minolta AF 50 mm f/1.7 versus Sony DT 50 mm f/1.8 SAM - Autofocus

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A history of Sony Alpha - Minolta AF 50 mm f/1.7 versus Sony DT 50 mm f/1.8 SAM

1 December 2009

Szymon Starczewski

10. Autofocus

The Minolta 1.7/50 works very swiftly on an A100. It runs through the scale in less than 0.5 second, no matter from what end. We hear a buzz during the autofocus work but fortunately it isn’t especially annoying.

The Sony DT 1.8/50 on the same body works a bit more slowly but its distance range is wider with the minimum focus of 0.34 m. The sound during the autofocus work is a bit louder and a tad higher.

When we put both lenses on an A850 to compare to the results from the A100 body practically nothing changed – neither the speed nor the noise level.

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The Sony on the A100 missed in 17% of cases in the studio conditions. The Minolta fared a bit better with the result of 13% of misses in the same conditions. To tell you the truth the SAM motor didn’t help the Sony lens to win against the Minolta in any category connected with autofocus so it wasn’t a serious asset.

Both lenses didn’t have any backfocus or frontfocus tendencies.