Sony LA-EA5 Lens Adapter Review

The Sony LA-EA5 comes in a rigid compact case that is easy to carry and serves to protect the adapter. A zipper secures the two halves of the case together. Inside it, the is just enough room for the adapter with a body-cap guarding the A-mount side and a lens-cap protecting the opposing E-mount.

This lightweight lens adapter has a short plastic barrel with metal mounts on both sides. It bridges the distance between the A-mount and E-mount flange without any optics which maintains the full image-quality of Minolta and other A-mount lenses. The field-of-view of lenses is preserved with respect to sensor-size. Full-Frame lenses show their intended coverage, while APS-C ones present their 1.5X Crop-Factor.

Even though there are no optics in the LA-EA5, this mount-adapter is both mechanical and electronic. A circular motor inside couples with the autofocus drive of most Minolta lenses. Electronic contacts transmit power to operate the SAM and SSM autofocus motors present on some Minolta and most Sony A-mount lenses. These electronic contacts also control aperture and transmit focal-length data required by IBIS and to record in EXIF.

A spring-loaded release on the side of the adapter disengages the AF and mounting pin to unmount A-mount lenses from the adapter. The standard lens-release on Sony mirrorless cameras must be used to disconnect the adapter. The spring of the lens-release on the LA-EA5 is rather stiff and requires some force to hold down while dismounting a lens.

The Sony LA-EA5 is made of sturdy plastic. Minolta never produced any weatherproof lenses, so this adapter does not have any seals to protect against the elements either. Being cylindrical and weighing a mere 88g, this adapter is truly unobstrusive and it never interferes with a quick-release adapter or tripod.

Image-quality is exactly what the lens provides since there are no additional elements introduces in the optical path. It is impressive that even lenses that are 30 years old produce sharp images on modern digital cameras. Generally, older lenses require more stopping down and suffer from greater corner softness than current ones. Perceived sharpness depends on camera resolution, so this adapter will produce much sharper images on a 12 megapixels Sony Alpha A7S III
Sony Alpha A7S III compared to a 61 megapixels Sony Alpha A7R IV
Sony Alpha A7R IV.

While image-quality is unsurprising, the autofocus performance of the Sony LA-EA5 is remarkable. Autofocus is driven quickly and decisively. Focus moves directly to the right focus plane without back-and-forth movement. With the adapter, the camera can automatically select any autofocus point and use clusters of points to accurately lock focus. Tracking AF is supported up to 11 FPS on SAM and SSM lenses.

One thing to know - or remember - is that older lenses are noisy. One should not use autofocus during video capture to avoid recording the sound of the focus motor. In manual-focus mode, there is no noise from the lens since A-mount lenses have mechanical focus-ring.

The Sony LA-EA5 Lens Adapter is extremely impressive as a seamless bridge between A-mount lenses and E-mount cameras. It works flawlessly with full camera capabilities. Autofocus is obviously one of those but it also allows aperture-control, all metering modes and effective image-stabilization. With purely mechanical adapters, the photographer must input the focal-length manually into the camera which is highly impractical for a zoom lens. With the LA-EA5, the camera correctly identifies the lens and set focal-length, even for 30 year-old lenses!

For any photographer with A-mount lenses, this the Sony LA-EA5 is the best choice of mount adapter. It is also a great option for those planning to acquire a second-hand full-frame system. Even though this adapter is not cheap, new Sony FE lenses are quite costly compared to legacy Minolta ones. This is even more true for photographers who prefer prime lenses that used to be vastly superior in image-quality compared to zoom lenses of their time.