Fearless_Photog
Senior Member
I'll preface this by saying it's not Sony I'm disappointed in at all, this is just a bad used equipment experience.
I'm a long time Nikon shooter, but like a lot of wildlife shooters, and bird shooters especially, I'm always wanting for more reach, my standard birding setup is a Nikon D300 with the 300mm f/4 AF-S and teleconveters.
However I've read lots of good things, and seen lots of great samples here and elsewhere of the Minolta 400mm f/4.5 APO HS. Regardless of system this stood out as probably one of the best bang for the buck deals around as far as a long somewhat fast telephoto that can also be used handheld.
Adorama has had one listed in their used department for months, and since I was in there today I decided to actually take a look at it in the metal. I looked it over and the glass was clean, the physical condition very good with only a few paint scrapes here and there, came in the original box and metal case. One problem was Adorama apparently didn't have a single Sony body on hand with a charged battery, so I couldn't test it on a powered body. Of course I figured if it had some kind of focusing issue or anything else I could just return it. So I went ahead and took the plunge.
Bought the lens, and since I didn't have a Sony body, I bought an A77 as well, something I've also been interested in since it came out as a wildlife camera. Got home, spent the last couple of hours charging the A77 battery and reading the manual, when the battery was charged I updated the firmware.
Then I mounted the lens, and nothing... It might as well not be mounted at all, No aperture detected, no autofocus. My first thought was to clean the contacts. They looked fairly clean to begin with, but I cleaned them with alcohol anyway. Lens back on, still nothing. My guess is the CPU in the lens is just totally dead, or something else has disconnected somewhere. I was really looking forward to using this thing tomorrow too, but instead I'm going to be spending the morning returning it.
Now what I have to figure out is whether I want to return everything, since I lot of my incentive for buying the A77 was to use lens on it. On the other hand I do like the camera body, and I could always buy a modern Sony SSM telephoto to use with it. Either the 70-200 f/2.8 with converters or 70-400 f/4.5-5.6, although neither will give the same combination of range and light gathering ability.
Any thoughts or advice from current Sony users would be appreciated, keep in mind that as of now I'm not invested in this system at all other than the A77 body and this dead lens. Thanks in advance.
Also here's some cellphone pictures from before my hopes were dashed.
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcullenphoto/
I'm a long time Nikon shooter, but like a lot of wildlife shooters, and bird shooters especially, I'm always wanting for more reach, my standard birding setup is a Nikon D300 with the 300mm f/4 AF-S and teleconveters.
However I've read lots of good things, and seen lots of great samples here and elsewhere of the Minolta 400mm f/4.5 APO HS. Regardless of system this stood out as probably one of the best bang for the buck deals around as far as a long somewhat fast telephoto that can also be used handheld.
Adorama has had one listed in their used department for months, and since I was in there today I decided to actually take a look at it in the metal. I looked it over and the glass was clean, the physical condition very good with only a few paint scrapes here and there, came in the original box and metal case. One problem was Adorama apparently didn't have a single Sony body on hand with a charged battery, so I couldn't test it on a powered body. Of course I figured if it had some kind of focusing issue or anything else I could just return it. So I went ahead and took the plunge.
Bought the lens, and since I didn't have a Sony body, I bought an A77 as well, something I've also been interested in since it came out as a wildlife camera. Got home, spent the last couple of hours charging the A77 battery and reading the manual, when the battery was charged I updated the firmware.
Then I mounted the lens, and nothing... It might as well not be mounted at all, No aperture detected, no autofocus. My first thought was to clean the contacts. They looked fairly clean to begin with, but I cleaned them with alcohol anyway. Lens back on, still nothing. My guess is the CPU in the lens is just totally dead, or something else has disconnected somewhere. I was really looking forward to using this thing tomorrow too, but instead I'm going to be spending the morning returning it.
Now what I have to figure out is whether I want to return everything, since I lot of my incentive for buying the A77 was to use lens on it. On the other hand I do like the camera body, and I could always buy a modern Sony SSM telephoto to use with it. Either the 70-200 f/2.8 with converters or 70-400 f/4.5-5.6, although neither will give the same combination of range and light gathering ability.
Any thoughts or advice from current Sony users would be appreciated, keep in mind that as of now I'm not invested in this system at all other than the A77 body and this dead lens. Thanks in advance.
Also here's some cellphone pictures from before my hopes were dashed.
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcullenphoto/
