Mirrorless Pics: Huck the Cat with the Sony a7 & vintage Nikon lens

It's hard to believe that it's been a whole decade since Sony's a7 rocked the camera market by introducing full-frame mirrorless to the world of serious photography.

They were the first mirrorless cameras to really dent the pro market, which had previously shunned them due to viewfinder lag, focus speed issues, and battery life. The a7 and its successor, the a7 II, solved the first two issues, but it wasn't until the a7 III that you could go through the day without a pocketful of spare batteries. (The problem was the original a7 used Sony's NP-FW50, which was originally intended for crop-sensor cameras with lower power requirements.)

I used the a7 & a7 II for a while before going back to Canon DSLRs for work because I was too poor to afford a new a7 III and the pandemic delayed the launch of the a7 IV for over a year, which kept used III's uncommon and spendy.

What I miss most about the a7 and a7 II was something fairly unique to full-frame mirrorless: The ability to use almost any old 35mm film lens at their native focal length with a simple dumb adaptor. Sure, you can put them on an APS-C camera like my Fuji X-T2, but then they get that 1.5X focal length multiplier.

These shots of my roommate's cat, Huck, were taken with the original a7 and a Nikkor 105mm f/2.5, one of the all-time classic portrait lenses.

While Responsible Tam would save her pennies until she can afford a nice used EOS R or even something newer, Impulsive Tam is always in danger of jumping on the first reasonably-priced used EOS RP that I can find just so I can play around with old lenses like this again.

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