Compatability

[mischof67]

I have moved from Minolta to Sony over the years. Being able to keep lenses made sense to me. I'm hoping to move to an A99 from my A77 in the near future as I start to enjoy photography more and more. I have been lucky enough to be able to improve the lenses as well I have a couple of G series and a couple of Ziess lenses. My question is how the lenses will fair with the A99 and it's full frame 'capacity' once I manage to get a new body. There appears to be conflicting information on the internet about fully compatible lenses for the A99. The Sony site shows all my lenses will work with an A99, but how will the features of the A99 be restricted by using a lens which may not be 'fully compatible'? I understand there is something called crop factor but I can't understand how it can restrict the capability of an A99. Can anyone out there explain is basic terms and also advise what lens from the Sony range, (if any), NOT to use on an A99. 

[mischof67]

Well I'm sure I'll soon find out. I've just bought an A99 today!

[gogorabbit]

Shocked that there is no response from Sony - But what I understand there are two type of lenses out for sony

SEL and SAL    SEL i believe is for full frame cameras such as the A99 and SAL are for the APS-C such as the A37

The difference is at the camera end of the lens, using a SAL lens on the Full frame camera ruduces the size of the images getting to the sensor effecing the picture quality so use the SEL for maximun benefit from the lens.

Might want to double check this but this is what I have been reading lately.

[Pascale_F]

Hi mischof67,

It looks like no-one from the Community got back to you.

Hope you enjoy your new A99 camera! Do let us know how you get on. If no-one from the Community assists you with further queries, you can always Contact Sony Support.

Good luck and happy snapping!

[mischof67]

I have found this on the Sony website, looking under the compatibility tag it gives a full list of everything that is fine with the camera. I presume this will also be present for all other Sony models. Perhaps that is why Sony have have made no comment. I'm sure I will get to understand what happens with results if I use a lens which is not full frame. This is all a aprt of gaining experience I guess!

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/SLT-A99

[Bieomax]

SEL is for the E mount cameras (NEX) and SAL is for the A mount (Alpha).

compatiblity shouldn't be a major issue as long as your using a A mount lens.

Some of the current A mount lenses are designed for APS-C sensors and the A99 will auto crop i believe to accomodate these, These lenses are market as 'DT' but this is not to be confused with lenses marked with D as these have a feature in them for distence encoding which helps with flash exposure/ADI .

the only other thing i think is that could be put under the compatibility banner is that one of the Autofocus modes (AF-D) is only compatible with newer lenses but this shouldn't really cause a concern as you still have all the other autofocus features (AF-S,AF-C)