Sony Alpha (Minolta Maxxum mount) lens bargains

The following lenses represent an unusual value. They are not necessarily the cheapest or the best quality available, but they all represent a very high quality for a reasonable price.

I’ve written this guide from the perspective of a longtime and Minolta user. I own the lenses below, but I don’t buy or sell them. You’ll have to find them on eBay or elsewhere on the web, and all the usual caveats about careful online shopping, checking seller reputation, and avoiding fraudulent listings applies. I wish simply to point you to lenses for the Sony Alpha / Minolta Maxxum mount that offer excellent value.

50mm f/1.4
This standby standard lens comes in several variants. They are all the same optical design and are all essentially equal. Some have different filter thread sizes (some are 49 mm, other 55 mm) and the newer ones have focal distance information to aid newer flash systems (these have a D at the end of their label). A really rare variant is the 1988 version with the crossed x’s (XX), a logo design that was quickly changed after complaints from Exxon, and thus extremely rare and valued by collectors. And Sony has released their version under the Alpha brand. From the point of view of basic performance they are all the same.

The 50mm f/1.4 is an extraordinarily sharp lens with one of the highest MTF ratings of any lens available. You really have no idea what your camera is capable of until you try this lens with it. If all you’ve had is the kit lens you’ll be astonished by how much better your photos can be. Things just sparkle with contrast and clarity. The downside is no zoom, but the upside is worth it if you value really, really good pictures.

This lens costs around $325 new, and can sometimes be had in the used range for under $200. That isn’t cheap, unless you consider just how amazingly good photos with this lens are in comparison to what you are currently using. Then it looks like a bargain.

35mm F/2 (rare)
Discontinued in the early 90s, this lens is the less expensive version of Minolta’s legendary 35mm f/1.4, a $1400 lens. It’s extraordinarily sharp at all apertures and all focal distances, and belongs to the small club of lenses with an MTF rating of over 4 (from a possible five). Better yet, it shines on 1.5x crop factor digital SLR’s like the Maxxum 7D, 5D and the Sony Alpha-100 and -700, where it is effectively a 50 mm f/2. It’s hard to give a current price since they so seldom come up for sale, but a range of $200 to $400 for a good condition copy seems reasonable.

100mm f/2 (rare)
Another classic lens from the early 90s, long since discontinued. This lens is among the sharpest available for any system, with an MTF of 4.6. It doesn’t do well on macro, and only focus is down to about 3 feet, but for any other purpose is just stunning. The bokeh (out of focus area blur smoothness) is among the best available, and it takes stunningly sharp portraits that yet isolate the subject against a background in a way that no general purpose is zoom is capable of (and that’s just a function of lens design; a lens can’t be all things, and zooms by design tend to have a very deep field of focus, which is really great for amateurs that makes it hard to get a professional looking portrait). This one too is quite difficult to find, and thus difficult to price, but even at $400 would be a good buy.

70-210 f/4 “the beer can”
This lens is truly become a cult classic. It used to be you could get them routinely for under $100, but those days are long gone and today they are pushing above $200. It’s strange that it 30-year-old lens design remains this popular. But it’s popular for a reason. The only downside is it’s size; it does everything else amazingly well. It focuses close to about 12 inches. It is razor-sharp edge to edge at any focal length to infinity. It’s at f/4 at 210mm (on a dSLR that’s an effective 315mm). And the pictures just look amazing. What more is there to say? You can get a better lens for $1500, but there’s not much else below that that comes anywhere close to this one.

100-200 f/4
This lens has not yet achieved cult classic status, and as such still routinely sells for under $100. The contrast to this and the “beer can” above is a perfect lesson in how lens design is a trade-off of factors. This lens is very small and lightweight. It’s also amazingly sharp. So what did they have to give up? Close focusing. Minimal focusing distances over 3 feet, so don’t expect to use it for macro shots. But such a tiny lens doesn’t scream “pro photographer”, so it’s useful where you don’t want to stand out. Yet it certainly takes photos every bit as good as lenses costing 10 times as much. And while there are plenty of medium-telephoto zooms that you can choose from, none this small come anywhere close to having this level of image quality, and none with this image quality are anywhere close to this price. This is probably the best value lens around.

35-70 f/4
The little brother to the “beer can”, this lens was designed at the same time and sold to complement its much larger sibling. In the days of dSLR cameras, the focal length is somewhat limited, becoming an effective 50-105mm zoom. But someday in a few years Sony will start selling full frame dSLR’s with the alpha mount and this little lens will become popular again. It has all the quality of the “beer can”, including an amazing edge to edge sharpness and a constant f/4 aperture, and its focal range is actually the most commonly used for film cameras. Finally, add the fact that they routinely sell for under $50, and you have a real value bargain. Just don’t confuse it with other 35-70mm lenses that aren’t nearly as good, such as the f/3.5-4.5 variants. This one was also discontinued in the early 1990s.

24-105 f/4-5.6 D
Back when Minolta released what is probably the best film camera of all time, the Maxxum 7, they also developed a brand-new general purpose zoom lens to be the high-end kit lens for the system. Most kit lenses sell separately for under $100, but this one has a list price of $500, so it’s clearly no ordinary kit lens. In general use it’s an all around excellent lens, long enough that you don’t often reach for a telephoto, yet broad enough to work even on a dSLR with 1.5x crop factor, having a functional 35mm bottom end. Sony reissue this one with an alpha label on it, so you can have it new for $440 or you can pick up a used Minolta version for under $200 if you can find one. I’ve probably shot close to 40,000 images with this on the Maxxum 7D and many have been published. If you leave the house with just one lens, this is the one you’ll want (unless your budget stretches to the thousands). It represents an excellent value when you compare overall image quality to the price you pay.

There are plenty of other excellent lenses for the Maxxum/Sony Alpha lens mount, and most of them are much more expensive. But these all represent extraordinary value because they produce exceptional image quality at reasonable prices.