Minolta/Konica-Minolta/Sony A Lens To Leica M Body (Techart Pro LM-EA7) Adapter

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In 1985, Minolta became the first company to produce a body-driven autofocus 35mm SLR -- the Maxxum 7000 -- and with it, the new A (also called Alpha or AF, replacing the incompatible manual-focus SR/MC/MD) mount became the camera system to have. Unfortunately, lawsuits soon followed: Exxon sued over the typography of "xx" in Maxxum and Honeywell (Pentax) sued claiming the autofocus technology infringed on their patents. It's a long story, but that began a slow fade; Minolta became Konica Minolta in 2003, finally giving their camera business to Sony in 2006. Although A mount is now second to E for Sony, by my counting, more autofocus lenses have been produced in A than any other mount, so there are plenty of reasons to want to adapt A-mount lenses... and there are various adapters available -- including the LA-EA1/2/3/4 from Sony itself. Ok, so why 3D print this one? Because we can seems like a decent answer -- this is an easy print in 2 pieces, the adapter itself and a little locking pin. Certainly, this adapter fits nicely on a Techart Pro LM-EA7 autofocus adapter and uses only about 12g of the 700g drive limit for the LM-EA7. It's great for manual A-mount lenses. The catch is that it doesn't yet incorporate an aperture control for autofocus lenses... which are the vast majority of A-mount lenses. Hopefully, I'll find a good way to implement that soon... but the LA-EA4 adapter already implements aperture control and native autofocus using those lenses on Sony E bodies, and I own an LA-EA4 as well as an LM-EA7. The last two photos were taken using the LM-EA7 on a Sony A7II, autofocusing a manual-focus Samyang (Opteka) 85mm f/1.4, both shot wide open. In fact, it's the only manual A-mount lens I own. Exceptionally smooth bokeh from that lens, but that super smooth transition to out-of-focus makes it hard to focus manually. By itself, it also has a rather long minimum focus distance, which isn't a problem combining manual focus with autofocus tweaking by the LM-EA7. I think this lens by itself is enough to justify making this adapter, although there are some other great manual lenses in A mount from companies including Samyang and Zeiss.

About the author:
ProfHankD
I'm a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Kentucky, best known for things like having built the world's first Linux PC cluster supercomputer in 1994... although around the 3D-printing world I'm probably best known for my HingeBox (which Tested popularized). My research group (Aggregate.Org) really is about improving computing systems by making the various SW+HW components work better together, which we do for many different types of computer systems: supercomputers, digital cameras, ... and now 3D printers. I had some experience with tool and die making using Bridgeport Series I CNCs as far back as the late 1970s, but my 3D printing adventure started in late 2012 with purchase of a MakerGear M2 for my lab to make custom camera parts in support of computational photography research. I now use multiple MakerGear M2 and Wanhao I3 3D printers, several semiconductor laser cutters, a 3040T CNC mill, a programmable paper cutter, and a small vacuum forming machine.

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