The parts of this series (including this one) are at:
Adapting Nikon lenses to Sony Alpha: Monster LA-FE1 autofocus adapter
Monster Adapter LA-FE 1 (2): AF-C for moving subjects
Monster Adapter LA-FE 1 (3): Another go with the Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 E FL
Monster Adapter LA-FE1 (4): Revisiting birds in flight
Monster adapter LA-FE1 (5): firmware v04
I hadn't meant to write another piece about the Monster Adapter LA-FE1, but the recent firmware update to version 04 seems to be quite significant. The adapter allows the use of more recent Nikon AF-S (or AF-P, AF-I) lenses on some Sony Alpha bodies with autofocus: for me, this means on the A1. The manufacturer states that the firmware update greatly improves the autofocus performance with supported lenses.
I did the update a couple of weeks ago (thanks for your help, Martin!) and have been working with the adapter a little since then. I noted in my last blog on this subject that using the older v02 firmware, I was getting useful results with the A1–LA-FE1–500PF combination. Has v04 made a difference?
Before I go any further, if you are interested in this adaptor, do look carefully at the manufacturer's website where they state the limitations of the current firmware, especially in terms of which cameras and lenses are or are not supported. I am only using equipment that is explicitly supported and within the limitations they state.
If you want to see more images made using the Monster LA-FE1, I have an album of them on Flickr.
TLDR: with the updated firmware, in my hands, the Nikon 500 mm PF f/5.6 lens and the 70-200 mm E FL f/2.8 lenses work well enough that I would have no problem making very general use of them. The Nikon 20 mm f/1.8 lens is a useful landscape lens on a Sony body with v04 firmware, and tracking autofocus works well enough for that kind of purpose (e.g. for focus and recompose). However, the older lenses, most especially the 50 mm f/1.4 AF-S lens or the Nikon AF-S 24-120mm f/4 G ED VR Lens, are scarcely worth using on a Sony body for anything beyond static subjects: there are so many better options on Sony bodies with native mount lenses.
Use with the Nikon 500mm PF f/5.6 lens.
Fulmar flying in front of cliffs
Big yawn!
Fulmar pair greeting each other
Turnstone in flight
Oystercatcher in flight
Curlew in flight in front of breaking waves
Brent goose about to touch down
Why am I using this lens, rather than the Sony 200-600mm? To reiterate what I said previously, this lens is a small, light prime lens that is very sharp and focuses fast. It has no direct equivalent in the Sony range and even fits in a smaller bag than the 200-600. It is simply more pleasant to do ambulatory photography with this lens.
After updating the firmware, I headed off to Thanet for some bird photography. At this time of year, the fulmars are back for the breeding season. The day was cold and clear with a sky of uninterrupted blue, plus an icy wind blowing from the west. I arrived just after high tide and spent an hour or so photographing them as they wheeled between the open sea and the cliffs.
My immediate impression was the focus seemed much snappier than before: a most welcome improvement.
To try to work out which autofocus mode works best, I cycled through four different modes that I use regularly to see which works best. These were: wide, zone, single-point flexible spot and tracking spot L. (I also tried varying the tracking sensitivity as I went along). I found tracking spot L the least successful. In this mode, the 500mm PF lens did not seem to track at all well on the A1 and v04 firmware; several times I found myself unable to lock focus at all. Wide and zone seemed to work much better than that on birds in flight against a plain blue sky. Zone seemed to work better than wide when the birds were against the distracting background of the cliffs. Analysing the sharp pictures when I got back confirmed my impressions. For birds in flight, zone gave me the best results, and tracking spot L had by far the least number of sharp images.
As the tide went out, some rocks were exposed just offshore, so I went down to the beach and tried photographing the birds as they arrived on the rocks to search for food among the seaweed. I quickly found that even with bird subject recognition switched on, the birds were far enough away in the frame that they were not picked up by wide/zone/tracking spot L. By contrast, single point AF with the birds on the rocks worked well. The pictures of the birds on the rocks shown here are deep crops from the original image, typically 3000x2000 pixel crops. I think they've held up pretty well, and you can see how effective the autofocus single-point mode is even at some distance.
Curlew on seaweed-covered rocks with breaking waves behind
Heron and crow, hunkered down against the wind
Turnstone on seaweed-covered rocks
An obvious question is what was my keeper rate? I'm very reluctant to come up with a percentage score, because it all varies with how the different birds were behaving, what the wind was doing (there was a strong cold wind blowing) etc. My general comment is that there is no doubt that to get the best out of the A1, you will need to use a native Sony lens: no surprise there. With the Nikon 500 mm PF lens, I get about 10 frames per second, compared to 30 frames per second available with the Sony 200-600 mm lens. Although zone focus mode held birds in flight in focus pretty well, it was not as solid as the lock I would expect with the 200-600 mm lens. On the back of the camera this was not so obvious, but looked at on my desktop screen it was clear that focus would occasionally drop in and out and then in again.
On the other hand, when I went through the pictures afterwards, I got so many sharp pictures that I stopped marking them when I got to about 180. First of all, that is almost unrecognisably better than my first outing last year. Second, even though I would have got a higher proportion of sharper shots using the 200-600 mm lens, do I need more than 180 from one short outing? Probably not. I certainly don't feel that I missed critical wing positions or suchlike with these species. Overall, I am very happy with this set of pictures.
Nikon 70-200 mm EFL lens.
I've only used this around the house enough to confirm that it focuses snappily and accurately. Human eye autofocus seems to work well, although I haven't done a proper portrait session to confirm this. All told, I'm looking forward to using this lens more on the A1.
Note also that Monster Adapter state that firmware v04 does not work well with teleconverters. I can confirm that with the TC-20E III and this lens: I could not get critical focus reliably.
Summary.
My first impression is that v04 firmware on the LA-FE1 is a significant upgrade: it has noticeably enhanced the utility of adapted Nikon lenses on the Sony A1. There are limitations as I've noted (lower frame rate; teleconverters are out), but I can live with that for normal purposes. Furthermore, my experience is that lenses of more recent generations work by far the best with this adaptor. In the future, I probably won't have anything specific to say about the LA-FE1 when using either of the 500PF or 70-200EFL lenses: they'll simply be standard elements of what I use with the A1. I've no idea whether v04 represents the last enhancement to this adapter's performance: I think there may be more to get out of it, so I'm hoping for a future v05.
Addendum 2023-04-11.
I made a visit to Feltham to catch some aircraft taking off from LHR when they were on easterly ops in early March. The 500PF on the A1 with the LA-FE1 performed extremely well, and reliably gave sharp, correctly focused images. A few below. As I’ve noted previously, this combination works very satisfactorily for aircraft.
NOTE 2023-08-28
A reader (thanks Kitmin!) alerted me to a potential problem with using the LA-FE1 with firmware v03 and the Sony A1 with firmware v1.32 (the latest version at the time of writing). In his experience, this combination does not work with Nikon AF-S lenses. I have not applied the latest update to the A1 firmware, so I am still on 1.31. My combination works fine still with AF-S lenses. For the moment I’m not going to update my A1 firmware until I am sure this issue is resolved.
Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350-1041 (G-VTEA) Rosie Lee
BA Airbus A380-841 (G-XLED)
Virgin Atlantic Airbus A330-941 (G-VJAZ) Billie Holiday
Etihad Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner (A6-BMA)
Emirates Airbus A380-842 (A6-EVP)