Mike — Thank you for your kind offer to find someone who could take off the flange so I could adapt my Flektagon 50/4 (also the MC non-zebra version) to the a900. I may yet take you up on it but have two stumbling blocks.
The greater one is that MF is increasingly unreliable for me; the lesser one is that, when I took the lens out of its case the other day there was more dust inside it than I've ever seen in a lens! So it may be that the first step ought to be finding someone to do a CLA on it.
Well, those lenses go for from $200 up to $400 or so depending on condition and model. I've just taken my adapter off mine and put it on super rotator 55mm f4.5 I bought on ebay. The switch was easy enough but the super rotator was very bad on the edges at f8 even though with the a900 I'm still in the middle of the image circle for that lens. It could only get worse with shift so I'm returning it.
I believe there are now tilt adapters made with focus confirm chips on them. There weren't when I bought mine and that is why I made my own. If there are focus confirm adapters available, that would be the way to go because you simply mount the lens in the adapter and put the whole thing on the camera. Put the little lever front left to the bottom position for manual focus then focus the lens until the green confirmation light comes on in the viewfinder. That's the way any adapter with focus confirm works on the sony. That would be your best bet. Aside from that the process is to mill off the flange that comes on the adapter then put a new m42 focus confirm adapter on the tilt adapter. I can have that done if need be.
As far as cleaning the lens if it's one of the old zebra style lenses and the cost is high it may not be worth it. Look on ebay under completed auctions to get an idea of what they go for. I think about 80% or more of the sales of that lens come from Eastern Europe.
At the moment, it's a matter of curiosity and a small gamble for me. The Zeiss Jena glass ought to be worth the investment, and your tilt/shift idea ought to be useful for landscapes, but, being camera poor at the moment, the project may have to wait for awhile.
Any thoughts?
You might want to look at m42 lenses and use an adapter. There are a lot of good lenses in m42 at reasonable prices.
Another idea is to look at some of the minolta af lenses. I believe the current 35-70 f3.5 is the same as the MD version which is also the same as the current 35-70 3.5 leica R lens. I don't have one and haven't tried it but I think it may be quite a nice lens and they are pretty reasonably priced.
Do you know about KEH? (www.keh.com) They have a good selection of used lenses at fair prices and they are highly reputable among the community. Even their bargain rated lenses are usually pretty good. They also have a long return period of 2 weeks. Their only real shortcoming is that their mailing costs are a little high.
Ask on the list what people have found to be good performers at reasonable prices. The 28-135 is an excellent lens but has very long minimum focusing distance. It usually goes for $300-400 and is a bit heavy but an excellent performer.
There are a number of beercan models as well that are highly thought of. You can check the resolution/contrast ratings as a single number value at old.photodo.com. But the best thing to do is to get opinions from those on the board. I know a number of people found the 24-105 (I think?!) to be good performer as well.
In re our theological discussion, it's interesting that Huston Smith, in spite of all his work in Comparative Religion, was still able to commit to Christianity, isn't it? As for my own relatively recent commitment to the Eastern Orthodox approach, I've found its somewhat different paradigms and understandings to be both refreshing, after so many years within the western approach, and profound.
Irenaeus
