The Techart Pro The ultimate focus assist.

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Whoever had the idea for the Techart Pro Autofocus Adapter is a brilliant genius. Either that or they knew the history of photography and saw how autofocus upended an entire industry, relegating twenty years of excellent lenses to closets. Sony sensibly decided to open up their autofocus controls to third parties like Zeiss and Metabones for competitors' autofocus lenses, but it's unclear if they predicted a startup like Techart Pro would create an affordable ($399 USD) adapter that would provide autofocus to virtually any lens, including their own vintage Minolta MC/MD lenses.

If it’s not obvious, I’m rooting for the TechArt Pro to work well, so let's get the bad news out of the way. As of the Techart Pro firmware version 4.0 and the Sony α7R II's autofocus abilities, I must classify Techart Pro's autofocus as more of an assist, like focus-peaking and focus-magnification, rather than full autofocus. As expected, it is quicker in good light, at fast apertures, and with shorter focal lengths. Performance is excellent when you have all three of these, good when you have any two, and worthless if you have one or none. At longer focal lengths, some manual focus is necessary to get the lens in the right range, and starting with the focal plane further out works best.

A brief video showing Techart Pro autofocus in good light.

When at the limits of lower light and longer focal length the Techart Pro seems to give up trying sometimes, requiring encouragement by continually pressing focus (back button AF/MF in my case). I have found the most effective α7R II set up is as follows:

  • Set your Fn menu to have Steady Shot Adjust available as you'll want Manual for your Techart Pro and Auto for native lenses. Auto detects the focal length of native lenses automatically and sets the in-body stabilization appropriately. You'll need to set the focal length manually when you use manual lenses (definitely do this). Set your Fn menu to have Steady Shot Focal Length available so you can quickly switch lengths as you change lenses.
  • To get best results you'll want immediate access to both Autofocus and Manual Focus's Focus-Peaking, and Focus-Magnification. Setting up back button focus is also recommended. If you don't set back button focus, make sure to set Priority Set in AF-C to Release.
  • To set back button focus, set AF w/ shutter to Off in the menus. Set a custom button like AF/MF to Focus. This will allow you to use Autofocus when desired, but also quickly use Manual Focus without autofocus interfering.
  • I also recommend setting AEL to AF/MF Ctrl Toggle. This will allow you to quickly switch from Autofocus to full Manual Focus, which will engage Focus-Peaking (that you should have on High) and also allow you to press Focus Settings (my C2), to quickly Focus-Magnify. With this set up, when Autofocus is toggled on, C2 allows Focus Settings like Wide, Center, Flexible Spot, and when Manual Focus is toggled on, Focus-Peaking will engage immediately and pressing C2 will Focus-Magnify.
  • Face Detection works well but I've found Flexible Spot - Small better for focusing on the eyes (unfortunately Eye-Autofocus is not supported). I recommend adding Face Detection to the Fn menu as well for easy toggling.

Once you learn to shift between these modes, you will quickly get far more keepers with your manual lenses than you ever did before, especially at the long end where manual focus becomes challenging. This is extremely satisfying, the little green square never felt so good.

I can confirm that as expected, the adapter does not work on the α6000. Interestingly, like the hyperactive fox that it is, the α6000 hunts for focus much more enthusiastically than the α7R II. I have not tested the α6300, which also has the open Phase Detect Autofocus necessary to work with the Techart Pro, but all evidence says it will smoke the α7R II, which is encouraging. That said, the α6300 is sans in-body stabilization, requiring a higher shutter speed, and it's smaller sensor will have more difficulty in low light. This is the reason I am holding out for a Sony APS-C body with stabilization: so I can have stabilization, 1.5x focal length, better autofocus, and 11+ FPS burst.

I have high hopes for continued improvements, ahem, Eye-Autofocus, from Techart Pro firmware updates, which are easy to apply via bluetooth and the Techart Pro App. I also look forward to improved autofocus from Sony bodies, but I'm confident Sony has the right group of innovative engineers to get there. In the meantime, I'm having a blast with my α, Techart Pro, and Minolta MC/MDs.

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