Tom Leonard at Petapixel.com has posted a great writeup of using old Minolta lenses on a Sony a7 system. The old school lenses can be found used for under $100, and with an adapter provide the a7 with a full frame solution, manual focus solution.
I was curious though to find out if they’re as good as some of the older lenses made by Minolta back in the film days. You might be tempted to think that with the rate of technological advancements in photography over the past 20 years that this might be a dumb question. Fair enough, but consider that most advancements have been made more in the tool we use to capture the light coming through the lens more than the lens itself.
The article has great sample shots, and the takeaway is that that focus peaking display on the a7 makes using manual-focus lenses incredibly simple. The low cost of the Minolta lenses and the quality of their build makes them an interesting solution for shooting images with non-native Sony lenses.