It's a Zoom - what did you expect?
February 28, 2014
It's hard to describe how much I like the A7r - but one of the things that comes with it is that punishing 36MP sensor. I knew in my heart that a mid-level (but premium priced) zoom lens would not be perfect - but my hopes were high. Basically, it's an average peer to lenses like the Canon 24-105 f/4, 24-70 f/4, and Sony 16-50G.
Shooting with the lens, a few things are very clear. First the BAD:
1) It is Not a bag of prime lenses. You will not see nearly the quality of the FE 35mm and 55mm lenses, or other system primes mounted via adapter
2) The distortion is extreme. The camera will try to correct this if you shoot JPG or process RAW in Sony software - but I use Adobe LR. The distortion is wild at 24mm and 70mm - you will see pixel smearing and lose field of view if you correct it.
3) The corners are very soft at 24mm - 28mm, no matter how you stop down. There is no way to improve that. If you resize down to 25-50% it looks a little better (as expected)
4) 70mm is not terribly sharp. Actually, you probably get about as much detail at 70mm as you would at 60mm or 55mm and cropping. This means, that you really have a very good 35-60mm zoom lens, and a kind of so-so 24-28mm and 60-70mm lens
5) Autofocus is rarely quite right - for critical focus I always have to use DMF to fine tune things
The GOOD:
1) Center sharpness is great - and this is the part that matters most
2) The contrast and resulting colors are very good, almost Zeiss-like
3) The performance between 35mm and 55mm is excellent - like REALLY exxcellent, stop down just a little to get a very good sharpness across the frame
4) The optical stabilization is amazing. I'm shooting 50mm at 1/5sec with no problem. I'm loving it!
Bottom line - this is a zoom lens. It's expensive, but fair considering the reasonable size. Don't expect miracles - it's a zoom lens. For what it is, it's an average and solid performer. I'm keeping it.
If you don't need 24mm or aren't very particular, consider the kit lens. It's probably 70-80% as good and less than half the price.... Read More
Hide