Beautiful Lens and Bokeh, just not for manual focu
October 07, 2013
This lens is a wonderful purchase for a NEX line camera. I used this briefly on my NEX-3N and the results were excellent. The bokeh is smooth and buttery, and the depth of field at the 1.8 and 2.0 are perfect for portrait work with a beautiful blurred backdrop.
Autofocus on this lens was a tad slower than the kit lens, and it seems to cycle in and out of focus at times, but other times it was quick as lightning to focus. This likely was due to light conditions.
The main caveat to this lens, and it was a large one for me, is the manual focus ring. The ring itself is beautifully crafted of solid metal with a nice grip on it. The throw is a bit weighted and has a substantial feel to it. The issue is that going from near to far focus with this requires what feels like two or three full revolutions of the focus wheel. I bought this lens for manual focus work not realizing how much turning the focus-by-wire approach would involve. I ended up returning the lens because it was causing me wrist pain to flick it as much and as hard as I needed for focus.
However, if you aren't like me and going to be doing a ton of manual focusing, it works wonderfully, has excellent build quality, and is a great choice for portrait work.
If the full-frame NEX camera comes out soonish, this would make a great standard 50mm, if that model follows convention and has no crop factor.... Read More
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