Sony’s mirrorless E-mount has reached a saturation point with more lenses available than possibly any lens mount before, so finding an actually unique lens can be hard to do. That’s not true for today’s review, however, as Sony is releasing a genre-busting lens that builds on the foundation set by last years FE 28-70mm F2 GM, which I reviewed here. The Sony FE 50-150mm F2 G Master goes from normal to telephoto while maintaining a maximum aperture of F2, making it a genuinely unique lens unlike any released on any platform before. The most similar lens we can point to is Tamron’s 35-150mm F2-F2.8, which has been my most used lens since it’s release in late 2021. The 50-150 GM is a more extreme instrument in every way, however, from aperture to size and to price…a whopping $3899 USD ($5499 CDN!!!) Who is this beast for, and is it worth buying? We’ll explore that in both the video review and text review here.

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Thanks to Sony USA for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can visit the product page for the 50-15mm GM here.

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Unlike the Tamron, the 50-150 GM is a constant aperture zoom. The Tamron does start at F2 at 35mm, but as a variable aperture zoom has closed to F2.2 by 50mm, and reaches the smallest maximum aperture of F2.8 by 85mm. After 135mm the 50-150mm F2 actually becomes Sony’s fastest lens as Sony has never released a 200mm F2. It’s pretty impressive that a zoom lens trumps all of the existing prime lenses in this regard.

And Sony’s goal is for this lens to be a replacement for a number of high end primes. About the only way you can justify the price is by looking at it as a replacement for 50mm, 85mm, and 135mm primes…with 150mm as a bonus! One of the key phrases in Sony’s press briefing on this lens was that it would have “prime-like resolution”. It definitely can make pretty pictures!

This is also a beautiful lens that oozes premium quality. If you are a lens lover, it is definitely temptation for acquisition. But should you? Let’s take a closer look…

Build and Handling

This is a big lens, but Sony has actually got perhaps the best track record out there among any lens maker for being able to produce smaller than expected lenses. This lens is the same length as the 70-200mm GM II (200mm, or 7.87″). What’s more, unlike the Tamron 35-150mm, the Sony is an internally zooming lens, so the length will stay consistently the same regardless of focal length. You can see that Sony is thus much longer when the Tamron’s zoom is retracted, but at 135mm the Tamron is essentially the same length.

The lens is 102.8mm (4.04″) in diameter by 200mm (7.87″) in length. That gives us a rather large 95mm front filter thread.

The lens hood has a sliding door to allow for more easy access to rotating filters.

I sometimes find this a little gimmicky (the hood is actually quite shallow here), but I do think it is perhaps justified here because a lens with an F2 aperture is far more likely to be used with filters. Using an ND filter in portrait (flash sync) or video work (shutter speed control) won’t be unusual, and a variable ND filter would need rotating just like a circular polarizer.

You can see that the hood itself is quite small for this size of lens, which to me speaks of Sony having great confidence in the coatings of the lens and not worrying much about flare resistance. We will see if that is justified in the image quality section.

The 50-150 GM weighs in at 1340g (47.27oz), which is more than the 70-200mm GM II (36.86oz), but less than 70-200mm GM 1 (52.20oz).

That weight is with the tripod foot removed, so expect another 80g (according to my scale) for the tripod foot if attached. That foot can be easily removed by loosening the knob pictured below, depressing a release button, and sliding the foot off.

You might have noticed from the picture above that I’ve had to add a QR (quick release) plate to the tripod foot. The foot itself is has a standard 1/4″ and 3/8th” holes for attaching quick release style plates, but the foot is not natively Arca-compatible. I don’t know why this remains the case, but I find it very limiting as it means I have to always add a plate before mounting onto a tripod.

Loosening a tension knob on the collar will allow you to freely rotate the lens to your desired position. There are no detents at the cardinal positions, but there are etched dots at those locations to allow you to line up at the 12, 3, and 9 o’clock positions (the 6 o’clock position is where the foot mount is located).

The 50-150 GM has Sony’s typically robust approach to features and controls. The fact that this is a constant aperture lens allows them to take a more prime-like approach to aperture control. We’ve got a manual aperture ring that can either be clicked or declicked. When clicked the action is on the firm side, with one third stop detents and marked full aperture stops from F2 to F22. There is an extra firm clip between F22 and A (Automatic).

There is an Iris Lock that will allow you eliminate the transition from manual to automatic aperture control, allowing you to either lock into the manual aperture ring if you don’t want to inadvertently bump into automatic mode or to lock out of the aperture ring if you prefer in-camera control.

There is also an option to delick the aperture on the right side. This will allow you to smoothly rack through the aperture without stops, and is particularly useful when shooting video. I was able to do smooth aperture racks without visible steps. Both the declick and iris lock switches are not particularly visible when you are holding the camera, but they probably also aren’t switches you’ll be using on a regular basis.

In between the zoom and manual focus rings there is a slim section of lens barrel that has the other switches and custom buttons. There is an AF | MF switch along with an ON | OFF for Full Time DMF (Direct Manual Override), which allows you to directly override focus in any focus mode (not all Sony cameras naturally allow for this, but this switch will guarantee that operation on all bodies).

There are Custom/Focus Hold buttons in three positions (top, bottom, left side) which will allow for one to be close at hand in either landscape or portrait orientation shooting. These buttons are redundant, with only one function assigned to them through the camera body.

The zoom ring is the first of the two rings, and the advantage of an internally zooming lens is immediately felt. That will keep the balance consistent and allow you to make quick changes to focal length. The rotation of the zoom ring is about 80°, and I actually would have liked it to be even smaller. I was able to successfully zoom in and out during video recording, however, which is not something I can typically do (handheld) with many zoom lenses.

That opens up a tertiary main purpose for a lens like this, as while its usefulness for portrait and wedding photographers is obvious, an internally zooming lens like this with such a fast maximum aperture makes this a very compelling sports lens – particularly for court sports like basketball, tennis, badminton, etc… This is particularly true considering that the blazingly fast autofocus has no problem keeping up with action.

The manual focus ring is near the front of the lens. Both rings have a ribbed and rubberized grips surface. The manual focus ring is well executed, with a fairly light action that nonetheless has decent feel. It is linear to allow for more repeatable focus pulls. My only complaint is that the position feels “far” to reach for. It isn’t a naturally ergonomic position, but I’m sure that a photographer would develop the muscle memory over time.

This is a high end, professional grade lens, so it comes with a thorough weather sealing that starts with a gasket at the lens mount, has internal seals throughout at the ring and switch positions, and has a fluorine coating on the front element to resist moisture and fingerprints.

On an unfortunately negative note, a close look at the rear of the lens also shows that the rear element is very close to the lens mount, leaving no room for use with teleconverters. That’s very unfortunate, as the usefulness of this lens could have really been extended by that compatibility. 210mm at F2.8 would have been handy (1.4x), and 300mm at F4 arguably even more so (2.0x).

It seems to me that modern lens designers are not getting enough criticism over marginalizing teleconverters in mirrorless lenses.

As with many modern zooms, the minimum focus distances varies on the wide and telephoto ends. You can focus as closely as 40cm (1.32ft) on the wide end and 74cm (2.43ft) on the telephoto end. In theory the magnification is very slightly higher on the wide end (0.20x, or a 1:5 magnification ratio), but the difference between the wide and telephoto end is marginal at best:

There’s some pros and cons to shooting at either position. Sharpness and contrast is a little better at 50mm, but the plane of focus is flatter at 150mm and the compression will make the background more out of focus. In some cases it might be preferable to have a wider angle of view (if you want more in the frame), while in other cases it might be preferable to have the tighter framing at 150mm to further isolate the subject.

It is definitely easier to shoot at the longer working distance available at150mm, however, as the shorter MFD means that you’ll be quite close to your subject and can risk shading it with the lens.

There is eleven rounded blades in the aperture iris. The lens does an excellent job of retaining a circular shape when stopped down (F2, F2.8, and F4 shown here).

A second unfortunate missing ingredient is Sony’s OSS (Optical Steady Shot). Lenses like the 70-200mm elements always come with lens based stabilization, but Sony decided to go without here. Perhaps the logic is that it would have added more weight and expense to a lens that is already have and expensive, but Sony’s camera based stabilization is definitely less effective at longer focal lengths. Fortunately 150mm isn’t too bad, however, and the camera stabilization in either my Alpha 1 and a7RV worked reasonably but not exceptionally well. We used the lens for shooting Easter events in our church and got mixed results at 1/60th and 1/100th second. I suspect the lens would have benefitted from lens based stabilization.

Overall this is a beautiful made lens that has that “special” feel you sometimes get from premium lenses. That price is going to be the most daunting aspect of the design, as while the 50-150 GM feels unquestionably superior to the Tamron 35-150mm in build and features, it also costs more than twice as much.

Autofocus for Stills

Pairing a Sony telephoto lens with a Sony sports camera is generally a delight. Sony is the best lens maker in the business (in my opinion) when it comes to designing and executing focus systems that deliver consistently excellent results no matter how challenging the optical design. In this case they have employed four of the premium XD linear focus motors, which assure that focus is nearly instantaneous. It’s pretty amazing in a lens with this large of optical elements, as that’s a lot of glass to move. This is designed to maintain real-time tracking up to 120FPS (a9III) and up to 240FPS movie tracking.

I think there’s a compelling case to be made for the Tamron 35-150mm as an alternative for weddings or events, but nothing is going to compare to a native Sony lens like this for action or sports. I fired off 150 quick frames in some bursts of Nala early in the morning, and despite her blending into the still dried grasses from winter, focus immediately picked her up (from frame 1) and tracked her perfect in every frame. I just don’t see focus that good from third party lenses…ever.

What’s more, Sony does favor its own lenses by capping burst speed with third party lenses at 15FPS. A Sony lens like this will be able to achieve the maximum burst rate of the camera and with sufficient focus speed to match it.

Focus is silent, split second fast, and deadly accurate.

It was a flawless companion for portrait work, even when I used a lot of layers to shoot through to soften the shot (Sony’s SH Profile used here).

Focus was perfect at any focus distance for portrait work.

The zoom ratio allows you to really change up your framing and move from full length to tighter shots.

It was a beautiful lens for taking photos of a new (grand) nephew.

Focus was effortless in a church setting as well.

Autofocus is one of the single greatest strengths for this lens, which is impressive in a lens with an unprecedented focal length/aperture combination.

Great job, Sony.

Autofocus for Video

Sony has worked hard at making their lenses (and cameras) to be equally good whether doing photo or video work. This is another excellent lens for video work. I tested focus pulls at both 50mm and 150mm, and while the focus speed is a bit slower on the telephoto end, it is still excellent.

Focus breathing is extremely well controlled even with Sony’s “Focus Breathing Compensation” turned off. At 50mm I can’t see any at all, and only a tiny amount at 150mm. This is a clear area of advantage over the Tamron. What’s more, what tiny bit of focus breathing is there can be easily eliminated with Sony’s focus breathing compensation in cameras (which only applies to Sony-branded lenses).

My hand test went fine, with focus easily moving from my hand to my eye and back.

I shot some 4K120 footage on my Alpha 1 during a portrait shoot, and focus was perfect as my model moved fluidly through a long series of poses.

Focus for either stills or video is excellent.

Image Quality Breakdown

As expected, this is fairly complicated optical design with 19 elements in 17 groups. This includes a variety of exotic optical elements, including 2 XA (extreme aspherical), 2 aspherical, 3 ED (Extra-low dispersion), and 2 Super ED elements. I’ll try to update the review with the optical design breakdown and MTF chart once they become available.

One would expect a lens like this to be impressively sharp, and that’s exactly what we find.

The 50-150 GM shows a fairly typical distortion pattern for a zoom covering this many focal lengths, with some barrel distortion on the wide end which turns to pincushion distortion midway through the zoom range.

It all remains impressively mild for such a large aperture lens, however, with a +8 to correct the barrel distortion at 50mm, a -4 to correct a bit of pincushion distortion at 100mm, and a -6 to correct slightly higher pincushion distortion at 150mm.

Vignette remains impressively low throughout the zoom range, requiring only about a stop of correction in the corners at any point. This shot, for example, has had zero corrections.

Vignette is just not an issue. Most likely you’ll end up adding vignette to portraits!

I saw a minimal amount of longitudinal type chromatic aberrations before and after the plane of focus on my test charts at on either end of the zoom range.

I also didn’t see any problems in real world shots, either. There’s the tiniest amount of fringing, but not enough to negatively impact the image. The same proved true with specular highlights, which don’t any fringing in the ring around them.

I didn’t really see any lateral style chromatic aberrations near the edges of the frame either on my chart or in real world results.

So how about sharpness and contrast? I did these tests on my Sony a7RV and its 61MP sensor. Crops are shown at roughly 200% magnification (as always) to highlight strengths and weaknesses. Here’s a look at the test chart:

And here’s a look at the 200% level crops from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner:

Unsurprisingly, the image quality is excellent. Yes, there is some fade into the corners, but they still look quite good.

For some perspective we can look at the Tamron 35-150mm, which is competitive with the 50-150 GM in the center of the frame but considerably weaker at F2 in the corners.

The GM lens is clearly more consistently sharp and higher contrast across the frame.

When a lens is this sharp to begin with, often further gains when stopping down will be minimal. I don’t see any noticeable difference (even at 200%) in the center or midframe, but you can definitely see some improvement in the corners.

There is a bit more to be seen in the corners by F5.6.

Landscape images are just as sharp as you would expect, with excellent detail and contrast across the frame (here at F5.6).

As per usual, expect to see a little softening at F11 due to diffraction but much more obvious impact by the minimum aperture of F22, which I would avoid if possible.

At 70mm (the next marked position on the zoom ring) the detail has not increased but the contrast has (which you can see from the strong moiré pattern). The midframe also looks a little sharper.

Stopping down a bit at 70mm achieves incredible resolution and contrast all across the frame.

Portrait shots even at F2 are very sharp, however, and have good contrast.

At 100mm I feel like there is slightly less contrast but perhaps a bit more detail.

The corners easily favor 100mm, however, and look extremely impressive for F2:

You can see how good the lens is at 100mm, F2 in this real world shot:

Moving on to 150mm shows an uptick in contrast to something akin to what we saw at 70mm.

The center shows well compared to 100mm, though the corners are slightly softer.

That’s still a great performance, however. The Tamron isn’t far behind in the center (though at F2.8 rather than F2), but the Sony wins in the corners.

F2.8 boosts the corners a bit, and then even more by landscape apertures.

But for real world work, the lens is plenty sharp even at F2…and even on the fly!

Detail is crisp, and contrast is strong.

The last two shots give us a segway into our next topic of discussion – the bokeh and rendering. The quality of the bokeh is good but not what I would call great. I feel in many ways similar to my thoughts at the end of the 85mm F1.4 GM II review. The sharpness and contrast I saw are exceptional, but it feels like Sony’s design is a little weighted in that direction. It is possible to correct a lens to the place where the rendering isn’t quite as pleasing.

Here’s where I think the Tamron has a bit of revenge. First of all, the out of camera rendering from the Tamron produces a more pleasing image (to my eye).

Part of that was the color balance, though even if I equalize color balance I find the Tamron colors to be a little richer.

But though the GM has a full stop advantage (F2 vs F2.8 at 150mm), and thus the background is less in focus, I find the more difficult areas like transition zones to be handled more artistically.

Everything flows together more organically in this crop, and that advantage only deepens if you stop the 50-150 GM down to F2.8 and the depth of field advantage is lost.

I think there is a little too much outlining of defocused objects, and that draws the eye a bit.

In this layered shot I find that the foreground bokeh looks pretty good, but the background looks fine but not exceptionally good.

If we take another shot from the burst with Nala we can see that the short grass is the transition zone looks fairly busy.

As as typical, however, if you can set up a shot with a more favorable ratio of distance to the subject and then from the subject to the background, you can get a more pleasing looking rendering.

It looks nice here.

This is perhaps an area where a prime lens might take the win over a zoom. I thought that specular highlights have good geometry (there is some cat-eye shape in the corners, but most of the frame has nice, circular highlights). But rendering is more than just the specular highlights, and while the 50-150 GM is far from bad, it also isn’t exceptional in this area.

Bokeh is subjective, however, so your opinion may vary from mine.

One area of weakness for the Tamron is surprisingly also an issue for the Sony, and that’s flare resistance. While things aren’t perfect at 50mm, they aren’t bad whether wide open or stopped down (F11 shown here).

There’s a bit of a ghosting pattern, but contrast holds up pretty well. I also think the sunstar is fairly interesting in the second image.

But things get much, much worse on the telephoto end even when the hood is being employed.

We are not only losing some contrast, but, far worse, we have a fairly dominant flare pattern that would be hard to ignore or compose out of. I know that Sony has amazing coatings (as does Tamron, for that matter), so this must be one of the challenges of engineering this type of lens.

The lens arrived to me late due to a shipping mix-up, so I haven’t had as much time as I would like to test the flare resistance further, but I do hope to do some head to head comparison with the Tamron to see which is worse in this area. Check out my YouTube channel where I will post that video at some point in the near future.

This is a very strong lens optically and excels in most of the technical categories (flare resistance aside). The main area that I’ve critiqued it is more of a subjective observation, but I think that’s warranted in a les that costs so much. Check out the image gallery if you would like to see more images.

Conclusion

There’s no question that a lens like the Sony FE 50-150mm F2 G Master is a huge technical achievement. It manages to do something that no zoom lens has done before (on full frame) and has managed to do it in a very livable kind of way. Yes, it is big and heavy, but no more than the first generation 70-200mm F2.8 GM. It’s lighter as an F2 zoom than what many of the 70-200mm F2.8 zooms from the DSLR era were.

I feel like the single best market for this lens might be those who shoot courtside sports. To be able to get 30FPS (or even 120FPS on the a9III) while tracking across the full sensor is a pretty unbelievable experience. Settings like that perhaps need less artistic rendering and need more of the technical brilliance that the 50-150 GM brings. It could be the best court sports lens ever released. I also think it would be amazing as an event/wedding lens where you can use that bright aperture in dimmer venues and get shots harder to achieve with an F2.8 zoom.

And while it is a a great portrait option, I’m not sure that I would personally choose it for that alone, as I feel like I can get equally good if not nicer rendering from an 85mm F1.4 type lens. You may value the versatility of the zoom for your portrait work, however, and the ability to effortlessly reframe in a variety of ways without moving could be extremely valuable. What is certain, however, is that the Sony FE 50-150mm F2 GM is the kind of lens you only get when a system has reached a certain point of maturation and a lensmaker feels the freedom to experiment a bit more. So if you’ve got a spare $3900 USD sitting around, you may just be able to get your dream lens. Happy shooting!

Pros:

• The first F2 zoom to go from 50-150mm with a constant F2 aperture
• Has the kind of premium design that reminds you of the $10,000 telephoto primes
• Beautiful build quality including robust weather sealing
• Excellent handling (internal zoom helps balance)
• Good feature set allows you to stay out of the menus
• Incredible autofocus performance – quiet, fast, and accurate
• Pair it with a Sony sports camera and get amazing tracking
• Strong, consistent optical performance across the zoom range
• Low vignette
• Well controlled distortion
• Good contrast and chromatic aberration control
• Sharper than the Tamron 35-150mm
• Could be the best court sports lens ever released

Cons:

• Expensive
• No TC compatability
• No lens based stabilization
• Flare prone on the telephoto end
• Is the rendering magical?

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sony 50-150mm F2 GM @ B&H Photo | Sony USA | Sony Canada | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony a7IV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada |  Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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