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Sony 50-150mm F2 GM Review | The New Sports Lens of Choice?
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Apr 22, 2025
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of Sony's world's first FE 50-150mm F2 G Master. It's beautiful, fast, and expensive...but is it worth buying? Find out in Dustin's exhaustive review. | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/50-150GMreview | Visit the Image Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/50-150GMpics | Purchase the Sony 50-150mm F2 GM @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/442RIzd | Sony USA https://howl.link/1jswe8xh6ufnw | Adorama https://howl.link/b3oxjhygjl9m2 | Amazon https://amzn.to/42UAQte | Sony Canada https://tinyurl.com/Buy50-150GM | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4vu1q | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/445HzSo | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/42laKj0 | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/42I6Boj Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.link/nt4zdz1goa7ql Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Fioboc Clothing: https://tinyurl.com/FiobocDA20 and us code DUSTIN20 for 20% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept
View Video Transcript
0:10
hi I'm Dustin Abbott sony's mirrorless E-mount has reached a saturation point where there are more lenses available on
0:17
it than possibly any lens mount ever before so finding a truly unique lens in
0:24
2025 can be difficult to do that is not true for today's review however as Sony
0:30
is releasing what is a truly genre busting lens that builds on the foundation that was set by last year's
0:36
28 by 28 to 70 mm F2G Master lens and in
0:42
this case we have got a new 50 to 150 F2G Master and so it goes from normal to
0:48
telephoto while maintaining a constant maximum aperture that makes it a lens that the world has never seen before on
0:55
full frame but just know that you're going to have to pay for the privilege of ownership the price tag is going to
1:01
be around $3,900 or about $5,500 bucks here in
1:07
Canada so is this new beast worth that kind of money well let's dive in and
1:13
let's find out i want to thank Sony USA for sending me a loaner of this lens
1:18
sony has had no input on this video and will not be re uh previewing it before
1:24
it is released to you the viewing public and so all of the opinions here are my own let's talk about the build and
1:31
handling here the kind of design from Sony is the idea that this is a lens
1:37
that can replace a number of other primes that fast maximum aperture means that it can replace everything from a 50
1:44
to 135 mm prime lens and a bit more and the truth of the matter is is that right
1:50
now outside of 135 millimeters where we have the some f1.8 lenses this is
1:56
actually the fastest max maximum aperture of any autofocus lens that I'm aware of after 135 mm there is no 200
2:03
millm f2 for example on Sony at least at this point and so that means at 150mm
2:09
and f2 that's the fastest glass that we have got here on FE now the chief
2:14
competitor is going to be this lens right here which I reviewed back in 2021
2:19
and it's a lens that I is kind of my go-to if I could have only one lens it would be this one that's the Tamron 35
2:27
to 150mm F2 to F2.8 VXD it's a fantastic
2:32
lens and it does have a brighter aperture range than what most competing
2:37
lenses have had before and it was similarly a very very much a genre boosting kind of lens or busting kind of
2:43
lens that being said this lens is f2.2 by 50 mm and so it's never actually as
2:50
bright as what this lens is at any point and by 85 millimeters it is closed down to a maximum aperture of just f2.8 which
2:57
of course is similar to a whole variety of other zoom lenses and so that really sets the G Master apart in that regard
3:05
now as you can see this isn't a small lens uh it is 102.8 mm in diameter or a
3:12
little over 4 in that's probably the single most unique factor here because
3:18
the truth of the matter is is at 200 mm in length or 7.87 in it's actually the
3:24
same length as the 70 to 200 millimeter f2.8 G Master M2 lens but it is
3:30
obviously more significant in diameter so that means that up front we end up
3:36
with a much larger filter size than the 70 to 200 GM Mark II we've got a 95 mm
3:43
front filter thread and so that means that filters are going to be kind of expensive for this but obviously this is
3:48
a lens because of that fast maximum aperture that you may end up using filters on and so for that reason in the
3:54
lens hood we have got a door that will allow you to rotate either a circular polarizer or maybe a variable ND filter
4:01
and as you can see the actual lens hood itself is actually fairly shallow so I don't know if it was entirely necessary
4:07
but the advantage of a door that you don't always get with putting a finger in is if the filter doesn't have a lot
4:13
of room outside of it for to get a finger on the window allows you to just get at the little knurled side edges of
4:20
it and do that rotation and so probably useful in that regard the lens is heavy
4:25
but it's not unusually so it weighs in at 1340 g or a little over 47 o now to
4:32
give you some perspective that is definitely heavier than the GM Mark I 70
4:38
to 200 which is 1,045 g or 295 g less however the first
4:45
generation 70 to 200 G master lens actually weighed considerably more 1480
4:51
g and so in this case that's 140 g heavier the Tamron just for reference is
4:57
1165 gram and so it is essentially right under 200 gram less than what this lens
5:03
is now one other factor that comes into play however is that that weight is
5:09
without the tripod foot attached and I put the foot itself on my scale and it weighs in at an additional 80 gram and
5:16
so that will boost the the weight up a little bit higher now that foot is very easy to remove there's a tension knob
5:23
that you loosen here on the side and then a button you depress at the front and then you can just slide it off like
5:28
that and of course obviously you just reverse that process if you want to mount it back and so very easy to remove
5:34
and certainly when I was shooting handheld I did eliminate the uh tripod foot because it just didn't seem to be
5:40
something that was necessary there i do have one complaint about the foot and that is that it continues all of Sony's
5:47
tripod feet are not ARCA compatible so as you can see here I have added had to add on a quick release plate and so I
5:53
can go to a tripod i obviously prefer to have tripod feet that have the grooves for arc and so you can go right onto a
6:00
tripod without having to mess with putting on the quick release plate there's a tension knob here on the side
6:06
that if you loosen you can freely rotate it on the tripod collar there are no detents at the cardinal positions
6:12
however there are alignment dots and so you can easily line those up and lock into the position if you're wanting to
6:18
be at one of those cardinal positions now because this is a constant aperture lens it means that we can have a
6:25
traditional uh approach to aperture control and so that means on a G Master lens that you have either the ability to
6:32
have clicks at 1/3 stop detents all the way through from f2 to f22 then there is
6:38
a fixed stop between f-22 and the automatic position however you do have
6:44
an iris lock here on the left side that will allow you to either lock into or out of the manual aperture ring
6:51
depending on what your preference is is if you like to control from within camera put it in the automatic mode and
6:56
then lock it there and you don't even have to worry about the aperture ring if you want to just use the aperture ring do the exact opposite you also on the
7:03
right side have the ability to declick the aperture and so you can rack through it in just one smooth motion and that
7:10
has the greatest benefit of that is the ability to do aperture racking and and as you can see it works as it should i
7:17
can rack through all of those aperture options without any kind of visible steps along the way which is exactly how
7:24
I want it to function in the middle of the lens in between the two rings we have got a bank here with a couple of
7:29
switches there's an AFMF switch always welcome and then an onoff switch for the fulltime uh direct manual focus and so
7:36
if you have that enabled even if you don't have a camera that natively supports a DMF during AFC mode it should
7:43
function with this on both of my cameras that's the way it works and so you can just override focus at any point also in
7:50
three different positions on the bottom that left side and then on the top there are uh custom buttons function or or
7:58
focus hold buttons now all of those are redundant and so it's not three different functions applied there but
8:04
it's going to be a single function that you uh designate from within the camera and so they're repeated and so whatever
8:10
orientation you happen to be shooting in there should be one close by to your thumb and so that you can easily use it
8:16
now one of the great advantages of this particular design over a lens like the Tamron is that the Tamron is an
8:23
externally zooming lens whereas this is an internally zooming lens and so that means that you can change your zooming
8:30
position much quicker much easier and much smoother and as you can see here I was able to zoom in and out during
8:37
shooting video handheld something I don't think I could actually do with the Tamron with any kind of smoothness i did
8:44
note that in that zoom ring that there is a rotation of about 80° i'd actually prefer it to be a little bit less than
8:50
that maybe 65° i just find it's a little bit long for just a single wrist
8:56
rotation and so I would like to shorten that up a bit more i really love the action on for example the 200 to 600
9:02
millimeter G lens which has a really nice quick and so you can zoom in and out but the fact that you can do those
9:09
quick zoom changes does o open up some extra types of photography that you can do effectively with this lens which
9:15
maybe we'll dive in a little bit more in the autofocus focus section up front is the manual focus ring and the damping is
9:22
decent on it it does move in a linear fashion and so you can get a certain degree of repeatability for manual focus
9:28
pools i will say however that its position is a little bit far forward for my taste and I find that when I'm in the
9:34
camera or holding the camera I don't naturally reach all that way forward to get to that manual focus ring however
9:40
like anything you can develop the muscle memory simply by doing it as you would expect in a high-end GM lens there is a
9:48
thorough weather sealing there's a gasket at the lens mount flooring coating on the front element and then
9:53
seals at all the different dials and switches and rings along the way it's
9:59
designed to use in adverse conditions and the fact of course that it's internally zooming uh makes that even
10:04
easier to keep sealed and to keep dust and moisture out of it and so that's fantastic i do have one critique here at
10:11
the back however and that is that there is an element that is right near the rear lens mount and so you know what
10:18
that means no teleconverters and frankly I don't feel like modern lens makers take enough heat over this it seems like
10:25
in the mirrorless world far too often teleconverters are an afterthought or not a thought at all and a lens like
10:32
this to me is kind of screaming to have that teleconverter compatibility that would allow you to get up to 210 mm at
10:39
just f2.8 or with a two times up to 300 mm at f4 that obviously would add a lot
10:45
of versatility to the lens and I think it's a shame that Sony did not make this
10:51
com compatible with teleconverters even if it making the design just a little bit larger now as with many modern zooms
10:59
you have two different minimum focus distances on the wide end you can go as closely as 40 cm and then on the
11:06
telephoto end you can go as closely as 74 cm i think technically the higher
11:12
magnification of 0.2 20 times is found on the 50 mm or wide end but as you can
11:19
see here they are so close that there's not really a lot of uh space that I can
11:25
see to discern between the two i did feel like that the uplose performance was maybe a little bit better at 50 mm
11:33
however the at 150 mm you get a much better working distance and you also get a flatter plane of focus so for me I
11:40
probably in real world shooting would end up shooting at the 150 mm end a bit more because I just think that that's a
11:47
more practical approach out in the field however I certainly appreciate the fact that it does have a decent level of
11:53
magnification and that is a little bit higher than what we find on the Tamron lens inside the Aperture Iris there are
11:59
11 rounded blades and as you can see if we go back to this aperture rack uh clip you can see that it does a fantastic job
12:06
of maintaining a very circular shape without showing you the shape of the aperture blades as you stop it down now
12:13
another unfortunate omission is that there is no lensbased stabilization in this lens no OSS so that means you're
12:20
going to be relying on the stabilization in your camera sony's IBIS depending on
12:25
the camera body obviously there's some variability but something that I found fairly consistently is that with
12:31
telephoto focal lengths it's just not as good and so I do miss OSS here i feel
12:38
like the inbody image stabilization does a decent but not exceptional job not as good as what I think you would get if
12:44
you had some lens based stabilization however you know no use crying over spilled milk it's not here of course
12:50
it's not on the Tamron either and so again there's parody in that regard overall however this is a lens that
12:58
oozes quality in its overall build it feels like a very high-end lens in fact the build in many ways it feels like
13:05
what you might expect from one of their $10,000 you know super telephoto primes it's that high of level and it really is
13:12
a gorgeous lens so let's talk autofocus this is something that I think Sony is
13:18
doing better than anybody else bar none at this point they've got four of their XD linear motors and autofocus is
13:25
essentially instantaneous both to acquire and then uh effortless in which to track it is perfect for high-speed
13:33
high performance tracking and that opens up another possibility here i think that this lens maybe even beyond as a
13:40
portrait lens which you know people might naturally think of it as i think that it could be an amazing sports lens
13:46
particularly for something like court sports you know basketball tennis something similar to that where you're
13:52
working a little bit of a smaller space not a stadium but a smaller space and the ability to quickly zoom in and out
13:58
for your framing and an F2 aperture it could be a groundbreaking lens for that kind of use obviously also as a uh
14:07
reportage lens or event lens wedding lens there's a lot of great applications that come when you have top-notch
14:13
autofocus and it is top-notch even in rather dim light and the fact that Nala blends in very nicely you can see that
14:20
from the very first shot focus instantly acquired her and tracked her perfectly throughout all of these sequences and I
14:26
could look at every single one of them and they were all just nailed right on her eye even though she was moving at a
14:31
fast pace and I was shooting at 30 frames per second on my Alpha 1 very very impressive in fact this lens is set
14:38
up to support up to 120 frames per second on the uh A9 Mark III uh they say
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it's rated for shooting at 240 frames per second video and while I didn't shoot 240 I did shoot some 120 4K
14:52
footage and focus was flawless through it it was also flawless for portrait
14:57
work in general even though I intentionally shot through layers to give a different look and a more shallow
15:03
depth of field um you can just see that focus was nailed every time and it just
15:09
you know instantly acquired proper focus and there was not one missed shot it was all perfect and and so autofocus here is
15:17
just really really amazing you couldn't ask for a better autofocus system and the fact that this is such an extreme
15:22
lens that's never been done before and comes with flawless autofocus that's huge and I think that Sony definitely
15:29
deserves commenation on that front same is true on the video side of things i
15:34
found that while focus pulls at 50 millimeters felt a little bit better a little you know tighter quicker better
15:41
damped uh even at 150 mm f2 which is very challenging uh they did a great job
15:47
and you can see that it still is moving at a good pace back and forth and a good degree of confidence you can also see in
15:54
these tests that at 50 millimeters I could not see any focus breathing at all
16:00
even with compensation turned off and then at 150 millimeters there's only the
16:05
tiniest amount of focus breathing even without that compensation uh turned on and so if you turn the compensation on
16:11
and the fact that it does get that support as a first-party Sony lens it means that it would be just the tiniest
16:17
of crop and it could eliminate that uh perfectly at that point so that is obviously huge the lens had no problem i
16:24
didn't expect it would in my hand test going from my hand to my eye and back forth um and then of course as referred
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to previously I did shoot some 4K 120 video and even as I zoomed in and out it
16:36
was just it was it was flawless um it just focus stayed where it needed to do and uh even shooting at a high frame
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rate and high resolution I had zero problems and so this is also going to be a great lens for some that want it for
16:50
video production again because it does something unique and different it gives you that shallow depth of field at 150
16:56
mm that you're just not going to get with any other lens that exists here at the moment so autofocus is absolutely
17:03
topnotch i don't think that I've ever seen better so how about the image quality this is an optical design of 19
17:09
elements in 17 groups and as you can imagine it's complex and there are a lot
17:14
of exotic elements there there's two extreme aspherical elements two regular aspherical elements three extra low
17:20
dispersion elements s two super extra low dispersion elements so a lot of fancy glass that's a part of that design
17:27
unfortunately uh getting the lens when I did there was not any kind of pre-release MTF charts available so I
17:34
can't show you the optical design or the MTF chart but suffice it to say the MTF chart would look fantastic because the
17:40
lens sharpness and contrast is fantastic though this is a zoom lens
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that covers a lot of different focal lengths um it has very very minor barrel
17:51
distortion on the uh the wide end i used a plus eight to correct for that in the
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middle of the range it becomes a mild pin cushion distortion a minus4 that I
18:02
used to correct there and then at the extreme telephoto end it was just slightly more pin cushion at a minus 6
18:09
all of that was very linear and easy to manually correct and of course as a first-party Sony lens it will receive
18:15
full profile corrections both in camera and then in software vignette is
18:20
extremely low again surprising for an F2 zoom but I saw almost no vignette i mean
18:26
you might dial in a stop at most on my test chart that's what I could see but in real world shots that's just so
18:33
minimal that I saw nothing to correct for and I'm reminded that you know Sigma did do a long time ago did an APS-C 50
18:41
to 100 millimeter um f2 zoom which was groundbreaking at that point but it was
18:46
you know fairly heavy vignette and so it's really impressive what they've managed to do optically with this lens i
18:52
also saw very little chromatic aberrations on my test chart you can see that either at 50 or 150 millimeters
18:59
there's very very little to see and when I shot something like the the you know vintage cameras that I like to shoot
19:05
that often will show on shiny surfaces or you know the transition from etched
19:10
letters onto a black lens barrel a lot of times you'll see fringing in those situations and I did see a tiny tiny bit
19:16
of it but nothing much i didn't see any fringing around specular highlights all of that was very very good i saw no
19:23
lateral style chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame either so fringing is just not an issue overall
19:30
looking at the sharpness at and if you want a deeper dive into the optics I will do that at the end of the video but
19:37
to give you an overview here the lens is very sharp and very high contrast even
19:42
at f2 at 50 mm great in the center great in the mid-frame a little bit of a drop
19:47
off into the corners but still very very good in fact if I went back and compared to the Tamron the Tamron is uh not quite
19:54
as good in the center of the frame but more competitive there in the corners at this would be at 35 mm f2 versus 50
20:00
millimeters f2 but in the corners the Tamron is very obviously weaker than what the Sony is it's very well
20:07
corrected very consistent in that regard you'll see those corners sharpen up a bit by f2.8 and then more obviously by
20:15
f5.6 where it's essentially flawless all across the frame landscape images as you
20:21
might imagine at 50 millimeters are excellent high detail high contrast good color all the things that you might want
20:28
defraction will start to set in at about f11 on my 61 megapixel camera and then
20:33
so after that you'll find that at f-16 and more noticeably at f-22 minimum
20:38
aperture that it becomes increasingly soft due to defraction moving on throughout the zoom range there are four
20:44
marked positions 50 70 and 150 mm so at 70 millimeters I found that contrast
20:51
increased detail did not but contrast increased at 70 millimeters versus 50 millimeters real world shot at 70 mm
20:59
looks great as you might expect at 100 millm I found that there was a little less contrast than at 70 mm but more
21:06
detail being resolved and the corners look maybe the best that I have seen to this point throughout the zoom range
21:12
wide open at f2 and so obviously if you stop down 100 millimeters a bit it gets ridiculously sharp but even at f2 like
21:20
of this shot of my new great nephew here that you can see that it's just it's
21:26
beautiful i mean beautifully sharp around the eye depth of field of course is tiny at 100 millime f2 but really
21:33
really gorgeous in results there moving on to 150 mm sees kind of more similar
21:39
to the 70 millimeter performance with detail is not picked up but contrast has
21:44
and then so when I went back and compared to the Tamron at 150 mm Tamron being at f2.8 eight at that point
21:51
obviously again it was kind of a same pattern to at 50 mm um it was the Sony
21:57
lens is a bit sharper in the center of the frame and in the corners also sharper though not by as maybe as much
22:02
of a margin as it was at 50 mm but I mean I've always thought the Tamron to be fantastic for a lens like this so you
22:09
know Sony be is even better at that point if there is a fly in the ointment
22:14
for all of this amazing optical performance it's that much like I the way I felt about the 85mm uh f1.4 GM
22:22
Mark II that it's incredible when it comes to detail micro contrast all of
22:28
those things but I only I felt the rendering was only good but not great and I I kind of feel the same way here
22:35
that uh you know if I went and shot some of the same shots with the Tamron versus the GM and I will do a a subsequent
22:42
video where I I kind of dive a little bit deeper into the head-to-head stuff but I I did find that I I felt like I
22:48
preferred the rendering from the Tamron a bit more and uh and so something about some of the and when you have a a
22:55
background completely blurred out obviously it's really really soft but if things are in the transition zone on the
23:00
Sony I feel like they get a little bit more outlining and get a little bit busier than what I would like and so um
23:06
this is a lens that looks great in favorable settings but you know transition areas can get a little bit
23:13
busy and so I don't think that that's necessarily the pinnacle of its performance relative to the sharpness
23:19
feel like if there is a pendulum it's swung towards the sharpness and contrast not towards the rendering one other
23:26
surprising thing that I encountered is that while at 50 mm there is some flare
23:31
issues uh some minor ghosting nothing extreme there and the sun star looks
23:36
pretty good but if you zoom in to 150 millimeters and you pan across the sun or get the sun in or right out of the
23:42
frame there's a surprising amount of flare mostly in the ghosting pattern that intensifies as you stop the lens
23:48
down i knocked the Tamron for the same thing and I know that Sony's coatings
23:53
are great and for that matter Tamron's BR2 coatings are also great so that may just be one of the challenges in
23:59
engineering a lens that has a you know a focal length and a faster maximum aperture like this but that's not what I
24:06
would consider a strength so if you're shooting on the 150 mm millimeter end and you're shooting into a back lit
24:12
situation for portraits or something like that just be careful um because that may be something you you would have
24:17
to avoid so my conclusion is this this is as mentioned the first lens of its
24:23
kind however it's far too mature to feel like a first effort this is not a lens
24:29
that you look at and say "Oh you know it's okay but as soon as the MK2 version come it's going to be a whole lot better." No this this is definitely a
24:36
high-end performance it oozes premium quality the moment I took it out of the box and and just kind of looked at it
24:43
it's like "Wow that is a that's a special lens." And it certainly is that it comes with this nice padded case
24:50
zippered case to put it in it's got a lens hood that's got that rubberized you know front transition it's got the fancy
24:56
paint and finish on it that means it's going to be a beautiful lens that looks like a professional lens a decade from
25:03
now i would have gone into this review saying that it's going to be a top choice for events and portrait work you
25:10
know weddings and I think that that is true but I actually think that the true
25:15
top um application for this lens is really going to be for those that are shooting sports uh I think you you need
25:22
a little less of the artistic part and more of the technical part that this lens excels in and that incredible
25:28
autofocus means that this is a lens that's going to do things that you just you couldn't do with other lenses before
25:34
and I think it's it's it's amazing for that i think it will be a great wedding and event lens being able to shoot in
25:40
you know dimmer venues and to have you know that quick zoom action to have an F2 maximum aperture amazing sharpness
25:47
and the autofocus that's just going to nail it in dim lighting conditions that's going to be you know that could
25:52
make all the difference in certain shooting situations so I think that's also a great application if you're
25:58
purely a portrait photographer of course it's your money and your mileage may vary but I feel like maybe this lens in
26:04
terms of its cost is overkill for that setting i feel like there wasn't a lot that I couldn't do with a good 85mm f1.4
26:11
lens you know if I could zoom a little bit with my feet and so I don't know if it's as necessary for that but certainly
26:17
you know if you're in space conra constrained situations to where being able to zoom in and out is going to make
26:23
all the difference will absolutely knock yourself out this is a very expensive lens at you know $3,900 US but it feels
26:32
elite and if you're someone who needs the best well you've got something else
26:37
to spend your money on if you want more information you can check out my full text review that's linked in the
26:42
description down below and there are some buying links there as well that will be populated throughout the day uh
26:49
and if you want that deeper look at the optical performance stay tuned with me right now and we'll jump into that
26:54
together okay so this gives you an idea of what we're looking at between 50 and then 150 mm you can see that that is a
27:03
tremendously different amount of framing so it's obviously going to give you a lot of options for portrait events
27:09
sports whatever work you're going to be doing that's an extremely useful focal range three times zoom ratio now at 50
27:15
mm we have a very mild amount of barrel distortion i used about a plus seven in
27:21
that range to correct for it you can see it's very linear correct easily there's only a minimal amount of vignette in the
27:27
corners very easy to correct about a stop there in the plus 30 range middle of the zoom range turns to a bit of pin
27:34
cushion distortion here I've used a minus4 to correct that mild amount again you can see it's very linear corrects
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easily vignette again is just really not much of an issue at all pin cushion
27:45
distortion increases a bit at 150 millimeters and so in this case I needed
27:50
to use a minus 6 to correct but again you can see very linear corrects easily and again vignette is remaining at a
27:57
very nice level this shot at 100 millm for example has zero correction for vignette you can see all of the corners
28:03
that should be bright they are naturally bright no issue there and so that's definitely a strength for the lens now
28:10
in terms of longitudinal style chromatic aberrations you can see here in this transition area which really tends to
28:16
show the stuff up there's a very very mild amount just a tiny bit of fringing there i don't really see anything on the
28:23
edge of specular highlights and so all of that is handled pretty well on the test chart you can see at 50 mm there's
28:29
a bit of it there and then at 150 mm it's a little less pronounced and so
28:35
you're going to see more of it on the wide end than what you do on the telephoto lateral style chromatic aberrations no problem i see no fringing
28:42
in the transitions from black to white near the edge of the frame now I'm going to reserve comparisons with the Tamron
28:47
for that head-to-head video so I'm just going to focus on the optical quality here this is 200% magnification on a 61
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megapixel sensor middle of the frame looks fantastic great contrast great detail mid-frame also looks very very
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good you know a little bit softer than the center but still holding up very strong there's not a lot of drop off
29:07
from here to here and as we look into the corner we can see that the corner
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although it's softer it still is very good and if we look over on this side and then into the upper left and then
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finally upper right corners we see good centering good consistency throughout if we go back to that upper left corner you
29:25
can see stopping down to f2.8 increases contrast and so the brights look a little bit brighter you can just see
29:31
that there's more detail popping there we stop on down to f5.6 six and you can see those corners are now really really
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sharp and so uh this is a very consistent performance all across the frame great detail right off to the very
29:44
edge at f5.6 basically f4 through f8 is going to be exceptionally good at f11
29:50
you're going to get a little bit of softening due to defraction if you stop on down to f16 and then particularly to f-22 you'll definitely see things get
29:57
considerably softer due to the effects of defraction now at 70 mm you can see that there's tons of contrast you can
30:04
see that from the moir pattern that begins to set up there as you stop down to f2.8 you can see that there's just a
30:11
little bit more detailed rendered the darks are getting a little bit darker you know the brights are getting a little bit brighter mid-frame here looks
30:18
really excellent particularly by f2.8 that detail is just popping there and if we pop back up to this corner you can
30:25
see that it's looking really really fantastic right up into the corners as well at 100 millimeters we can see that
30:31
there is a little bit less contrast in the middle of the frame detail is still look looking really good stopping down
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to f2.8 does start to increase that contrast once again we see a a nice even
30:42
performance here it's still looking good in the mid-frame and stop down obviously and into the corners the corners are
30:48
actually looking really really strong and so just a little bit different distribution of sharpness at 100 millm
30:54
versus uh 70 mm but still extremely sharp finally at 150 millimeters at f2
31:01
it looks sharp and high contrast very much what it looked like what I saw at 70 millimeters and the same kind of
31:07
pattern that as you stop it down it it just intensifies a bit more i don't think that the detail is quite as good
31:14
but it is very very close and it's also very consistent once again mid-frame looks very good up into the corners
31:20
corners are looking good and again we'll just pop around the world you can see a good centering performance good
31:27
consistency wherever we're looking across the frame it's holding up very nicely give you a real world shot at 150
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mm so you can see the combination of sharpness and contrast and then also the rendering that's going on in the image
31:40
nice looking image now we can see the difference in the minimum focus distance in terms of that magnification that
31:46
comes out at 50 mm versus 150 mm there is very slightly higher at 50 mm versus
31:53
150 mm it's probably this is probably more like 0 either 18 or 1 nine times
31:59
compared to 0.20 times however there's a couple of other things I see first of
32:04
all I see at 50 mm that contrast is better and so it gives you a little bit better up close performance however if
32:10
we step back just a bit we can see also that you're getting maybe a little bit flatter plane of focus at 150 mm and so
32:18
I mean it's it's neither one of them is bad neither one of them is exceptionally different here again showing you 50 and
32:25
then 150 mm at minimum focus what's going to really change is the amount of compression to the background and so it
32:31
just gives you an idea of the rendering if you're using the up close versus the distant i tend to kind of favor the
32:38
distant more for the working distance it just means you have a you're a little bit further away and you're not going to shade your subject now the bokeh in
32:44
rendering is very situational in my opinion in a shot like this obviously you're going to get a tiny tiny little
32:51
sliver of depth of field the background strongly defocused it looks fantastic this image here it's a similar kind of
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situation it's a very favorable situation you can see that the contrast and the detail pops the background is
33:04
smooth and in this image you know this is an image that I actually thought would look end up looking better than
33:10
what it did because there are some harder edges in the background it gets a little bit busier there just doesn't
33:16
render that quite as as special as it did with the other now one thing it does do very well is that while there is
33:23
there's some kind of odd clipping and deformation here towards the corners it does do a fantastic job of maintaining a
33:29
circular shape and you don't ever see the aperture blades really ever at any point and so you're able to get very
33:36
nice and round specular highlights and so kind of in a mathematical way the bokeh is good it's just that kind of
33:42
more artistic rendering that I think it lacks a bit now when it comes to portrait work here I mean detail is
33:49
great as you would expect the rendering as you can see it's you know there's pretty nice three-dimensional cutout but
33:56
you can see just in some of these areas it gets a little bit jittery in the rendering here more of a head and
34:01
shoulders type shot this shot at f2.8 you can see it looks fantastic skin tones are nice uh you know the
34:08
background I think there's just a little bit more outlining this image I like but this background being a little bit more
34:14
complex particularly on the left side of the frame uh makes it it just doesn't render it as nicely as an easier that's
34:20
here on the right side of the frame here's some layering and I thought that it did good with the foreground bokeh
34:26
and I was intentionally really shooting through things to try to create that natural frame detail looks great you can
34:32
see again in this area it doesn't like that kind of stuff but all of this looks good uh likewise in this shot you know
34:39
more of the natural frame although in this area there's just a little bit more hard edging than what I would like in
34:45
this shot it's it's a very neutral background so there's it's just kind of furniture inside of a house all of that
34:51
just kind of melts away and I think the bokeh looks great there and the detail obviously looks fantastic got those eyes
34:58
and you know all of those little fine uh hairs that are there and the eyelashes
35:03
really really beautiful so my opinion is is that the bokeh is good and it's going
35:08
to be look really good if you put it in the right situation if you put it in a more complex situation it's not as happy
35:14
the flare resistance I was surprised by considering how good Sony's coatings are i think the sunburst looks pretty good
35:21
and 50 mm wasn't as bad as we saw with the video but at 150 mm you're
35:27
definitely going to see lots of ghosting artifacts and that's going to become more obvious if you stop the lens down
35:33
so you're going to have to be careful in your composition and make sure that you don't ruin images through that so that's
35:39
an area where the the lens does fall a little bit flat in my opinion overall a
35:44
very nice optical performance as you would expect from a premium lens from Sony so thanks for sticking around to
35:51
the very end and I hope that this has helped you to get a more informed opinion as to whether or not this is a
35:58
lens for you as always thanks for watching have a great day and let the light in