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Sony FE 100mm F2.8 Macro GM OSS Review | The New Gold Standard
Oct 8, 2025
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the Sony FE 100mm F2.8 Macro GM OSS - the best macro lens I've ever tested. | Read the text review on dustinabbott.net: https://tinyurl.com/100GMreview | Purchase the Sony 100mm Macro GM @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/46EIKJo | Adorama https://howl.link/8wbbp7yh8hzzn | Amazon https://amzn.to/4o6tlHB | Camera Canada https://tidd.ly/46VjltE | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3IzzxZD | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/4mU9iuJ | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/4gTztQS Purchase the Sony 1.4x Teleconverter @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3PGA7pg | Amazon https://amzn.to/3IIjkkT Purchase the Sony 2.0x Teleconverter @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/44pOu5L | Amazon https://amzn.to/4pVIrkP 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
View Video Transcript
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[Music]
0:10
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the newest lens from Sony, the new 100mm f/2.8
0:18
macro GM OSS. Yes, we finally have a G Master macro lens. Something that many
0:24
of us have been asking for for years. The question was whenever that discussion came up however is how is a G
0:31
Master going to distinguish itself from Sony's own excellent 90 millimeter macro or excellent alternatives from Tamron or
0:39
Sigma LAA and the like? Well, the answer came by Sony leveraging what is one of
0:45
the unique firstparty advantages for their platform. Namely, that the G
0:50
Master Macro can utilize both the 1.4 four times and two times teleconverters
0:56
here on Sony. That opens up a world of new possibilities. While the lens has a
1:01
higher than average 1.4 to one level of magnification or 1.4 times macro
1:07
magnification, you throw on the 1.4 times teleconverter, that focal length becomes 140 mm and you get a two times
1:15
level of magnification. Throw on the two times converter and you're up to 200 millimeters of focal length and your
1:20
magnification jumps up to 2.8 times. Obviously, that's a lot of additional
1:26
versatility as to what you can do with this lens, the kind of working distance you can have. And of course, you have
1:32
outstanding autofocus with it all. This is a lens that is packed with features.
1:38
It has all kinds of controls on the body itself. It has a thorough weather
1:43
sealing. It has the unique clutch mechanism that allows you to have true manual focus. It does a lot of stuff
1:51
really well. And on top of that, it's got amazing autofocus and the best optical performance that I've ever seen
1:57
from a macro lens. Now, it is going to cost you. The MSRP is $1,500.
2:02
And for a GM lens, that is not particularly expensive, but it is going to be more expensive than either the 90
2:10
mm G macro and considerably more than either the Sigma or Tamron macro
2:15
alternatives. So, is this new G Master lens worth it? Well, we're going to dive in today and explore whether or not this
2:23
truly is the gold master of macro lenses. So, in full disclosure, this
2:28
lens was sent to me by Sony USA for evaluation. Uh however, it will be going
2:33
back to them at the end of this review period and they have had no input in my findings. This is a completely
2:38
independent review. All right, so let's talk about the build and design of this new lens. This is the 23rd G Master
2:46
lens, but the first of their macro lenses. And one of the things that I am
2:51
impressed by is that while they have obviously dramatically expanded the capacity of this lens, it really isn't
2:59
significantly heavier than what the existing 90 millimeter macro is. In fact, at 646 g, it is only 42 g heavier
3:07
than that lens. Despite having a longer focal length, higher magnification, more space here, it's 17 mm longer to allow
3:14
those teleconverters to fit inside, and has additional features throughout. I think that's pretty impressive the way
3:20
that they have managed this to where this is still a very usable weight. In fact, it's lighter than the Sigma 105mm
3:27
uh f2.8 macro lens, despite that lens having, you know, far less feature set than what this lens does. So, those di
3:34
dimensions are 81.4 mm or 3.2 2 in in diameter and 147.9
3:41
mm in length and that is 5.8 in. So it is a fairly long lens. However, and as
3:48
mentioned that's 17 mm longer than the 90 mm lens. But a big part of that is the fact that they have more depth here
3:55
to where teleconverters can fit at the back. And that is I think in my estimation that is well worth it. And I
4:02
would take more lenses that are a little bit longer if they could be used with Sony's teleconverters. And so that
4:08
weight, 646 grams, that's 22.8 ounces for those of you who speak imperial.
4:13
Now, to give you a little bit of idea, this lens has the capacity to do 1.4 times or 1:4 or 1.4 to one level
4:22
magnification on its own. So that right there gives you some advantage over, you know, your typical 1 to1 macro lens like
4:28
this Tamron 90 millimeter that I use almost every day. But you put the uh the
4:33
1.4 times teleconverter on there and that focal length changes to 140 millimeters. The magnification goes all
4:41
the way up to two times potentially. And then if you throw on the two times teleconverter, the focal length is an
4:46
effective 200 millimeters and your magnification is up to 2.8 times potentially. Now, the other advantage
4:52
there, however, is that uh maybe you don't need that level of magnification, but what that gives you is the ability
4:59
to move a little bit further back and have more working room and still get one one or higher levels of magnification.
5:06
And that can make all the difference in the world if you're working for a subject that might get scared off, you
5:12
know, like living dragonflies or uh insects, things like that. And so, it
5:17
definitely gives you some extra potential in that regard. Your minimum focus distance is 26 cm. And so
5:24
remember, this is a fairly long lens. And so there's not necessarily a ton of working distance out in front of it, but
5:31
you throw on those teleconverters, you can move the lens a little bit further back and thus expand that working
5:36
distance as you go. Another thing that stood out to me is that this lens, if you look at this diagram, has an unusual
5:42
amount of weather seal points inside. I went through and counted and I saw 19 seal points plus four flooring coating
5:49
on the front element. So you could argue that there are 20 different seal points as a part of that design. That is
5:55
definitely a G Master standard. Very very high level of weather sealing that you know the other brand lenses like
6:01
this Tamron how be it an excellent lens but it's not going to match that degree of performance. Again that's you know
6:08
they're setting the gold master standard and that is what we are looking for. Now, I was delighted to see in the Sony
6:14
press briefing the m moment that they noticed this, and that is the ability to clutch out of your typical mirrorless
6:22
autofocus, uh, which is then manual focus, you know, focus by wire, no hard
6:28
stops, you know, no definite focus positions, but you have this clutch mechanism that drops you down into a
6:35
true manual focus environment. And that has hard stops, that has permanently defined focus positions. It is so
6:42
refreshing and so valuable for macro work. There is 170 degrees. That's my
6:47
estimation of focus throw here. Now the one limitation is that most of that
6:53
focus throw is between that 26 cm minimum focus distance and about 2 m.
6:59
Beyond that 2 m mark, you've only got about 30 degrees of focus rotation. I did find that a little bit hard when I
7:05
was manually focusing for my test chart test because you have to be really precise because just a tiny bump makes a
7:12
significant difference in the overall quality of focus here. So, this is a lens I would say that outside of macro
7:17
range, stick with autofocus because autofocus is awesome. But in macro range, if you're looking for an amazing
7:23
manual focus experience, this is gorgeous. This is the best way to do things right here. And I really, really
7:28
love that design. Now, interestingly, they still give you a lot of additional features on the focus by wire side. You
7:34
have an AFMF switch. You have a fulltime DMF or direct manual focus. And so, at
7:40
any point, you can grab that focus ring and turn, but remember that's focus by wire. It's not going to be as precise as
7:46
fantastic as this clutched uh section down here, but still, you're getting very full feature to that. Likewise,
7:52
you're getting the full G approach to aperture. So the you have the option of clicks with one-third stops. You have
7:59
the ability then also to declick the aperture and so to smoothly rack through it and you can do focus racking as you
8:06
can see here. Performs that very aly and you have an iris lock and so you can either lock into or out of that manual
8:14
aperture range depending on what your preference is. All good there. Additional features include other
8:20
switches are a three-position focus limiter. I didn't actually use it at all really in my test other than just to
8:27
test it because I found that autofocus is so good I didn't feel like I needed to worry about it. So, I was either manual focusing or just letting
8:33
autofocus do its thing. It's always fast enough. The other thing we've got here is an on andoff switch for the OSS or
8:39
the optical steady shot. The lens based stabilization. This is a very effective stabilizer because it is the first that
8:46
they have ever had that is actually designed the stabilizing system itself is designed around macro photography and
8:52
so it gives you some additional um controls of axes including depth control and so it's actually reading how far
8:59
your distance is from your subject and it is you know controlling stabilization based on that. In other words, this is a
9:05
lens that really is designed in a way that maybe no macro lens has been before around the idea of doing handheld macro
9:13
work. And for example, even with the uh the 1.4 times teleconverter attached uh
9:18
and so I was shooting at 140 millimeters, I was able to handhold this macro shot at 130th of a second. I just
9:24
don't know if there's other macro lenses that I would be able to pull that off, at least with any kind of repeatability.
9:29
And so that is uh that's very impressive on that front. Likewise, we have a couple of focus hold buttons. And so, if
9:36
you're shooting in, you know, your typical landscape position, you've got one. But if you're shooting in the horizontal position, one will be close
9:42
to hand there as well. Up front, we've got 67 millimeter front filter threads. We have 11 rounded aperture blades.
9:51
I don't love wide open uh geometry. It's a little too pinched in the corners, but if you look at the aperture rack here,
9:56
as you begin to stop the lens down, it does do a really effective job of keeping a circular aperture shape thanks
10:02
to those uh iris blades there. Included here, we have a lens hood. And the lens
10:08
hood itself is actually fairly shallow. Um, and so that kind of uh it helps to
10:14
level off the distance length of these two lenses because while the native lens is longer than the Tamron lens by a fair
10:22
bit, when you throw on the lens hoods, it actually reverses because the Tamron lens hood is so much deeper than the
10:27
Sony one. But I do like the Sony has that padded front edge, making it a nice stable place to set the lens down like
10:34
that. It has a lock on it as well and so you can feel confident in making sure
10:39
it's not going to come loose on you. So all good. It also comes with a nice zippered padded case as well. The MSRP
10:46
is as mentioned $1498. That's it'll come for $17.99 Canadian.
10:52
And so those of you in the Canadian market, that's a really competitive price relative to the US price. It's by
10:58
the way that's $300 more than what the 90 millimeter G macro is. I would say if you're just shopping purely on the Sony
11:04
platform, looking for first-party Sony lenses, it's pretty easy to justify that extra 300 bucks for this lens with all
11:10
that it adds. However, there are much cheaper alternatives. The Sigma is a good value. And then a particular good
11:15
value is this Tamron 90 mm, which you can get for around 700 bucks. So, less than half the price. So, I mean, that's
11:22
obviously going to be a consideration to think about. These lenses will start to ship in mid November according to Sony,
11:29
so not too long. And so if you want to get a pre-order in, you won't have to wait too long, assuming that all goes
11:35
well in delivering those things. Altogether, this is a really impressive package. It's it's a little bit of a
11:40
busy lens because there's a lot going on here, but it's a lot of good. A lot of valuable control points to making sure
11:47
this really is a fabulous lens to use for your macro photography. So, let's
11:52
talk autofocus. Out of all the brands that I test, I would say that Sony has done the best job that I have ever seen
11:59
of putting together a combination of focus motors that allow their lenses to really have the premium autofocus
12:06
experience. That's definitely true here as the 100 millimeter GM macro has been equipped with four XD linear motors and
12:15
those working in concert allow you to have just lightning fast autofocus. It's not unusual for macro lenses to have
12:22
slower autofocus because there are so many additional focus possibilities and you can help that by using a focus
12:28
limiter and eliminating some of those. But in this case, we have so much thrust that it's really not an issue at all.
12:34
And you can see going from close to uh distant subjects, it is essentially an instantaneous process. And throughout my
12:41
whole test period, I felt like in all situations, autofocus just flew. It was always fast, always silent in operation,
12:49
always very smooth. And so that meant that I could use the lens in a wide variety of situations. You could uh
12:57
continue to use it for uh autofocus, for example, at macro distances, unlike the recent LA 180mm f4.5 that I reviewed.
13:05
You could use it for focus stacking and things like that. And um you producing
13:11
really great end results from that. Uh, I found that I could use it for portrait work and I used it at a wedding and of
13:17
course it was lightning fast in those situations. I was able to even nail some
13:22
shots of the bees going in and out of the hive and able to track that and achieve that. Basically, this is a lens
13:28
that really doesn't have any kind of limits to its potential because it has such fantastic autofocus and that's not
13:34
something that you can say of a lot of macro lenses. So, they really have equipped this with what I would say is
13:40
the G Master standard for autofocus, and that is in this instance the very best
13:45
you can possibly get in 2025. So, how about video autofocus? Well, as
13:51
you probably have seen on all of these outdoor segments, I have been filming with the lens mounted on my new Alpha 1
13:57
M I, which I will give you a review of somewhere in the near future after I've had enough time with it to give you a
14:03
good evaluation. However, you can see that it has no problem tracking me in these kind of situations. We'll give it
14:09
a quick test right now to see how it does if I drop out of frame and I pop back in again
14:17
and back in. And I suspect you are finding that it has no problem picking me up and tracking me because as we've
14:23
already seen, it's got tons of thrust for its autofocus system. Now, when it came to other type test, I found that
14:29
for my video pools, it was really nice and smooth. It actually has a nice level of damping and so a nice transition
14:37
without any kind of visible steps, no hunting, no pulsing, none of those things. And of course, it is completely
14:43
silent in operation. When I did my hand test, it really did well overall. There
14:48
was a couple of times where it didn't want to transition away from my face, but that is largely because of that
14:54
predictive algorithm that knows that the main focus subject needs to be my face, and so it's trying to continue to track
15:00
that. But when it did the transitions from my hand to my eye, it was all nice and smooth and so no concerns about
15:06
that. You'll find here if I go backwards a little bit and then in a moment I'll
15:12
come back forward, you can see that it has no problem as it tracks me as I get
15:18
closer into the frame and closer to the camera itself. And so I don't really see
15:24
any real kind of reservations there. I found that in my clips I got good results. I also found that there is
15:32
focus breathing obviously, but most of that focus breathing happens in the macro range. And what I did find is that
15:38
like for example in my hand test or in that focus pull test at those more normal normal distances, focus breathing
15:45
is of course quite well controlled. And yes, you can in fact employ the focus
15:50
breathing compensation if your camera is so equipped. that does come at the cost of a crop factor, but it will eliminate
15:57
some of that additional focus breathing out of the equation. So, at the end of the day, again, this is a really
16:03
excellent lens and I will add to that uh because you have such great manual focus. In this case, you have a true
16:08
manual focus because of the clutch mechanism that we have talked about. And so, what that allows you to do is that
16:14
in video to really do nice, nicely damp focus pulls with really good precision
16:19
and macro range. a little less precision if you're out at this kind of distance. However, if you're in that macro range,
16:25
manual focus is really, really fantastic if you're in the clutch true manual focus mode. So, at the end of the day, I
16:32
think autofocus for video is as good as you're going to find on a macro lens. Okay, let's talk optics. This is an
16:38
optical design of 17 elements in 13 groups. That includes two of the Sony
16:44
specific XA elements, which is extreme aspherical elements. And then also they
16:49
have two of the extra low dispersion elements as well. If you look at the MTF chart, the MTF chart is exceptionally
16:55
good. Over the first half of the frame, it is pretty close to perfect and then it's only a mild fall off towards the
17:03
corners. In fact, this is a lens that's sharper in the corners than what many lenses are in the center of the frame.
17:08
It's a really really exceptionally sharp lens. You can see stopping down to f8, it's it's pretty close to perfect. a
17:14
little bit of a stigmatism, but outside of that, it is really fantastically sharp. And I found that this is a lens
17:21
that that sharpness really showed up at macro distances. I was really impressed by how much the textures popped. I don't
17:28
know. With macro lenses, I tend to be I have high expectations of them optically. And so when I see a little
17:34
bit of haze on textures, macro lenses, it really turns me off. And I would find
17:40
say that the textures pop from this lens in a way that I just don't remember any other macro lens matching before. It is
17:46
exceptionally good. And that's even at the high levels of magnification. I found also that when it came to testing
17:53
for distortion and vignette, there is no distortion, no measurable distortion that I could see. And there is almost no
17:58
vignette. I used about a plus 22 to correct a little tiny bit in the corners, but you could easily leave
18:04
those uncorrected and never notice. When I added the 1.4 four times teleconverter. It added a little bit of
18:10
barrel distortion. It was a plus three to correct for it and added a tiny bit more vignette, a plus 29 rather than
18:16
plus 22. In both cases, that's no big deal. I don't own the two times teleconverter and so I can't test for
18:23
that, but I would suspect you're just going to see a little bit of exaggeration of both of those qualities. Kind of scale that up a bit and it
18:29
should give you a sense of what you're going to see with the two times teleconverter. I also saw no frringing
18:34
in any of my test or in any of my shots. Um, and that's hugely important for
18:39
macro type work with a lot of shiny surfaces. And so it also allows you to have, you know, allow that to have that
18:46
really great micro contrast because you're not having any kind of blooming on textures that is robbing you of
18:51
contrast. And so all of that was perfect. Uh, no lateral style chromatic aberrations in the corners as well. All
18:57
really, really awesome there. When it came to doing the test, and this is just a quick overview. If you want the deep
19:02
dive, that's going to be at the end of the video. But I found that it was basically perfect. wide open. Center is
19:07
perfectly sharp. Mid-frame is exceptionally good and the corners really, really look great. I was
19:13
interesting to see how it compared to the 90 millimeter macro from Tamron because I think that this is actually a really, really sharp lens. And what I
19:20
found is basically the GM is kind of like a one step further in terms of performance. The Tamron is good. The GM
19:27
is great and that was true all across the frame. It just had that consistent advantage everywhere that I looked. So,
19:33
really, really impressive on that front. I found that when I stopped the lens down, I really didn't see much of an
19:39
improvement as I stopped down. So to mostly use stopping down for depth of field, I could see a tiny bit maybe in
19:45
the corners at f8, but I mean it really isn't much difference to note. Starting
19:51
at f11, you'll start to see a bit of defraction. Your minimum aperture is f22 and defraction will be a little bit more
19:56
pronounced by that point particularly on a high resolution body like the 61 megapixel a7r mark 5 that I have done
20:04
these tests on. There's a few other things that I tested. I did test to see if focus bracketing and then stacking
20:11
would work with the native lens plus teleconverters. And what I found is that
20:16
it did a it did it worked perfectly. I could get, you know, shots like this to where uh this is actually a stack of in
20:22
one case 20 and then another case 15 shots. Just allows me to increase that depth of field a bit, but still have the
20:29
strongly blurred out background, which is really, really useful. And and so I was really pleased to see that because
20:35
that just adds the ability to automate and thus kind of perfect that technique. And so that's really great. As far as
20:42
the sharpness, uh, when you add the teleconverter on there, I did notice a bit of a hit to sharpness, but it's
20:48
still great. It's probably actually pretty comparable to the level that the Tamron is at, even with the teleconverter attached. And so, that's
20:55
really, really great. Again, expect a little bit more of a hit with the two times um, uh, teleconverter on there,
21:01
but still, it's going to be a really strong performance. When it comes to the bokeh, I've already mentioned that I
21:07
don't love the wide open geometry. As you can see here, it's just kind of pinched a little too much in the corners. Stop down to f4 and a lot of
21:13
that clears up. By f5.6, that is all perfectly clear. But that really was my only complaint when it comes to the
21:20
quality of the bokeh. I at close focus distances, it's really beautiful uh fall off to where you're transition from
21:26
focus to defocus is really lovely. I found that a little bit further out, you're really strongly blurring out
21:33
backgrounds. And then a little bit further out, still backgrounds are still, you know, nicely blurred here and
21:39
they don't get harsh or busy. And then even at a longer distance, like for full-length portrait work, I found that
21:45
while it's not obliterating the background like a faster maximum aperture would, what I found is that at
21:51
f2.8, I had a really nicely pleasantly defocus background and the subject stood
21:57
out really nicely. And so overall, I was really impressed with all of those things. Flare resistance I would say is
22:04
good but not great. Um there certainly were instances where I saw some ghosting
22:10
artifacts and you can see as I pan back and forth there's a little bit of a pattern but what I will say is that it
22:15
never gets particularly strong strongly defined and thus harsh causing any kind
22:20
of major problem there. Finally, the colors are really beautiful. I mean, this is a lens that is just it's it's
22:27
nailing it optically. And so, I think that Sony has done a fantastic job of showing us what a next level macro lens
22:34
can be capable of. The new Sony FE 100 millm F2.8 macro OSS really does set the
22:43
gold standard for macro lenses. I would say that in every area that I tested,
22:48
this definitely stands out as being a better product than any macro lens that I've used. I didn't know quite what Sony
22:56
would do to set itself apart when they did release a G Master macro lens, but I'm really impressed by the choices that
23:02
they've made and the fact that while I'm not crazy about the fact that they have
23:07
excluded other brands from using teleconverters on their platform, I'm at least glad to see them utilize
23:14
teleconverters. And you know, I've owned the 1.4 times for quite a while and I
23:20
primarily have used it in some tests and then in one lens that I own, the 200 to 600 millimeter G lens. So, I'm really
23:26
delighted to see even the potential of more lenses that take advantage of that. And it's one thing if you're going to
23:31
restrict it from third-party lenses on your platform, but if you produce relatively few lenses and even take
23:38
advantage of it yourself, you aren't going to sell a lot of teleconverters. Truth be told, I see one of the
23:43
advantages of this new G Master lens is not only is it going to kind of give a
23:48
permission structure to those who already might own televerters to say, "Hey, here's another lens that takes advantage of something I've already
23:54
invested in, but also I can see it having the reverse effect that people, some of you who have never owned any of
24:00
Sony's televerters, look at the potential of what it could add to this lens and say, "This might be something
24:05
that I could invest in to dramatically expand my options for this." I think
24:11
that Sony has also done a great job of checking a lot of boxes that matter to real macro photographers. There's a lot
24:17
of versatility here for how you get shots. And of course, the ability to really do things like focus bracketing
24:24
and thus focus stacking is going to allow those of you that are truly exceptional macro photographers to get
24:30
mind-blowingly good macro images. The fact that this lens is so incredibly sharp, even when teleconverters is
24:36
attached, is extremely extremely useful. I'm really impressed with this lens. And while I'm very happy with my daily
24:43
driver macro right now, which is Tamron's 90mimeter f2.8, this is a lens
24:48
that I'm going to be personally thinking about long and hard because I do use macro lenses all the time for my product
24:53
photography, uh, for showing off, you know, little details for my lens reviews. It's just a lens that I reach
25:00
for all the time, and this is a lens that I could see additional potential for. And so I think that really uh Sony
25:07
has checked the right boxes and they have delivered a sufficiently superior package that even though it's pricey at
25:13
$1,500. I can suspect I can see a lot of people saying hm it feels like this
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might be a lens that's worth the money. We'll see if that's true. Now if you want more information you've got a
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couple of options. You can check out my full text review which is linked in the description down below on the newly
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resigned dustinbott.net. or if you want a deep dive into the optical performance, well, jump in with
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me right now and let's take a look together. So, let's start by taking a look at vignette distortion. It may look
25:41
like I have the same thing side by side, and that's because this lens has no distortion and very, very little
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vignette. You can see I've corrected a tiny bit of vignette in the corners. No correction for distortion, just a plus
25:54
22 to correct for the vignette. Now, if we add on the 1.4 times teleconverter, you can see that it does create a little
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bit of barrel distortion. Fortunately, it is nice and linear and not difficult to correct. And there's just a tiny bit
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more vignette, but not enough to really be statistically significant. Chromatic aberrations are basically perfectly
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controlled. I don't see anything before or after the plane of focus in this. If we zoom in on the SLR, even to 200%
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magnification, you can see if we look back at these shiny textures, there's just there's nothing to see there. It's
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just perfectly controlled. No issues at all with that. Neither is there any kind of fringing around specular highlights.
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Likewise with the lateral style chromatic aberrations. All clear here at the corner of the frame. No problem at
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all with that. So let's take a look at our sharpness and contrast in the center of the frame. You can see even at 200%
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magnification. It looks fantastic. Mid-frame is looking excellent down all
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the way into the corners. It looks excellent all the way there. Likewise, we have nice consistency looking at both
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sides of the frame in all four corners everywhere. It just looks awesome. So,
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for a quick point of reference, here's what the Tamron here on the right looks like. You can see if you look at the
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sails, for example, there's just not the same level of detail there in the Tamron. The Tamron looks good, but it is
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just not as perfectly crisp as what the Sony lens is. We have a different chart
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on there, but take a look here. this mid-frame zone. You can see it's just this looks a little bit muddy on the
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Tamron by comparison. Perfectly crisp there on the um the Sony result.
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Likewise down here, same kind of thing. Everywhere that we look, the Tamron is
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good, but the Sony is great. Now, likewise, if we throw the the 1.4 times
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teleconverter, which is the only one I have, it's the only one I can test. You can see that the focal length changes to
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140 millimeters. maximum aperture is f4 now because it does lose a stop of
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light. Likewise, the two times you're going to drop down to a maximum aperture of f5.6.
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So, if we compare these two lenses, we can see that really this is every bit as good, if not a bit more than what the
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Tamron was um just with the bare lens. And so, that's really impressive there. We can see it's still looking good in
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the mid-frame. You know, it's it's dropping a little bit. And likewise into the corners. You can see that the
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corners are a little bit softer, but overall it's still holding up really quite remarkably well. Now, what I found
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when I begin to stop the lens down is that frankly there's not really a whole
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lot of improvement here. And so here from f2.8 to f4 and if we go from f4 all
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the way down to f8. I mean, I do think f8 is a little bit better in the corners, but really you're not getting
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much more than what you got at f2.8. At f11, you'll start to see some effect
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of defraction. Though you can see this is still a very very usable result. So don't hesitate to use f11. F-22,
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however, the minimum aperture I say is a different story. You can see just how much softer it is due to the effects of
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defraction. Now here you can see the highest level of magnification with the barrel lens. This is 1.4 times. If we
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pop in there and take a look at this, you can see the weave of the paper. Like it's really, really great. Even with the
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1.4 four times on there. You can see the magnification level is jumping up to two times magnification. That is a very
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noticeable difference. And it'll be even more noticeable going from that to f2.8 with the two times on there. And we can
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see still again while it's not as perfectly crisp in the area here. You can see it's looking really, really
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sharp. As noted before, you can get really good handheld macro results. This
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shot here, um, this is a handheld macro shot with the 1.4 times on there. And
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you can see it's looking really really fantastic. Here's another and that is once again that's a handheld macro uh to
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that with the 1.4 times teleconverter on there. So pretty impressive in the results you can get with it. Now I've
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talked about the geometry that I don't love wide open but here this is at f8. And so a lot of times at macro distances
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you're going to want to stop down anyway because depth of field is just so small. And one thing I notice is number one I
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mean it's it's great macro performance. But here as we watch the going towards
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defocus, we can see that it's holding up nicely in terms of the geometry towards the edges there. Likewise here, nice and
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round. And so for macrotype work, I think it's going to do a beautiful job. Here's another macrotype shot. And here
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you can see a transition from before to after in terms of um the just defocus.
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But then also look at there's just no longitudinal style chromatic aberration. really really great transition there.
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Likewise here, I'm really impressed by just how much detail is rendered there.
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And that's that really kind of stands out to me. That's that's a lot of fun to play with right there. So, great stuff
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there. You can see that standard defocus towards the background. The background here is nicely blurred out. I like that
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a lot. Here for portrait type work, you've got nice dimensionality of the subjects. You can see that they're
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standing out really nicely. great detail and texture on them. But as we look past them towards the area that's defocused,
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you can still I mean if you step back, you can still see everything that's there, but it's nicely defocused.
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There's no harsh edges, nothing grabbing the eye. Here's another where we can see looking towards the distant background.
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Everything just has a nice transition to defocus. And you can see that the detail on the ladies here looks really
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fantastic. Here's another handheld macro shot that just shows off all the good stuff here. Great detail, great
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contrast, very steady shot. And then as you transition to defocus, just looks fantastic. So I wanted to experiment
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here with a bit of the focus bracketing and to see how that worked out with this lens, both of the bear lens. So starting
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here. So what I I've done is I've just done enough frames to where you can see all of the graphites are in focus. And
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so that just makes a real difference here. I wanted that very shallow depth of field to be maintained, which you can
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see it has. But now we've just got all of this in focus, which makes for a more compelling image. And of course, I could
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do all of that automating within the camera to where the camera was making the focus adjustments. So, I wanted to
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know if you could do the same thing with the teleconverters on there. Can the camera still do all of that bracketing without problems? Well, the answer is
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yes. And so you can see here that rather than just having one of the screw heads
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in focus, now I have enough depth of field to where I've got the front two in
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focus and all of that really, really crispy detail showing up there. And then to start that transition towards defocus
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and as you look towards the area where the images are defocused, they look the exact same. And so that's a really
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useful thing once again. And that was done. That's 15 frames taken with the teleconverter attached with the camera
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doing all of the bracketing. Super useful for macro work. Now, if you're just looking at still images for the
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flare resistance, you can see there's a little bit going on there wide open. Um, if I stop down, there's a little bit
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more of a ghosting pattern. You can see a bit more here. it's really going to be composition specific, but as you saw
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when we pan back and forth across the sun, there's just more noticeable flare
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at different points. So, I guess word to the wise is just be careful with your composition and you'll probably be just
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fine. So, thanks for sticking around until the very end. I hope that that deep dive into the optics helps to give
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you the information that you were looking for. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the
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light in.