Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS: Review and IQ Breakdown | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my final verdict on the new Sony
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FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS lens. This is of course a premium lens for Sony's full frame E-mount
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and there are a few lenses that are more indispensable to a full frame setup and
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more widely used by photographers than a 24-105mm or equivalent lens, of course, if you're talking
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in Nikon, the 24-120mm. And so I'm really glad to see Sony bring this lens to market
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Now, if you haven't seen it already, I would certainly recommend that you start by taking a
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look at this video here. In this video, I break down the build, the design, the handling
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give you a closer look at the lens and how it's going to handle for you. Today, we're going to
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take it a step further and we're going to break down the image quality in detail and stay tuned
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and I'll render a final verdict, talk a little bit about focus, all of those qualities at the end of
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the episode. Okay, like most of Sony products, really all of Sony products on the mirrorless
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systems, we find that really images arrive kind of already corrected. And so on the right here
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I've got the DNG image as you're going to see it after it's been imported into Lightroom because
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the profile here is embedded. And so as a result, for example, if we were to look here in Lightroom
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we would see it says here built-in lens profile applied. And so it's already built right into
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there. And so you have to basically uncheck those boxes to apply a standard profile or to see kind
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of the unfinished result which I had done there. So this gives you an idea then as how they look
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the uncorrected here on the right and the corrected version on the left. So this is at 24 millimeters
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and as you can see there certainly is some barrel distortion which is not at all surprising at this
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kind of focal length with this kind of zoom lens and so you can see that and as we look at the
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corrected version. It's corrected fairly well. If you look at it closely, however, the geometry
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isn't quite perfect there. But at the same time, you know, and you can see that some of the curves
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is, it's not all just central. It's a little bit of a wavy distortion pattern. So it doesn't clear
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up perfectly. I just see kind of a little bit of a dip in the image here. But at the same time
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you know, for a zoom lens like this, it's not bad either. One other thing to point out is the
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amount of vignette here. And as you can see, there certainly is some vignette and particularly in
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those extreme corners, you can just see the very, very edge of the frame is just a little bit dark
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but it seems to correct quite cleanly here. And if we compare these corners, I wouldn't say that
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we've really lost anything there in the corner. It seems to have cleaned up quite well. And so
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no major concern when it comes to that. Now looking at the image on the right, which is the
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uncorrected image, you can see that at 50 millimeters, we have swapped to a little bit
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of a pin cushion distortion here. And so have gone kind of towards the other. However, this is a more
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mild amount of distortion. And as you can see, the correction here on the left is also, I would say
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cleaner end result. Now a vignette here even at f4 is really fairly minor and so as a result we
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we see some correction that's taken place but there's not a huge difference between the two
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corners because not a whole lot of correction was needed. Now at 70 millimeters it's pretty
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much the same story however the distortion pattern to me seems to be a little bit more complex at 70
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millimeters. The corrected result though looks pretty good. As you can see also almost, well
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I wouldn't say zero vignette, but at the same time, certainly not a pronounced amount of vignette
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And so as a result, obviously not very difficult to correct for there. Now on the right side here
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once again, we're now moving up to 105 millimeters. We can see that it looks a lot like 70 millimeters
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that same kind of pin cushion distortion pattern that's there. And, you know, a slightly strange
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looking distortion pattern on this lens. But again, engineering a, you know, a lens like this for
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full frame does have its challenges. But the important thing here is that the corrected result
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looks nice and clean. And remember, this is really all that you're ever going to see either in JPEG
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or RAW unless you specifically try to uncover the kind of distorted image there. Now the vignette
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here is a little bit heavier than what we saw at 70 millimeters, but still not incredibly
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significant. So as a result, it's easy to correct for here. And once again, you're not going to see
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this vignette. It should be already pre-corrected either in JPEG or the embedded RAW file
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Now a strength of the lens appears to be its resistance to flare. It doesn't really do bad
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at all here for a zoom lens. And so here we can see that a stop down, it delivers a nice sunburst
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sunstar effect, which I like. Now you can see here that there is a ghosting artifact that
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you know didn quite exit the frame and you can see little tiny ghosts I see a few of them here but at the same time as you can see it not really destructive to the image I see just a little bit down here as well
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and so they're there but I certainly have seen worse performances than that. As far as our
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contrast, contrast seems to hold up well. The scene you know at large looks good. Here's another
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scene shot on the same day. Now for whatever reason here I've gotten a little bit more
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pronounced of a green ghosting pattern up here. And so, you know, you might just want to watch
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There are, there is some ghosting. I mean, it's, it's not the worst that I've seen by any stretch
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of the imagination, but at the same time it, it does exist. And so you're just going to have to
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watch for that. As far as veiling, I'm not really seeing much of any veiling, um, even near the
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epicenter here. I mean, obviously the sun was extremely bright and shooting, you know, right
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into the frame. So, you know, all told, this really isn't too bad a performance. I've also not
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encountered a whole lot of chromatic aberration here. And so here we can see before our plane of
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focus, this is at 105 millimeters. And as you can see on these kind of really bright transition areas
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I'm not seeing a lot of lateral CA here before the plane of focus. And then also, you know
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as we look beyond, I'm not really seeing a tremendous amount of green fringing. There's
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I think, a little bit there, but not significant. And then if we look, you know, at subjects that
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are along the edge of the frame, there's, you can see just a tiny bit of purple fringing there
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but there's not really a lot of lateral CA there as well. So, I mean, I don't consider this to be
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a bad performance. Now, obviously, a zoom like this with a relatively, it's not a small maximum
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Maptra, but neither is it large. And in my opinion, it's more on this, you know, the smaller end of
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f4. It's not going to be the world's greatest, you know, bokeh lens. But in this case, I mean, I think
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that this is actually quite a nice result. And so we've got, you know, enough sharpness on the
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fairly narrow depth of field here to be credible. Looks good and result looks good there. And then
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we have got a pretty nice defocused background that I'm not seeing any kind of ugly hard edges
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or, you know, just shapes that are catching my eye. And so a pretty nice result there also
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Now, a quick observation about the autofocus quality of this lens. It focuses very quickly
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very quietly. No issues there, no complaints. And of course, the new Sony a7R III has an excellent
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focus system. And so in this case, I had this young man skate towards me as fast as he could
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while I shot a burst and just check to see how the lens would keep up with, in this case
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very fast moving action. And of course, if you're familiar at all with hockey
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you know, young people can move very quickly on the ice. And as you can see, you know
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The tracking actually is quite admirable here. It's doing a good job
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And my shutter speed could have been a little bit faster to freeze the action a little bit better
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But in terms of the actual advancement of the autofocus, it's keeping up as he gets right on top of me
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And as you can see here, even quite close, it's still nailing focus
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And it's only really once his face exits the frame that the autofocus drops off
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And so, I mean, you know, a really good performance there. Now taking a quick look at the resolution from the lens
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at 24 millimeters, we'll start off. You can see that in the center of the frame
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I think that this sharpness looks pretty good. You can see there's a lot of detail that's rendered there
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And as we move over towards the edge of the frame, you know, really we're seeing a pretty good consistency
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over a lot of the frame, and it's only really right out here towards edge of the frame that our image quality starts to erode
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And we can track that up all the way up into the top corner. And corners really don't look too bad here
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And we'll see if stopping down makes an improvement. Now stopping down to F5.6, if we look here at the center of the frame
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we see that contrast is picked up. And so there's a little bit of lateral CA that we have already taken a look at
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And so that negatively impacts sharpness wide open, but stopped down to F5.6
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We see that there is an improvement there in our contrast and thus apparent resolution
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And then if we take a look towards our corner, we see that there is a mild improvement here in the corners
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Corners are still not perfect yet. And there's more of an improvement in the center of the frame than what there is out on the very edge
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where I would say that our improvement here is mild at one stop down. Now, if we go down two stops
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to F8 at 24 millimeters, we find that our center result looks, you know, very good, probably not
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any better due to already being just slightly past the diffraction limit on the A7R II. Looking
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towards the corner at 24 millimeter, you know, somewhat like the new Canon 24-105 F4L IS Mark II
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the corner performance is never really exceptional. You can see that it's better at f8
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but it's very, very mild. It's nowhere near what the improvement we see
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in the center of the frame. And in fact, if we go back to the comparison between f5.6
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and now we put f8 there you gonna find that there really is not an improvement from f5 to f8 in the center of the frame and really there not much of an improvement at the very edge of the frame either and I don
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think that there's enough difference there between f5.6 and f8 that would be worth the extra stopping
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down unless you actually wanted to and you know you're not going to be able to discern a real
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world difference between these two end results here. Now, if we move out to 50 millimeters
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or it's actually 51 millimeters, it's not quite perfect. We see that in the center of the frame
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kind of like 24 millimeters, we have really a pretty good result. I would say we actually have
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a hair more contrast at 50 millimeters than we saw at 24. Looking out to the edge of the frame
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though, it's also kind of an equal story in that the edge is, it's definitely lagging behind the
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center of the frame in terms of performance. And you can basically see where that breakdown starts
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to take place here. In pretty much the last, you know, kind of fifth of the frame, the image quality
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gets a little bit softer. And as you move up towards the corner, that becomes more obvious
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Now comparing the F5.6 result to the F4 result, we find that in the center of the frame
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kind of like what we saw at 24 millimeters. It's more an improvement in contrast that has boosted
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a little bit there at f5.6. And so our center looks really quite good at f5.6, good contrast
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good resolution. Moving out towards the edge of the frame, it's really kind of a similar story
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in that there's not a whole lot of improvement. There's a mild improvement. You can see a little
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bit more contrast here, but resolution is still not fantastic there towards the edge of the frame
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And so, you know, as a result, you could see, again, it's a mild improvement here. It's not a
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significant one, a stopping down one stop. Now, if we go right down to F8, it's, you know, it's the
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same pattern that we have seen previously that towards center of the frame, there's a little bit
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of improvement, but as we can see here, as we move out, there's a little bit more contrast and a
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a tear more resolution. And right here at the edge of the frame, I mean, I am seeing a little bit better contrast
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like in some of this grout. It's a little softer here, but at the same time
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it's not a night and day improvement. It's just a, it's a mild improvement
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But so, you know, there F8 is providing better results. If we compare F5.6 and F8 here
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Now, in this case, there actually is a little bit of an improvement between F5.6 and F8
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more so than what we saw at 24 millimeters. And so here at F8, I mean, you're probably getting pretty much best case scenario
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middle of the frame in terms of having even sharpness across the image frame
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Now at 70 millimeters, once again, center of the frame looks pretty much like we've seen
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For the most part, I'm seeing a fairly consistent performance here. I will say that at 70 millimeters, the edge performance seems a little bit improved over 50 millimeters
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here at f4, I'm seeing a more even kind of result towards edge of the frame than what I've been
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seeing. Now, just taking a quick look at these images globally, you can see that at f5.6
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you are seeing an improvement in terms of a contrast, even looking at this area, how it
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doesn't stand out quite as much, just more of a difference between light and dark there. And if
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we zoom in, we see that. Although here, I think that the improvement is the least dramatic between
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f4 and f5.6 and that's in part because I think we've seen the strongest wide open performance
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that we've seen in the focal range there at 70 millimeters and in some ways I think that it as a
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result is probably our strongest performance and so as you can see stopping down here really doesn't
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make much of a difference so at 70 millimeters you're getting pretty close to peak performance
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wide open and in this case we see an opposite effect of what we've seen previously stopping
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on down to f8 actually gives us a hit on image quality. So image quality is definitely optimized
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around f4 wide open at 70 millimeters. And so a little slightly different performance than what
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we saw at the previous focal lengths. And the only improvement I see here is at the very edge
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of the frame. It's a little better on f8 considering f4, but in the center of the frame f4 looks
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better. So as we arrive at the end of the focal range, this is 105 millimeters. We see a fairly
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even result. I think 70 millimeters was a little bit sharper in the center of the frame. It's a
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little bit softer here, which again is not a surprise from what I've seen from these lenses
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And we are kind of back as we get to the extreme, you know, edges of the frame or the focal range
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we see that we get our softest corners at 24 millimeters and then again at 105 millimeters
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And that's pretty true to the pattern I've seen with similar lenses. Stopping down to f5.6 makes
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a very mild improvement, a little bit of additional contrast here. And so as a result, it's a little
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less kind of a haze on the textures there, a little less veiling. And so moving off to the
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edge of the frame, same is true. It's not a huge improvement, but a little bit of improvement of
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contrast. And so as a result, you know, something like that looks a little bit better and a little
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bit more distinct distinction between dark and light areas. So we're seeing mostly an improvement
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in contrast, a mild improvement in resolution, stopping down to f5.6. Stopping on down to f8
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gives a you know it again it a similar kind of mild improvement maybe just a little bit better edge performance here than what we have seen And so our textures are clearing up here at f8 So
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unlike 70 millimeters, which look pretty great at f4 wide open, you really need a bit of stopping
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down at 105 millimeters to get maximum performance. So as you can see, the image quality from this
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lens is solid, if not spectacular. It does a good job across the focal length of providing
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good, if not exceptional sharpness. And in many ways, it compares favorably to what I saw from
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Canon's own 24-105mm f4 LIS Mark II that I reviewed later last year, in that that lens
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really disappointed me on a few fronts. The build felt a little more plasticky than what this lens
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does. I also didn't feel like the image quality really took much of a step forward from the
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previous generation of the Canon lens. It had some fairly pronounced chromatic aberrations
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So certainly the news is much more rosy on this front in that there's certainly far less
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chromatic aberrations. And outside of some more complex barrel distortion at 24 millimeters
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I saw little to concern me there along the way. And outside of around the 70mm mark
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which seems to give you pretty much best image quality wide open, the lens certainly does enjoy if you stop it down to f5.6
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if you're going to shoot landscapes. And in some cases, even f8 will produce a very minor boost there as well
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But I mean, really, these lenses are about versatility. And frankly, I don't get, I'm not excited by 24 to 105 millimeter lenses
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I've reviewed and handled, used a lot of them. They don't excite me in the sense of what they can accomplish or what they are
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but they certainly are more practical than just about any other lens
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And if you're looking for, you know, a weather sealed, well-built, quality image producing
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travel option for your fancy new Sony body or a general purpose lens that you can leave on
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and pretty much shoot everything, or if you need a lens that when you're going to an event or you
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don't know exactly what you're going to be shooting, this is a lens that kind of covers
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everything. And in some occasions, I zoomed into the images and of course combined with the
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fantastic sensor that's on the new Sony a7R III, and I was very impressed by what I saw
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And so this is a lens that's going to give you quality images and it gives you a lot of versatility
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in what you're going to shoot with the focal length along the way. And of course, the high megapixel count if you're shooting with a A7R II or III
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it also means you have some pretty deep cropping ability while retaining a lot of detail there
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So a lot of good to be had there. And as far as the autofocus goes, autofocus here is very quick
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IAF works well. And so as a result, I felt like I got more keepers with this lens
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than any kind of comparative phase detect, autofocus, kind of traditional viewfinder AF
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that I've seen with other lenses. And so that was very good
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In a few occasions, in dimmer conditions, or if the subject, they weren't full eye on with me
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I found that if I started IAF as opposed to just regular autofocus
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the IAF sometimes would pulse sometimes before it kind of created a lock
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And I didn't really see that in other kinds of applications. For the most part, autofocus was very, very sharp, and it was very quiet and accurate
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And of course, an added benefit to this lens is that it does allow you to focus down very closely
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and has a great reproduction ratio of 0.31 times, and that makes it, extends the usefulness of the
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lens. I will note, however, that I didn't find that at minimum focus at wider Aptors that I was
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all that impressed by image quality and it needed to be stopped down to improve results and I felt
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like if you just backed up a little ways from minimum focus distance and image quality actually
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improved even more so. And so all in all however I think that for many shooters there's really only
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one kind of significant concern here and that is that this lens is is expensive when compared to
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alternatives first-party lenses from Canon or Nikon or the excellent Sigma 24-105mm F4 OS
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and that's from their art series. This lens runs at minimum over the first-party options
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It runs $300 more of them at $1399, and of course, even more so when compared to the Sigma
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So it's a little bit hard to argue for it when it comes to a price-to-performance ratio
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At the same time, of course, if you're wanting to shoot native Sony glass on a Sony A7R series body, this is your option
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And fortunately, it's a very good one if you don't mind ponying up the cash for it
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And to be fair, it is the newest of these variants to market. And so market forces may drive that price down a little bit in the future, but certainly it's not inexpensive
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But if you do spend the money to get it, I think that you're going to be happy with it
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And yeah, it's not a tiny lens, but it balances fine here and it produces good results
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I'm Dustin Abbott. And if you look in the description down below, you can find the link to my image gallery
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You'll also find linkage to following me on social media or signing up for my newsletter
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You can become one of my patrons. And of course, if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button
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Thanks for watching. Have a great day

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Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS: Review and IQ Breakdown | 4K

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Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS: Review and IQ Breakdown | 4K

Dustin Abbott