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Sony FE 50mm F2.5 | G Definitive Review
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Jul 17, 2023
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a thorough review of the compact yet premium Sony FE 40mm F2.5 G prime lens. | This video is sponsored by Lens Nest. Visit https://bit.ly/lensnest to join the Kickstarter and get your LensNest today! | Read the Text Review: https://bit.ly/FE50Greview | Visit the Image Gallery: https://bit.ly/50Gpics | Purchase the Sony FE 50mm F2.5 G @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/35V1WCg | Amazon https://amzn.to/3Ag8j0U | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/31y2z | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3du9tfA | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3dtFdl2 | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3ju0KxG Purchase the Sony FE 40mm F2.5 G @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3xUsLlX | Amazon https://amzn.to/3y7c1YX | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/31y2b | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3ydDybj | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3A70avI | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3A9omxL Purchase the Samyang AF 45mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2Ka0rov | Amazon https://amzn.to/2JWX7hA | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/30YgkoQ | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2SJBHr7 | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/2ymfGoM | Ebay http://bit.ly/AF1845 Purchase the Sony FE 24mm F2.8 G @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3A1DjSs | Amazon https://amzn.to/3A1fWIq | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/31qyo | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3qsUxn4 | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2UHNZFB | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3zUIqUe Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Comparison to options 2:53 - Build & Handling 7:03 - Focus Action 10:18 Image Quality Breakdown 18:59 Conclusion and Pricing ---------------------------------------------------------
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my definitive review of the final of the series of three G-primes, as I call them, that were released together, announced and released together, which are the 24-millimeter F-2.8, 40-millimeter F-2.5, and then finally the 50-millimeter F-2.5
0:30
Now, on paper, a 50mm F2.5 lens that costs $600 is not a particularly exciting proposition
0:37
and perhaps your response to this announcement was somewhat lukewarm. I can understand that
0:43
After having spent time with this lens, though, this is actually my favorite of the trio
0:47
and is a shockingly good lens when it comes to the overall performance
0:53
be it the build quality, auto-focus performance, and the optical performance. This really is a lens that is surprisingly
0:59
special in terms of its rendering and the kind of image quality you can get out of it
1:04
and is a much more intriguing lens in practice than what it is in theory
1:10
Now, all three of these lenses share a very, very common DNA in terms of their size and
1:16
their build, and clearly Sony has shared some both development and manufacturing costs across
1:22
the three of them, and so at the end of the day, you get lenses that are extremely compact
1:27
very, very well made, and I think should particularly be appealing to someone like a Sony A7C shooter
1:35
who is prioritizing getting compact and yet high quality performance. But at the same time
1:40
this lens optically held up just fine to my 50 megapixel Sony Alpha 1, and so it's certainly a
1:48
lens that has the optical chops to pull off whatever camera that you put it on at this point
1:53
Now, today we're doing the definitive review, and so we're going to dive into various aspects of
1:57
performance in detail. But if you would like a quicker, more overview type review, then feel
2:03
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So we're going to start today by taking the look at the build and handling. I've been kind of
2:56
hyping the build of the lens and hopefully I'll show you why here as we take a closer look
3:01
at the beautiful construction of this lens. Let's take a look. Part of what makes this lens a little
3:06
hard to classify is that while it is very small and diminutive and the maximum aperture of F2.5
3:13
makes you want to compare it to lenses like the 50mm F1.8. The problem is that this in no way is
3:19
a lens like those others. This is a lens that has a very high degree of build that is really like
3:25
a miniature Gmaster lens. All metal construction. It has thorough weather sealing, starting with a gasket here
3:32
10 different seal points throughout the lens. And so, and all of the features that you would find on a G master lens
3:38
including the various approach to aperture, starting with A, which is for automatic
3:44
and so you can control it from within the camera. Then there's a hard stop to tent that takes you into the manual aperture ring
3:50
and so you can choose to select one third stop to tents with nice precision
3:54
but you can also choose to declick the aperture for video or if you're just someone that likes to rack freely through aperture
4:01
and just select your aperture setting based like that. You also have the AFMF switch here and a focus hold button
4:10
Now all of these things are a little bit miniaturized because of the small size of the lens
4:14
so I have noted that as someone that shoots a lot in winter, I can tell that this is going to be a little hard to operate with gloves
4:20
because everything is so tiny, which includes, of course, a very small distance
4:24
between the aperture and the manual focus rings. Now the manual focus ring itself, it is all ribbed, it's in metal
4:31
It feels great, it has good damping, it is very precise and it's linear
4:36
However, both of those are a little bit close together and so if you're wearing gloves
4:40
and you have less precision in your finger, you may have a little bit of an issue with that
4:46
Now the 40 millimeter and the 50 millimeter share this unique trait when it comes to the lens hood
4:51
It's not a traditional hood at all. You can't reverse it for storage
4:54
It doesn't, you know, it's not shaped like a traditional hood. However, it bayonets in in only one position
5:01
but it's basically, I think, designed to just stay in place. It is threaded in the front
5:05
and so you can use 49 millimeter filters here at the front of the lens with it mounted
5:10
or you can put them onto the lens itself. It also of course you can put the lens cap right on there So I just used it with them in place and staying in place like that Now the overall dimensions of the lens as you can see are incredibly compact
5:27
This is a lens that is 68 millimeters in diameter. It is only 45 millimeters in length
5:32
That's well less than 2 inches. And it weighs in at only 174 grams
5:38
So it's lightweight despite being beautifully constructed. Inside we have got seven rounded aperture blades, though I have found that the blades aren't as curved as what I see in some other configuration
5:50
so the aperture doesn't stay quite as round as what I see in, say, the Gmaster type lenses, but it does a decent enough job with that
5:58
We've also got a dual approach to minimum focus, and so a focus distance when you're auto-focusing
6:04
and then you can get a few centimeters closer if you are manually focusing, and it gives you a little bit higher
6:11
as you can see here, and we'll talk about that a little bit more during our image quality segment
6:16
Overall, however, though, this is a beautifully made, wonderfully compact lens that, although it has a fairly high price tag
6:24
the build quality definitely warrants it. And so as you can see, there is a lot that is going on here
6:29
in terms of the beautiful build and the design of the lens. I've found it to be generally a joy to use
6:34
though, as I noted, as I look ahead and anticipate winter coming once again, I think that's going to be a little bit more complicated to
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to use. But the good news is, of course, is that with a lot of these things, say, aperture
6:46
you can always just, you know, switch into that from within the camera. And so you could switch
6:51
it into the A mode, control aperture from within the camera, if you have a concern about that
6:55
So at the end of the day, I don't think it's a big deal, but I did just want to point that
6:59
out as part of the reality of having such a compact lens. I've also noted that the auto
7:05
focus has been fantastic across these lenses. And we're going to jump in and take a look at why
7:11
I consider to be so excellent. So let's talk about autofocus. If you have been watching this series
7:16
it's gonna sound a little bit like a broken record because I have been thoroughly impressed
7:20
throughout each one of these lenses when it comes to the autofocus performance. Once again, we have dual linear motors
7:25
that are driving the focus group, which as I've noted is really overpowered
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for lenses like these, considering the elements are small, only a 49 millimeter front filter thread
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So none of the glass in here is particularly big, which means you've got lots of torque
7:38
without needing a whole lot to push around. And so the bi-price, product of that is that you get really, really fast, very quiet, very accurate auto focus
7:46
And there's just nothing to complain about when it comes to autofocus
7:50
If we take a look at focus pools, you'll see that they are confident, they're smooth
7:54
they're quick, and they are utterly silent. Nothing to hear there
8:08
The only negative to see, however, is that there is that there is. some focus breathing that you may have noticed and so objects do change size relative to their focus
8:17
position. This can be a downside and a, you know, a single blemish on what is otherwise a really
8:23
great lens for a video work. I mean, you've got a great manual focus ring that is linear
8:28
damped nicely. You know, you've got great autofocus that is precise and silent. So unfortunately
8:34
that focus breathing is going to be a downside for some people, depending on your shooting style
8:39
For me, for my kind of video work, it's really not an issue because I don't do like long distance focus pools
8:45
I tend to do more static type shots. So, but for your shooting style, it may be an issue
8:51
Another positive, however, is that it does a fantastic job of tracking my face
8:55
I'm filming with it right now. But if I approach the camera, as you can see, it just does a great job of transitioning along with me
9:02
even if I move more quickly towards the camera and getting close
9:06
And as I move in and out, it's staying right there with me. without any visible stepping or just anything that kind of jars you out of the experience
9:14
So really a great job there. I also found it a great companion for, you know, just out and shooting photography, whether it
9:21
was a human subject. My son shot this of myself on July the 4th
9:25
My uncle Sam get up and you can see that autofocus was very precise there
9:31
But then if I was out hiking, there's lots of wildflowers along trails and whatever right now
9:36
and I was just, it was a great companion for delivering just incredibly well-focused results
9:42
that, you know, made for images that I really, really liked from the lens. And so all across the board, this is an excellent auto-focus system that gives you precision
9:50
it gives you silence, it gives you speed. What more could you ask for
9:54
And so, as you can see, this lens really does have fantastic autofocus and certainly worth consideration on that front
10:02
And so as you can see, this lens has really great autofocus performance. And I just, there's nothing really to take away to be critical about
10:10
It just really did a great job for me. And so certainly, you know, a lens that should be intriguing on that front if that is a priority for you
10:18
So ultimately, I also talked in the intro that this is my favorite of the series when it comes to the image quality
10:25
And we're going to take a deeper dive to hopefully demonstrate why I believe that to be true
10:30
I been working my way up through starting with the 24 millimeter through the 40 millimeter to this 50 millimeter lens And fortunately as I have gone along I have found less and less to complain about when it comes to Vignette and distortion
10:43
As you can see here, compared to the earlier lenses that had barrel distortion
10:47
we have now flipped to a pincushion distortion, but a mild amount
10:51
It only took me a negative 3 to correct for it. Vignette is also the lowest of the series
10:57
I used a plus 38 and slid the midpoint over to correct 4
11:02
And so as you can see, I was able to get a nice clean manual correction, although you probably
11:09
never need to do anything like that as there are very good profiles that clean everything up very easily
11:14
I like to do the manual correction, though, because it allows us to really examine what's going on
11:18
underneath the hood and the actual optical qualities of the lens. In this case, no problem at all
11:24
Also good is the lens's ability to control lateral chromatic aberrations, which show up along the edge of the frame
11:29
and the transitions from black to white. And you can see that there is no evidence of fringing here
11:35
Very good performance. If we flip over and look at a longitudinal chromatic aberration
11:41
before and after the plane of focus, I see very little before, a little bit of green fringing afterward
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and in real world we're going to see. You see it mostly in a little bit of green fringing
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occasionally in Boka highlights. This image was actually the worst that I saw
11:57
for any kind of longitudinal chromatic aberration, and it is an extreme example
12:02
I had to seriously overexposed to get the look that I wanted here
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because the leaves were in shadow, and it was overcast, but very bright beyond
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You can see in these extremely high contrast areas, there is a little bit of fringing there
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I could correct for it. It's not really that huge of a deal
12:21
but anyway, it is there, as you can see. In this more typical, less extreme example, however
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we do have a very, very high contrast subject, but as you can see, there is relatively little fringing
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just a little bit of that green fringing, and very little of the magenta or red fringing
12:38
before the planet focus, but great detail and the contrast is holding up
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despite this, you know, very high contrast. There was actually some sun coming through
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and illuminating these little wildflowers. So overall, I don't consider longitudinal chromatic aberrations
12:53
to be much of an issue for real-world shooting. Now I found this lens to be the best of the bunch optically in terms of sharpness and contrast, the center of the frame
13:04
That is just fantastically good. As you can see, it's pretty much at perfect levels of contrast and detail
13:10
You can see that bit of more pattern that is beginning from just having such great detail there
13:16
The midframe, if we pan over here, also looks really excellent. You can just see tons of detail in the weave of the paper slash polymer that it's made out of
13:27
And then if we pop down here as we get towards edge, looks great here
13:31
You can see a little bit of softening as we move towards the corner. And as we get here, it still has good detail, but the acuity is not quite as high
13:39
But at the same time, these corners are extraordinarily usable wide open
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It's a very strong performance. This translates to fantastic real-world performance. You know, here, this lock, you can see that at a pixel level on a 50-mixel camera
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the detail on the contrast is just, really fabulous. I mean, there's so much texture information that is there, and that's just a
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fabulous, fabulous job. Likewise for portraits, I refer to this as my Uncle Sam look earlier
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but we'll take a look here now at a pixel level, and you can see that the detail on my face
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is really, really fantastic. So a nice portrait lens, a tiny portrait lens to bring along. Finally
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one other image. I just, I love this image, and I like it globally, but look at it at a pixel level
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Look at the amount of information that is there, the contrast, the color
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That's just fantastic. So the mild stop down to F2.8, it gives you a little bit more contrast in the center of the frame
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I mean, it was great before. Now it's greater. The mid frame, a little bit more contrast
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Down in the corner, it's just a little bit brighter, but not necessarily a whole lot crisper yet in the corner
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If we move on down to F4, you can see that we're starting to get more
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more sharpness there in the corner now. If we take a look at a real world image at F4
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you can see that the acuity here, just all these fine details
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you can just see every single needle that is rendered. And as we pan on down into the corners and the edges
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we can see that detail continues to be really good. And there's just a ton of information here in this frame
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Great contrast. And so this is a beautiful lens when stopped down as well
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Stopping down from F4 to F5.6 produces no real visible improvement in the center of the frame
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Mid-frame, you know, it looks excellent at either aperture. And down in the corners, there is an ever-so-slight improvement
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and so it certainly stop on down if you want to get your maximum performance in the corners
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Now, earlier in the episode, we talked about the close-up performance a bit
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Here we take a closer look and so you can see that we have a nice flat flat plane of focus you know good detail across And you can see that we got actually better detail than what I saw at the 40 millimeter The 40 millimeter has slightly more magnification but not as good performance
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And so this to me is, again, the peak of the series. Now, this shows us, again, the difference in the magnification
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At autofocus, you get 0.18 times and then a closer 0.21 times because you can focus
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focus a little bit closer. In both cases, however, we've got good detail. It's not like it falls apart as you get closer. And so it's a very, very usable magnification figure. And as you can see, it does help to even further blur out that background to make it really nice and creamy. And on that note, I found the bouquet quality to be quite exceptional from this lens. Surprisingly good, really. You can see that it transitions to defocus in a very nice way and extremely creamy. You're just never going to see that
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out of cheaper 50 millimeter lenses. This has a much higher quality of blur
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that I find quite impressive for such a small lens, but also a lens with such a small maximum aperture
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Here's another image I think is quite impressive because first of all, we can look in
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and see that the amount of detail here on all these textures is really fabulous
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But then you can see as you transition towards defocus that that also looks very good
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which many lenses don't achieve both of those things, having great contrast and sharpness while also having a soft defocused area
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The early morning due shot here, you can see that the geometry is fairly decent across the frame
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Very nice circular shots in the middle. There's little bits of fringing here
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You know, this is very, very bright stuff. But overall, the look of the image, I think, is quite great, and I love the transition towards defocus
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Here's another shot that shows off both the bouquet quality, which, as you can see, is really
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really quite nice. It's, you know, hints at what's beyond, but blurs it out nicely. But then if we
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zoom into a pixel level here, just look at how beautiful the rendering of all the fine details
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there is. One final shot to look at for the rendering. There's lots of layers to this image, so
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lots of layers of different areas of focus. And I think that it handles all of them quite well
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And as again, as we look at our subject here, it's just beautiful, beautiful amounts of detail
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really fantastic and then I think the overall different areas of de-focus all look quite good no real
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ugly thing that jars the image to me this is a difficult scene that I think it's done a fabulous job
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with finally flare resistance although there is some clouds in the sky as you can see it was very
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very bright and so I was able to move the camera around and to get it at various positions and I found
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that everything held up nicely here I saw nothing jarring in terms of
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you know, any kind of ghosting artifacts, putting the sun at different positions, at different
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apertures, and overall I just saw good results all across the frame. So on paper, a 50-millimeter
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lens with the maximum aperture of F2.5 doesn't really excite me. But the reality is, is that I
19:07
love the images that I get off of this lens. They really have a great feel to them. Beautiful
19:13
bocah, a great contrast, amazing sharpness. It handles the 50 megapixel. sensor of my Alpha 1 without any kind of problem at all. And as you can tell from the images that you've
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seen to this point, and I'll show you a few more at this point, that it really just produces
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images that have something special about them. Great color, great contrast, just a great overall
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rendering to them. And so this is a lens, I think, that really punches above its weight optically
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with really no serious optical flaw that I can point to. And so that makes it a far more appealing
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lens than what it appears on paper. So if you're someone that is interested in the idea of having
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an extremely compact 50 millimeter prime lens, maybe for street photography, for travel, you know
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or you just want, you like your setup to be small and light. This is a really, really appealing
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lens. I've also found it to be appealing on APSC where it's a great, you know, match. And I kind of
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like the 75 millimeter focal length, which is the, what you get as a full frame equivalent
20:12
when it's mounted on Sony's APSC. And so, This is a lens I think that just could work for a lot of Sony photographers, and I'm really glad that it's here
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I understand not everyone's going to get it. It might be a hard lens to market, but if you give it a try, I suspect you will find, as I did
20:29
that it's a much better lens in actuality than what it appears on paper
20:34
I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you look in the description down below, you can find links to my full text review
20:39
You can also find linkage there to the image gallery where you can check out more photos
20:44
There's buying links. if you want to purchase one for yourself. Beyond that, there's linkage there to purchase some of my merchandise
20:50
follow me on social media, become one of my patrons, or sign it for my newsletter
20:55
And, of course, if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button right here on YouTube
20:59
Ring that bell, and so you get notifications when new content drops. Thanks for watching
21:03
Have a great day and let the light in
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