Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM PZ WR Review

Dustin Abbott

July 20th, 2023

Powerzoom lenses are always a bit of the oddball in the room – caught between video and photography. The PowerZoom function is most reminiscent of the focus on camcorders or similar video cameras, but the cameras that a PZ lens will be mounted on is, at its heart, a device designed first and foremost for photography. Serious cinematographers tend to use more complex focus-follow systems and gearing for their systems, while many of those who are photographers first probably aren’t all that interested in the idea of zooming during video recording even if they do video. That leaves a fairly small niche for these lenses, which in many ways is a shame, as the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ is, in many ways, the perfect all-in-one zoom for Fuji X-mount. It has a great focal range (nearly 6.7x zoom ratio), a constant aperture of F4, quality autofocus via the linear motors, an internally zooming design, and fairly good optics throughout. That focal range is so useful, going from 18mm (27mm full frame equivalence):

to 120mm (183mm full frame equivalence):

The vast, vast majority of photography subjects fall within this range, and I found the lens very useful as a walkaround lens. I personally preferred it to either the 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS or the 16-80mm F4 OIS (though surely some will dispute the latter), but that is with a major caveat: I tested the lens on two bodies that have IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) – the Fujifilm X-H2 and the new X-S20. The one acronym missing from the 18-120mm PZ’s description is OIS – which stands for Optical Image Stabilizer. There is no in-lens stabilization, which is actually very rare for any Fuji zoom lenses with an aperture of F4. If you own a body with IBIS, you may not miss it, but it is a very odd decision in a video specific lens considering how many of Fuji’s cameras don’t have IBIS. Trying to get handheld video without stabilization is a nightmare! This is a lens that should probably only be seriously considered by those that have a camera with IBIS.

If you do own such a camera, Fuji has developed some of the best IBIS systems out there. My X-H2 held the viewfinder perfectly steady with the 18-120mm PZ zoomed out to 120mm, and I was able to easily get 120mm shots with 1/5th of a second shutter speeds (right over 5 stops) and some success going one stop lower to 0.5 second shutter speeds.

I’ve read a number of user reviews since this is a lens that has been on the market for a while before I’m actually reviewing it (it released in September 2022), and most of the criticisms seem to fall around the lack of OIS and some frustrations with the video specific aspects of the lens. I actually feel like the lens would have been better received if they had gone a more conventional route and added OIS rather than the powerzoom functionality.

There is some renewed interest in PZ lenses at the moment due to the release of the TG-BT1 Tripod Grip. I’ve reviewed several such accessories in the past for other platforms, and they are very useful for Bluetooth control, extending your reach for vlogging, a quick tabletop tripod, and even for video capture where you have the major controls right at hand. It’s particularly useful if you have one of the powerzoom lenses (like the kit lens 15-45mm OIS PZ) or the 18-120mm PZ as you can smoothly zoom in our out without grasping a ring of any kind. This definitely adds some versatility and reminds me of using a remote to zoom my camcorder in years past.

I’ve reviewed the 18-120mm PZ on two different camera bodies. One is the compact X-S20 body (which I reviewed here); the second is the larger, higher resolution X-H2 (my review here). The X-H2 is the camera I’ve done the optical tests on, and it is the most demanding platform at the moment for any lens to be tested on. So does this lens make sense? We’ll try to answer those questions and more in this review. If you would prefer to watch your reviews, you can choose to watch my definitive video review below…or just keep reading.

Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Build and Handling

Fuji likes to essentially build the feature list of their lenses right into the name, so if you learn to “speak Fuji” you can quickly get a sense of what a lens does and does not have right from the name. In this case, the name includes LM, WR, and PZ

LM = Linear Motors, Fuji’s premium focus system
WR = Weather Resistance
PZ = Powerzoom

We’ve already mentioned that OIS is missing, but another interesting omission is R, which stands for aperture ring. This is another odd omission, as just about all of Fuji’s other zooms do have an aperture ring. The lack of an aperture ring is less unusual on most other platforms, but this has been one of the defining attributes of lens design on Fuji, so I suspect some photographers will definitely miss it as they are accustomed to using the ring as their point of control for aperture. This most likely means that you will have to assign one of the control wheels to aperture when using the lens.

Fuji has delivered a thoroughly weather sealed lens here with a gasket at the lens mount, internal seals (12 of them!), and a fluorine coating on both the front and rear elements. The latter helps deal with fingerprints or water and makes the elements easier to clean.

The overall shape of the 18-120mm PZ is different from competing zooms because of being an internally zooming design. This obviously will help with the weathersealing, as well, as nothing extends outside the lens during zooming. The dimensions of the XF 18-120mm PZ are 3 (D) x 4.9″ (L) / 77.3 x 123.5 mm with a 72mm front filter thread size. The weight is moderate at 1 lb or 470 g. It has a fairly long and slim lens profile, and while the internal zoom makes it a little longer for storage, there are a number of very positive trade-offs.

The primary one for video work is that this makes for a great gimbal lens. Depending on your gimbal, you may be able to activate the powerzoom feature right from your gimbal controls, and because of it being an internally zooming lens, the weight balance will be the same regardless of what focal length you are selecting.

Most of the physical controls are designed around two functions: zooming and focusing. In the case of zooming, you have three different ways to zoom. One is the typical zoom ring that most photographers will be familiar with (it’s the widest ring in the center of the lens). You can also use the unique Zoom/Focus control ring (the slimmer ring between the zoom ring and the Z/F button). There is also a small lever beneath the Z/F button that can be used for slow, controlled zooming. You would think that with three options here, there would certainly be at least one standout way to zoom the lens, but for stills, at least, that just isn’t the case.

Why?

Because all three approaches involve a “zoom-by-wire” functionality, where the input from the rings is actually routed through the powerzoom motor. Even the main zoom ring requires about five rotations to get from 18 to 120mm. There’s no quick way to zoom, which means that as a photographer, you will probably miss a few shots because you are intent on getting to the focal length you want but can’t quickly get there. It’s also worth noting that the powerzoom motor isn’t silent, so it is possible that you will pick up some sound if shooting in a very quiet environment.

The “rocker-style” zoom ring is a little more useful, as it is position sensitive. If you move it all the way in one direction or another, it will speed up the zoom, and the zoom action will be slower if you press it only partway forward or backward. This is good for smooth, continuous zooming (the main zoom ring will be limited by your wrist rotations, with a pause between them), but it still isn’t fast even if push the rocker all the way forward or backward. I started from 18mm moving as fast as it would allow and counted an easy “3 Mississippis” (roughly 3 seconds) before I reached 120mm. Not a lot of time in an absolute sense, but an eternity if you are desperate to get a shot.

The final option is the small lever/buttons under the Z/F button that allows you to do very slow, very controlled zooms by pressing in one on side of the rocker or the other. You can then release, as the lens will slowly and smoothly continue slowing panning out or in. And I mean slowly. I started a video and initiated the zoom, and it took nearly 30 seconds to go from 18 to 120mm! Obviously this is designed for slow pulls in or out and isn’t useful for much else.

The biggest challenge here is that the lens is not parfocal (focus is not at a consistent point throughout the zoom range), so as you zoom the lens must make small focus adjustments, and I could often see them. You can choose a small focus point and place it where you want, obviously, but what is small at 18mm is going to be huge by 120mm in terms of how much of the frame it occupies, so that almost certainly means that there will be some focus adjustments along the way. This was a lens that REALLY needed to be parfocal and is not. That’s a missed opportunity and is one of the chief complaints from real world users who wanted to love the lens but didn’t because of this.

In many ways the single biggest value of the powerzoom is the ability to remotely control it. That allows for the camera/lens to be tripod mounted and thus have pans in and out without the fear of introducing vibration. The TG-BT1 grip/remote is a good option for that. I break down its function in this short video:

The final piece of the puzzle is the Z/F button. It allows you to switch between Zoom or Focus for the rocker style ring at the back. The idea is to allow for smooth focus racks. It does work, though I found two issues with the actual operation. First, this only works if you want to do relatively small focus changes, because (you guessed it!) focus moves as slowly as the zoom action. A large focus change takes a LONG time even at the fastest setting. The second issue is that it is basically impossible to take pressure off the rocker (say at the end of your focus pull) without jarring the camera. That’s fine if you want to just focus right through your target (you can then cut the jarring out in post), but if you want to pull to your subject and then stay there, it is very difficult to do that smoothly. The upside is that you can do some focus pulls in a way that Fuji’s standard focus rings don’t really allow for, but the execution still isn’t quite there.

One final observation is that the Z/F button has a lot of travel and doesn’t activate until the end of it. You have to push a little harder (and deeper) than what you might expect.

In most other ways the lens feels like standard Fuji fare. It has quality feel to it and has Fuji’s attractive classic semi-gloss black finish.

The included lens hood is is a petal shaped design. As usual, I don’t feel like the hood feels quite as quality as the materials of the lens, and the finish is slightly more matte and seems to get rub-marks and scratches far more easily than the nicer finish on the lens barrel.

There are no other switches on the barrel, as AF/MF is handled via a lever/button on Fuji camera bodies. Thus far Fuji has nothing that is the equivalent of Sony’s “focus hold button” on their lenses, nor is there any option to declick the aperture. That seems like an odd omission in a lens so clearly designed around video.

The minimum focus distance is a not-particularly-close 60cm, but the magnification figure is a very useful 0.20x nonetheless. Here’s a look at MFD:

Up close performance is fairly good, with nice detail and nicely blurred out backgrounds.

You’ve probably been able to pick up on what has been the major issue with the 18-120mm PZ; it has a lot of promising ideas but doesn’t quite deliver on them. There are some key areas where the execution reduces the potential of the lens. On paper, I like a lot of the ideas here, but the lens doesn’t quite live up to expectations in real world use. I love the internally zooming design, the constant aperture, the weather sealing, and the modest weight of the lens. I don’t love the zooming and agree with other users that the aperture ring is missed.

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM Autofocus Performance

The Fujinon XF 18-120mm PZ is equipped with a linear focus motor, which is Fuji’s premium autofocus system. Focus was smooth, quiet, and fast. I had no problems locking on subjects, even if that subject was a bird on the wing.

Focus was also accurate around my bee hive, with the insect detection locking onto the bees as they moved in and out of the hive.

Focus of Nala on the move was also good, with good eye tracking and stickiness:

I startled a flock of gulls near the water, and while focus didn’t start on the gulls (I was bringing the camera up), you can see that focus adjusted and was accurate as I panned across the water to follow them.

Focus breathing was well controlled in my video focus pulls tests. I saw no visible steps during the actual pull, but I did see an unfortunate common Fuji trait – focus traveled the majority of the way but then would have a split second pause before settling on the final focus lock. Fuji still isn’t quite at the level of Sony or Canon in this area. My hand test (where I reach forward and block the view of my face before removing it and allowing focus to come back to my eye) was smoother. Fuji’s AI tracking is quite good, and it seems like focus is more confident if there is one of the “trackable” subjects in frame.

I had my daughter shoot a clip of me approaching in my truck for my Ford Maverick review, and the vehicle was tracked smoothly as it approached the camera and as she panned to capture me passing.

As noted, the lens is not parfocal, so when I filmed the fast zoom clip for my review, you could clearly see focus trying to catch up by the time I reached 120mm. Focus is fast, but not quite fast enough to keep up in that instance. Another problem that could have been solved by a parfocal design.

In general, however, autofocus is good for both stills and video work.

Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Image Quality Breakdown

The Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ has an optical design of 15 elements in 12 groups, and this includes 3 aspherical and 3 ED elements. The MTF chart shows a very strong performance in the center of the frame at both 18mm and 120mm, with some regression near the mid-frame. At 18mm there is a further dip that improves right at the edge of the frame (a unique graph), while at 120mm the MTFs show a steady regression to the corners, which are fairly soft.

The extremely high resolution of the Fujifilm X-H2 (40.2MP) that I’m reviewing the lens on is essentially the most optically demanding platform I review on right now, offering much greater pixel density than the 61MP Sony a7RV or Fujifilm GF100S and its 100MP medium format sensor. I have quickly seen that not every lens holds up well to the demands of this sensor, so this will be a hard test. There were moments that I was pleasantly surprised, however, as in this shot of wildflowers (104mm, F4):

Fuji’s correction profiles are typically quite good, but I’ll turn them off to take a look at the actual lens performance when it comes to vignette and distortion. There is (unsurprisingly) a strong amount of barrel distortion present along with significant vignetting at 18mm:

I corrected the distortion with a +17, and while the manual correction isn’t perfect, the distortion did correct in a fairly linear fashion. Vignette is moderately heavy (nearly three stops) and required a +73 to fully correct.

As you progress through the zoom range, the distortion flips to pincushion style distortion that is progressively stronger as you zoom out. At 12omm it is the strongest, looking like this:

This distortion is nice and linear, and easy to correct, but there is a fair bit (-14 to correct). Vignette isn’t bad at all, however, requiring only a +39 to correct for it. As per usual, Fuji’s correction profiles do a nice job of adjusting for all of these issues.

How about chromatic aberrations? When I went looking for longitudinal chromatic aberrations, I found very little of them either on my test chart on in real world images. There is a very minor amount of fringing before and after the plane of focus on my test chart, but little that shows up in the real world…even with all of those pixels on the X-H2 to reveal them. You can see on these white blossoms that there are no apparent fringing issues:

As we’ll see a little later, however, I did some fringing in harsher outdoor lighting.

I also looked for the lateral chromatic aberrations that show up near the edge of the frame in high transition areas. There are minimal amounts of LaCA, that seem very concentrated at the very edge of the frame:

There’s no deal breaking flaws here. This is actually a pretty good performance for a zoom lens with such a broad zoom ratio.

So how about sharpness? Here’s a look at my test chart that the crops came from (40MP images from the X-H2):

Here’s a look at 18mm F4 crops (about 175% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and corner:

We see essentially what the MTF chart shows: a sharp center, a good mid-frame, and a fairly good corner performance. I’m not wowed by the amount of contrast and rending of fine details, though I’ve seen much worse. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot extra “in the tank” here if you stop the lens down. There’s a very mild improvement of contrast at F5.6, but no further gains at F8 due to diffraction already starting to limit what gains might naturally be there. Here’s a real world image at 18mm, F8 with crops.

You’ll see that detail is good but not exceptional, and the textures aren’t clearly defined even in the center, though the center has more contrast and detail than the crop from the edge of the frame.

Minimum aperture is F22, but you can see that diffraction has completely robbed the image of all sharpness and clarity.

It’s worth observing that very high resolution cameras like the X-H2 or X-T5 are going to be better served by large aperture lenses. They can be stopped down multiple stops before diffraction begins (it typically shows up between F5.6 and F8 and gets progressively worse as the aperture closes down). That allows these lenses to achieve maximum sharpness before diffraction occurs. A lens like the 150-600mm F5.6-8 is already past that diffraction point at its maximum aperture of F8 on the telephoto end, meaning that you can’t stop the lens down to improve sharpness effectively.

Moving on to 35mm shows an almost identical performance to the results at 18mm, though without the odd dip about 2/3rds of the way out. There’s a more consistently linear performance in sharpness, so my outer midframe results definitely look better even if the corners are about equal:

Stopping down to F5.6 gives a mild improvement in contrast. Real world results at landscape apertures look very nice on a global level even if the detail doesn’t pop off the screen at a pixel level.

The results at 50mm are the best yet, with a slight improvement over the 35mm results. There is more contrast and detail, and it shows up across the frame. It’s a mild improvement, but it is there. This real world image looks nice and crisp in the plane of focus:

There’s also slightly more capacity for increased sharpness when stopped down. I noticed a little more improvement than earlier focal lengths when stopping down to F5.6 or F8.

At 90mm the image was definitely softer at F4, though I saw a much more obvious improvement at F5.6 than usual. This real world result at F4 looks pretty good even if contrast isn’t fantastic.

My test results show a similar trend at 120mm. Results are a bit softer across the frame, and the corner performance is considerably weaker than at wider focal lengths. Stopping down to smaller apertures helps somewhat, but the lens never really gets particularly sharp.

This real world shot at F8 shows a pretty good performance in the center (though you can see some “blooming” in the highlights due to weak contrast), but the edge shot is quite soft and shows some strong aberrations on the edges of some of the brighter subjects.

Contrast seemed better at closer distances and easier lighting conditions.

On the flip side, I actually felt like the bokeh quality was pretty good at longer focal lengths for a zoom like this. At closer distances you have the ability to really blur out a background, and this image at 120mm, F4, looks great.

Likewise, the bokeh in this shot of bright leaves against the green background of a rainy day also looks great.

With a less ideal subject to background ratio, things can get a little busier, but not terrible:

You’ll get a little more outlining in the bokeh in the middle of the range (where the lens is sharper), but again, not bad:

I found that flare resistance was fairly good, and for normal, real world use, flare wasn’t a problem.

A typical strength of Fuji lenses is the color rendition, and that continues to be the case here. Colors in this big landscape scene are nice:

Colors on a more intimate level are also good, with nice saturation levels.

Forest greens had a beautiful saturation level – not overdone or garish, but just right.

Optically, this lens is fairly good. Sharpness isn’t exceptional, but it was good enough to produce nice looking images, and there aren’t any critical flaws to report. If you are shooting one of the high-resolution bodies, you’ll have to decide just how much of a pixel peeper you are. Thus far it has seemed to me that only the sharpest of Fuji primes are actually great on this demanding 40MP sensor, but the 18-120mm PZ doesn’t embarrass itself optically, either. Check out the image gallery to see more images for yourself and see if this is the lens for you.

Conclusion

I’m left with mixed emotions at the conclusion of my review period with the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ. There are a number of things I genuinely like about the lens. I love the zoom range, the constant maximum aperture, the quality weather sealed build, the good autofocus, and the internally zooming design. But there are also a number of questionable design decisions that hold back the potential of the lens. The decision to not include OIS will affect some Fuji shooters, and the inability to realize a parfocal lens really limits some of the video-specific elements. Traditional photographers are unlikely to enjoy the zoom mechanics and the lack of an aperture ring. And it’s a shame, as I think Fuji could have gone a more traditional route with this lens and really had a winner.

This the second PZ lens for Fuji, and it obviously occupies a much more premium space than the inexpensive 15-45mm PZ kit lens. There is certain a market for powerzoom lenses, and this 18-120mm PZ is a vast improvement on the performance, build, autofocus, and focal range of the kit lens. I also found the combination of the 18-120 and the new TG-BT1 tripod grip an interesting combination, as it gives you remote control of the powerzoom functionality. It could be particularly useful for working off-camera.

The current price of the 18-120mm PZ sits at $899 USD. That prices it above the more traditional Fujifilm XF 16-80mm F4 OIS lens. There are things I prefer about the 18-120mm, but there’s no question that the 16-80mm will prove more popular with the photography crowd. Some of the execution and ergonomic misses that I’ve detailed have lessened the excitement over this lens. It’s unfortunate, as this is a lens that had a lot of potential. There is a market for this lens, but I would only recommend buying if you are seriously interested in powerzoom.

Pros:

Well made lens
Good build and weather sealing
Internally zooming – great for balancing on gimbal
Smooth, quiet autofocus
Great focal range
Constant aperture
Balances well on a gimbal
Can control powerzoom from gimbal or tripod grip
Bokeh quality fairly good for a big zoom ratio
Low levels of chromatic aberrations in most situations
Beautiful color rendition
Fairly good flare resistance

Cons:

No aperture ring
No OIS
No quick way to zoom
The lens is not parfocal
Bright conditions cause some fringing
Sharpness only okay

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

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Keywords: 18-120mm, 18-120mm F4, XF 18-120mm F4, Fuji, Fuji 18-120mm Review, Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 Review, WR, LM, PZ, Powerzoom, F4, F/4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-S20, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, Wide Angle, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, letthelightin, DA

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ Gallery

Dustin Abbott

July 20th, 2023

Powerzoom lenses are always a bit of the oddball in the room – caught between video and photography. The PowerZoom function is most reminiscent of the focus on camcorders or similar video cameras, but the cameras that a PZ lens will be mounted on is, at its heart, a device designed first and foremost for photography. Serious cinematographers tend to use more complex focus-follow systems and gearing for their systems, while many of those who are photographers first probably aren’t all that interested in the idea of zooming during video recording even if they do video. That leaves a fairly small niche for these lenses, which in many ways is a shame, as the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ is, in many ways, the perfect all-in-one zoom for Fuji X-mount. It has a great focal range (nearly 6.7x zoom ratio), a constant aperture of F4, quality autofocus via the linear motors, an internally zooming design, and fairly good optics throughout. That focal range is so useful, going from 18mm (27mm full frame equivalence):

to 120mm (183mm full frame equivalence):

The vast, vast majority of photography subjects fall within this range, and I found the lens very useful as a walkaround lens. I personally preferred it to either the 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS or the 16-80mm F4 OIS (though surely some will dispute the latter), but that is with a major caveat: I tested the lens on two bodies that have IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) – the Fujifilm X-H2 and the new X-S20. The one acronym missing from the 18-120mm PZ’s description is OIS – which stands for Optical Image Stabilizer. There is no in-lens stabilization, which is actually very rare for any Fuji zoom lenses with an aperture of F4. If you own a body with IBIS, you may not miss it, but it is a very odd decision in a video specific lens considering how many of Fuji’s cameras don’t have IBIS. Trying to get handheld video without stabilization is a nightmare! This is a lens that should probably only be seriously considered by those that have a camera with IBIS.

If you do own such a camera, Fuji has developed some of the best IBIS systems out there. My X-H2 held the viewfinder perfectly steady with the 18-120mm PZ zoomed out to 120mm, and I was able to easily get 120mm shots with 1/5th of a second shutter speeds (right over 5 stops) and some success going one stop lower to 0.5 second shutter speeds.

I’ve read a number of user reviews since this is a lens that has been on the market for a while before I’m actually reviewing it (it released in September 2022), and most of the criticisms seem to fall around the lack of OIS and some frustrations with the video specific aspects of the lens. I actually feel like the lens would have been better received if they had gone a more conventional route and added OIS rather than the powerzoom functionality.

There is some renewed interest in PZ lenses at the moment due to the release of the TG-BT1 Tripod Grip. I’ve reviewed several such accessories in the past for other platforms, and they are very useful for Bluetooth control, extending your reach for vlogging, a quick tabletop tripod, and even for video capture where you have the major controls right at hand. It’s particularly useful if you have one of the powerzoom lenses (like the kit lens 15-45mm OIS PZ) or the 18-120mm PZ as you can smoothly zoom in our out without grasping a ring of any kind. This definitely adds some versatility and reminds me of using a remote to zoom my camcorder in years past.

I’ve reviewed the 18-120mm PZ on two different camera bodies. One is the compact X-S20 body (which I reviewed here); the second is the larger, higher resolution X-H2 (my review here). The X-H2 is the camera I’ve done the optical tests on, and it is the most demanding platform at the moment for any lens to be tested on. So does this lens make sense? You can read my thoughts in my text review, watch the video review below, or just enjoy the photos!

https://youtu.be/OLA0yiOjwtg

Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for loaning me this lens for review. As always, this is a completely independent review and my conclusions are my own.

Photos of the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Photos Taken with the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Keywords: 18-120mm, 18-120mm F4, XF 18-120mm F4, Fuji, Fuji 18-120mm Review, Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 Review, WR, LM, PZ, Powerzoom, F4, F/4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-S20, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, Wide Angle, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, letthelightin, DA

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN (iSeries) Review

Dustin Abbott

May 1st, 2023

Over the past four years Sigma has easily been the most prolific lens developer on Sony FE and Leica L. We went from no full frame options from Sigma on Sony’s mirrorless platform three years ago to 30+ lenses today. And, while I tend to look at these lenses from a Sony slant (I don’t cover Leica L-mount), I do recognize that often these iSeries lenses (a lineup of compact prime lenses that debuted in late 2019) are designed even more with Leica cameras in mind. Compact lenses are even more desirable on compact cameras, and while Sony does have the compact a7C full frame camera, there are a variety of L-mount supporting compact cameras, including some from Sigma itself. The newest lens to join the growing ranks of the compact iSeries lenses is the Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN, which we will refer to as the i17 for brevity in this review. It was announced alongside the 50mm F2, an interesting lens that I reviewed here. If you’re interested in other focal lengths, here is the growing list of iSeries compact prime lenses all hyperlinked to my review of them.

I’ve noted that Sigma’s marketing language for the iSeries is typical marketing word salad (impressive words without much grounding in reality), but the premise for the series is sound. Sigma has recognized that there are multiple segments within the mirrorless market, and those segments have different priorities. One group wants maximum performance in aperture and optics, and these are served by Sigma’s larger ART series (like the excellent 20mm F1.4 DN ART), but there is a secondary market who bought into the mirrorless vision of smaller and lighter while retaining the performance. This second group is the target audience for the iSeries. The iSeries lenses are beautiful crafted, very tactile, but are also much smaller and lighter than other premium lenses. I’m a fan of the premise, myself, and have liked most of the iSeries lenses quite a bit.

As time has passed, there has been an additional bifurcation of the iSeries into two lines with different priorities. It gets a little “lost in translation”, but Sigma describes the distinction as, “Difference between the lineup that pursuits “supreme compactness” and that “combines superior image quality with everyday use”. Some of that makes about as much sense as the “Contemporary” designation (aren’t all new lenses “contemporary”?), but essentially the way it plays out in the real world is that some of these lenses pursue compact size at the cost of a few things, most notably maximum aperture. There are a 45mm and 90mm that have F2.8 apertures, one (24mm) that has a F3.5 aperture, and this compact 17mm has but a F4 aperture. The other line all have maximum apertures of F2 and are a little higher end optically, though they they are a bit larger (more medium size lenses than really compact ones).

But while the maximum aperture isn’t huge here, there is something very appealing about the notion of being able to carry a very wide angle of view (103.7°) in such a very compact package. This is a full frame lens that is barely over 50mm long and can use traditional filters. There are going to be a lot of opportunities to use a lens like this to compliment longer focal lengths. So should the new Sigma jump onto your wish list for an extremely portable wide angle option? I’ll explore the strengths and weaknesses of the lens in this review. So now you have a choice: watch the video review below or read on to get the full picture.

Thanks to Gentec (Sigma’s Canadian Distributor) for sending me a pre-release review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7IV along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

Sigma i17 Build and Handling

I’ve been a fan of the iSeries design philosophy. I love the all-metal construction, attention to detail, and beautiful handling. Sigma has very intentionally crafted another lens that is both aesthetically and functionally pleasing. The first thing that stood out to me about the 17mm F4 is how extremely small it is. It is just 64mm in diameter (2.5″) and 50.8mm in length (2″). It is 2mm shorter in Leica L mount. We have a 55mm front filter thread. The i17 weighs just 220g (7.8oz). The closet comparison I can think of on the Sony E mount is Samyang’s 18mm F2.8 from their “Tiny” series, which is 63.5 x 60.5 mm (about 10mm longer) but weighs only 145g due to having a very plasticky construction. The two lenses can’t really be compared in terms of build, as the Sigma is beautifully constructed of high quality materials, while the Samyang is, umm, light.

Sigma has chosen to position the i-Series lenses under the Global Vision division of “Contemporary”. Typically the lenses branded Contemporary carry Sigma’s lowest level of build, with Sport lenses given the most robust build while Art lenses land in the middle. The build of the i-Series, however, is arguably nicer than that of the ART series, and cosmetically every bit as nice as the Sport lenses (though the Sport lenses receive a much higher degree of weather sealing). The positioning of the iSeries lenses into the Contemporary lineup may have more to do with optical design, however, as I’ve had internal discussions with Sigma employees and it seems the idea is that ART lenses should be well-corrected optically without needing a lot of software or profile corrections while Contemporary lenses may require some electronic correction to achieve optimal performance. Frankly I have not found that to be a hard and fast rule, however. Some ART series lenses still need a fair bit of correction and some Contemporary lenses need little, so I think it comes down to the unique engineering of each lens.

In many ways these i-Series lenses remind me of two things: 1) classic lenses like the SMC Takumar lenses (which I own about 5 of), and part of why I love them is their beautiful timeless construction that is all metal and glass – and – 2) cine lenses where the aperture and focus rings are raised rather than flush with the barrel and have wider, deeper ribs that accommodate gearing (something that cinematographers often do but stills photographers almost never do). We’ve got a similar design element in the i-Series.

The Sigma i17 is made all of metal alloys, up to and including the lens hood. The lens hood itself is a beautifully crafted piece with a great tactile feel to the metal and ribbing, and it has an added practical value that there is plenty of grip friction due to the ribbing that makes it easy to remove. I love the way that the vertical ribs of the two rings flows right into the lens hood. I appreciate that the hood doesn’t looked “tacked on”, however, and to me the lens looks completed with the lens hood in place because the design language of the lens carries on into the lens hood. There’s a nice “flow” to the design. This lens feels like a miniaturized premium lens in a similar way to the feel of the Zeiss Loxia lenses.

Sigma has adopted the inclusion of an aperture ring on many of their DN series lenses (DN indicates that the lenses is designed specifically for mirrorless, while DG designates that the lens is designed for full frame cameras). It works just like Sony G Master lenses where one has the option of selecting A (Automatic) and controlling aperture from within the camera like most lenses, but then one can also manually select aperture in one-third stop detents. There is a nice extra bit of friction between the A position and the manual section which will help avoid any inadvertent bumping between the two choices. The aperture ring (like everything on the lens) is beautifully engineered, and has very precise, definite movement and feel for each of the detents. Some people question the necessity of an aperture ring (particularly one that cannot be declicked for video aperture racking), but I can say for myself that I personally strongly prefer to have an aperture ring even for stills. I find it helps me to be more intentional about the use of aperture and plan in advance for what aperture will best suit my shot.

Another solid addition is the AF/MF switch on the side of the barrel. This is something that many mirrorless lenses lack, but I still find an actual physical switch the quickest and easiest way to move between autofocus and manual focus. The F2 lenses have the AF/MF switch mounted transversely, which I would preferred here as it fits into the tight space better. As it stands the raised knurls on the aperture ring can make it hard to engage the switch when in the AF position because there is just a few millimeters of clearance between the ring and the switch. A subtle positive touch here is that the paint exposed when in AF is white, while the exposed paint when in MF mode is black. It’s a quick visual clue. Sigma’s ART series DN lenses include a focus hold button as well, but that’s not a feature we’ve seen on the iSeries lenses.

There is also a manual focus ring. The focus ring, like the aperture ring, is a “by-wire” system, meaning that input on either the focus ring or the aperture ring is electronically communicated rather than through a direct mechanical coupling. This means that input on the focus ring or the aperture ring will not create any physical changes unless the lens is attached to a camera and powered on. The focus ring has a nice feel to it, and Sigma has done a good job emulating traditional manual focus by designing a high quality focus ring that actually has some weight to it. It is worth noting that Sigma has released a firmware update for its L-mount lenses that enables the user to have control over whether the focus ring operates in a linear or non-linear fashion.

Like most of the iSeries lenses, Sigma is leveraging the all-metal construction to give consumers an option when it comes to the front lens cap. There is a traditional pinch-style plastic lens cap included, but the lens also ships with a magnetic cap that pops easily into place. I find that it works better if you are using the lens without the hood, as reaching in to remove it with the hood fixed is quite difficult. The lens hood is fairly shallow here, but I find the only way I can removed the magnetic cap is to hook a fingernail under a ridge on the side, and it isn’t always quick or reliable. I’ll confess that for me, personally, the magnetic caps have proved more gimmick than revolutionary, and I just use the traditional pinch cap. Your mileage may vary, of course. I know that some people love the magnetic caps.

The lens does have a weather sealing gasket, though there are no other internal seals in the lens. There is no image stabilization (though almost no prime lenses do, so I don’t exactly look for it). You’ll have to rely on IBIS if your camera is so equipped.

The aperture iris has seven rounded aperture blades, and this helps keep the aperture shape fairly circular when stopped down, though that’s going to be less of a concern with a wide angle lens that has maximum aperture of F4. The specular highlights near the edge of the frame suffer from the strong distortion from the lens – they are obviously stretched and elongated. The correction profile doesn’t fix this. Pretty “bokeh balls” (specular highlights) are not going to be a particular strength of this lens.

Minimum focus distance here is 12cm or 4.8″, which is really close! The distance from the sensor to the end of the lens hood is right over 9cm, which leaves you less than 3cm of working distance. You will almost certainly want to remove the lens hood when working up close, as there’s a good chance you’ll shade your subject with it. If you can get that close, you can produce a very high nearly 0.28% magnification (1:3.6). Here’s what MFD from the Sigma looks like:

Distortion gets exaggerated when you are that close (you’ll note the plane of focus is not flat at all), so you either need to compose as “flat” as possible to avoid any exaggeration, or use that creatively, like this:

Unlocking the close focus abilities of the lens takes some work, but I do appreciate the inclusion. It adds versatility to the lens, and also means that when doing video work you won’t have to worry about exceeding the minimum focus distance as you’ll be bumping into your subject by then!

The Sigma 17mm F4 is the widest lens in the series thus far, and is wider than many of the lenses I could think of that might compete, though it also has a smaller maximum aperture than any of those lenses. The price point of $599 is much higher than the cheaper alternatives from Samyang or Tamron, and is high enough that the Sony 20mm F1.8 G comes into the picture at the higher end ($898) if you want a lens with a much larger maximum aperture. Here’s a look at where the Sigma slots in with these alternatives.

I remain a fan of the iSeries design formula, and the i17 is no exception. It feels beautiful in the hands, and both the aperture and manual focus rings move nicely. The iSeries is not as feature rich as some recent lenses from Sony or other brands (no focus hold button, declick aperture option, etc…), but frankly it would have been hard to fit much more on such a compact lens. I really value compact lenses that are also well-made and high performing, as they tend to be the lenses that I reach for most often for practical reasons.

Sigma 17mm F4 DN Autofocus

Sigma continues to utilize a stepping focus motor (STM) in these smaller lenses as the elements are smaller and lighter and require less overall power than, say, an F1.4 lens. I have no problem with this decision, as focus is snappy and quiet. A wide angle lens with a small maximum aperture is never going to put too much stress on a focus system, but that doesn’t change the fact that the focus system did pretty much everything that I would expect it to do.

I used the lens got get some wide angle perspective on a basketball game, and found that it did fine tracking the action there, though again depth of field means that only minimal focus changes are needed at F4 since so much is already in focus.

I worked at tracking Nala as it can sometimes be hard for a lens to grab focus initially on a small, fast moving animal. The i17 did pretty well, however, though in that kind of lighting the maximum aperture of F4 meant that I had really jack up the ISO to prevent everything from being a blurry mess due to motion blur.

I saw good results when I got close enough to a subject that there were some things actually out of focus, though in many cases just about everything in frame will be in focus.

During my focus pull test I heard no focus noise despite working in a near silent environment. Focus pulls were smooth and quick, and made more so by the fact that there are A) minimal focus changes to be made and B) there is next to focus breathing. I also saw a good result when doing my hand test (where I block the lens from viewing my face and then remove it to see how confidently focus returns to the eye), with a smooth transition back to my eye once the blocking hand was removed.

This will make the 17mm F4 a nice gimbal lens. The light weight, wide angle of view, and quality focus make it a nice option for vlogging or just getting a wide angle of view for video work. It’s also worth noting that 17mm is wide enough to also be useful on APS-C (25.5mm equivalent), and the lens is certainly small and light enough to be a natural fit there.

As per usual, I’ll add the warning label: the burst rate on Sony’s sports cameras will be limited to 15FPS rather then the potential 20/30FPS that Sony’s sports bodies can achieve with a Sony lens. That’s true of all third party lenses on Sony FE. No such limitation will exist on Leica L, where Sigma is technically a “first party”. It also isn’t supported by Sony’s Focus Breathing Compensation, but that’s basically a moot point here because there really isn’t any focus breathing to compensate for.

In short, the focus system is excellent, and I have no really concerns to report.

Sigma i17 Image Quality Breakdown

Sigma has done a pretty remarkable job as a third party lensmaker in that people expect a new Sigma release to automatically be a very high performing lens optically. While the 17mm does have a few optical shortcomings, sharpness isn’t one of them. This is a very sharp lens from F4 on all across the frame, and can deliver beautifully detailed results even on my 50MP Sony Alpha 1:

It is rare for a wide angle, wide aperture lens like this to suffer much from longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA), and that’s true here. I see only a faint amount of green/blue fringing around some specular highlights, but next to none on the facets of the crystal in the foreground.

I saw little evidence of lateral chromatic aberrations (LaCA) along the edge of the frame in either my chart tests or any real world images (all of these bare branches are prime breeding grounds for LaCA:

Sigma lenses enjoy good profile corrections on either Sony or Leica platforms, but we’ll look past the corrections to the optics of the lens itself. Here’s a look at my vignette and distortion chart, with the uncorrected result on the left and a manually corrected result on the right.

There’s some heavy barrel distortion (manually corrected with a +12) and a significant amount of vignette (I corrected it with a +78). The distortion has a bit of a mustache profile, so it doesn’t manually correct particularly well. That’s about three stops of vignette in the corners, and if left uncorrected that vignette does penetrate quite deeply into the frame, giving images a certain look that is a little “heavy”…even at F6.3:

The correction profile does a cleaner job of correcting the distortion, so you’ll want to use that if you have any straight lines in the frame:

Even this cityscape really benefited from using the correction profile to straighten out the fence on the left side of the image.

This is some significant distortion, but I’ve seen worse. Much worse.

The Tamron 20mm F2.8 OSD isn’t as wide, and I had to dial in a +42 to correct the distortion (vs +12 for the Sigma). The Canon 16mm F2.8 STM was worse still – I had to dial in a +70 to correct it! Bottom line is that for a compact wide angle lens this really isn’t too bad of a performance, so I wanted to put things into perspective.

We’ll move on to testing sharpness. All of the tests and photos shown in this review are done on the 50MP Sony Alpha 1, which is Sony’s second-highest resolution full frame mirrorless camera at the time of this review. Here’s a look at the test chart we’re using for the tests.

If we look closely wide open at F4 (crops are at roughly 170%), we find that the lens produces extremely strong resolution results all across the frame.

The i17 also showed very good centering, with consistent sharpness everywhere I looked.

The strength of a lens like this is not in producing shallow depth of field but rather in having a whole scene in focus at “larger” apertures. This shot at F5.6, for example, has everything in focus from the snow in the foreground to the distant tree line beyond the bay.

I see little difference across much of the frame if stopped down to F5.6, but the corners do show a visible improvement in contrast.

I would say that you’ll only see the slightest bit more in the edges at F8, though I don’t really see a diffraction hit elsewhere, so it seems to be worth using even on a high resolution body. This F8 shot shows a lot of punch!

Minimum aperture is F22, though by that point diffraction has softened the image quite a bit. I typically recommend using F11 as a practical limit if you are using a higher resolution camera.

Obviously this is a very sharp optic. While it is considerably more expensive than a lens like the Samyang AF 18mm F2.8, it is also a higher performing lens.

This isn’t really a “bokeh” lens as there are limited opportunities to really blur out backgrounds, but here’s a few shots to give you a sense of what you can do if you get very close to your subject.

This lens is more about getting lots of things in focus than in getting them OUT of focus.l

Flare resistance is extremely strong, and I really couldn’t make the lens do much of anything negative with the sun in the frame.

The one thing I will note is that I didn’t actually find it particularly easy to make a nice sunburst with the i17. The final shot above shows fairly good conditions for creating one, but I just didn’t feel like the blades produced a highly distinct effect.

Color rendition was nice, and besides the vignette and distortion, I didn’t really see a lot to complain about optically…so I won’t. You can check out even more photos by visiting the lens image gallery here. This is a very strong lens optically and one that has few flaws. It’s a solid choice if you want something smaller and lighter yet high performing.

Conclusion

I was intrigued when I pulled the little Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN out of the box. The notion of getting a very wide angle of view in an extremely compact form factor is always appealing, as there are many occasions where I like to bring along a lens just like this to help augment shooting with a longer focal length. You could pair this with a 24-70mm or 28-70mm zoom to fill in the wider shots, and it is a very easy lens to throw into the bag or even a pocket to bring along. The fact that it can also produce great looking images is icing on the cake.

The iSeries always delights me with the tactile feedback of the designs. They feel exquisitely well made, with unique textures and design language that speaks of a company that really does love to produce beautiful lenses. This 17mm F4 backs up those good looks with nice optics as well.

The final hurdle for most of the iSeries lenses will be the price. At $599 USD, this isn’t a cheap lens, but it’s also quite a premium little lens. The challenge is perceptual. A big ART series lens at $900 feels like a value, and while this is a very quality little lens, the small size makes some people feel like they are getting less of a value. The iSeries has always been for a certain type of photographer, however, and I think that for the right buyer this lens will be a delight. It’s easy to bring along, makes beautiful images, and has a very useful focal length for a lot of things. The Sigma 17mm F4 DN is one of the more unique additions to the iSeries, but I, for one, welcome it.

Pros:

Beautifully crafted lens with a lot of loving touches
Has a weather sealing gasket
STM focus motor is quick and quiet
CA fairly well controlled
Excellent wide open sharpness
Good color and contrast
Good flare resistance
Extremely compact

Cons:

Might be perceived as slightly expensive
Some obvious vignette and distortion
The AF/MF switch can be a little hard to engage due to space

Purchase the Sigma 17mm F4 DN @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Keywords: Sigma 17mm F4 DN, Sigma 17mm, Sigma 17mm, Sigma 17mm review, Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN, DG, DN, iSeries, Contemporary, 17mm, Ff, f/4, Review, Leica L, Sony E, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Sony a9, sony a7III, sony a7RIV, a9II, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1 let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, #SIGMA, #SIGMA17mmF4Contemporary, #SIGMAContemporary, #SIGMAContemporaryPrime, #SIGMADGDN, #Iseries, #SIGMAIseries

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Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN (iSeries) Image Gallery)

Dustin Abbott

May 1st, 2023

Over the past four years Sigma has easily been the most prolific lens developer on Sony FE and Leica L. We went from no full frame options from Sigma on Sony’s mirrorless platform three years ago to 30+ lenses today. And, while I tend to look at these lenses from a Sony slant (I don’t cover Leica L-mount), I do recognize that often these iSeries lenses (a lineup of compact prime lenses that debuted in late 2019) are designed even more with Leica cameras in mind. Compact lenses are even more desirable on compact cameras, and while Sony does have the compact a7C full frame camera, there are a variety of L-mount supporting compact cameras, including some from Sigma itself. The newest lens to join the growing ranks of the compact iSeries lenses is the Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN. It was announced alongside the 50mm F2, an interesting lens that I reviewed here. If you’re interested in other focal lengths, here is the growing list of iSeries compact prime lenses all hyperlinked to my review of them.

I’ve noted that Sigma’s marketing language for the iSeries is typical marketing word salad (impressive words without much grounding in reality), but the premise for the series is sound. Sigma has recognized that there are multiple segments within the mirrorless market, and those segments have different priorities. One group wants maximum performance in aperture and optics, and these are served by Sigma’s larger ART series (like the excellent 20mm F1.4 DN ART), but there is a secondary market who bought into the mirrorless vision of smaller and lighter while retaining the performance. This second group is the target audience for the iSeries. The iSeries lenses are beautiful crafted, very tactile, but are also much smaller and lighter than other premium lenses. I’m a fan of the premise, myself, and have liked most of the iSeries lenses quite a bit.

As time has passed, there has been an additional bifurcation of the iSeries into two lines with different priorities. It gets a little “lost in translation”, but Sigma describes the distinction as, “Difference between the lineup that pursuits “supreme compactness” and that “combines superior image quality with everyday use”. Some of that makes about as much sense as the “Contemporary” designation (aren’t all new lenses “contemporary”?), but essentially the way it plays out in the real world is that some of these lenses pursue compact size at the cost of a few things, most notably maximum aperture. There are a 45mm and 90mm that have F2.8 apertures, one (24mm) that has a F3.5 aperture, and this compact 17mm has but a F4 aperture. The other line all have maximum apertures of F2 and are a little higher end optically, though they they are a bit larger (more medium size lenses than really compact ones).

But while the maximum aperture isn’t huge here, there is something very appealing about the notion of being able to carry a very wide angle of view (103.7°) in such a very compact package. This is a full frame lens that is barely over 50mm long and can use traditional filters. There are going to be a lot of opportunities to use a lens like this to compliment longer focal lengths. So should the new Sigma jump onto your wish list for an extremely portable wide angle option? I’ll explore the strengths and weaknesses of the lens in this review. So now you have a choice: watch the video review, read the text review, or just enjoy the photos below.

Thanks to Gentec (Sigma’s Canadian Distributor) for sending me a pre-release review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7IV along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

Images of the Sigma 17mm F4

Photos Taken with the Sigma 17mm f4

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Keywords: Sigma 17mm F4 DN, Sigma 17mm, Sigma 17mm, Sigma 17mm review, Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN, DG, DN, iSeries, Contemporary, 17mm, Ff, f/4, Review, Leica L, Sony E, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Sony a9, sony a7III, sony a7RIV, a9II, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1 let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, #SIGMA, #SIGMA17mmF4Contemporary, #SIGMAContemporary, #SIGMAContemporaryPrime, #SIGMADGDN, #Iseries, #SIGMAIseries

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Sony E 10-20mm F4 PZ G Review

Dustin Abbott

June 7th, 2022

I’ve been openly questioning of Sony’s commitment to its APS-C platform, as both camera and lens releases in that space have been few and far between over the past 3 years. Sony’s development on full frame has been rather frenzied during that same period, with a number of new camera and what I consider a golden age for lens development. I’ve reviewed one lens after another that I really, really liked in the full frame space, which tells me that Sony has really hit its stride as a camera lens maker. But APS-C has seemed to be on the back burner. And while I still see a lot of room for Sony to deliver a robust sports-oriented APS-C body (something to contend with the new Canon EOS R7 would be nice!), they are taking large strides to shore up the wide angle end of their APS-C catalog with three releases: the E 10-20mm F4 PZ OSS (Powerzoom), the E 15mm F1.4 G, and the Sony E 11mm F1.8 lens. This isn’t the first time that Sony has done some of its better APS-C lenses in bunches, as the last “G” lenses (mid-tier superior lenses) for APS-C came together in 2019: the Sony E 70-350mm F4.5-6.3 G OSS (my review here) and the Sony E 16-55mm F2.8 G. I’ve been fortunate enough to have gotten to spend some time with all three of these new releases, and so I’ll follow up my coverage of the 15mm F1.4 G (my review here) with the zoom in this lineup – the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G (which we’ll simply refer to as the 10-20PZ in this review).

The key here is the PZ, which refers to PowerZoom. Sony has had an existing wide angle zoom for APS-C in the form of the E 10-18mm F4 OSS lens, but there is a recognition that more and more photographers actually do a mix of photos and video. We call these “hybrid” photographers, and it is clear that Sony has been designing its cameras with this in mind. Their a6300 was a breakthrough in this regard, allowing photographers to capture really good 4K video in an APS-C body at a time when most of the competition was stuck at 1080P. But there also needs to be some concessions to the unique needs of video in lenses as well, and that’s where the PowerZoom (PZ) comes into play. The 10-20PZ is essentially an APS-C counterpart to the recent full frame FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G lens with a full frame equivalent of 15-30mm (1.5x APS-C crop factor). The PowerZoom capability means that not only can you smoothly zoom in and out with the switch on the side of the lens (with much smoother zooms than you can achieve with a ring), but if you have the right accessory (a Bluetooth remote or wireless shooting grip like the GP-VPT2BT or even just using the Sony app), you have the option of off-camera control. This gives the smoothest results of all, of course, as you can have the camera on a tripod and have no vibration introduced into the process. This is a next level option for video shooters, and Sony has set the price point actually below that of the 10-18mm F4 despite the larger zoom range and new features (though the new lens loses the Optical Stabilizer that the older lens had).

Sony reserves the G designation for its mid-tier lenses and G Master for its superior lenses, and I’ve found that there is a lot of value to be found in the G lineup. These lenses have more advanced features like weather sealing and a focus hold button, and Sony has packed a lot features into a very small package here.

Superior G Lens image quality with two ED elements and one ED Aspherical element
Linear motor autofocus
A focus on video performance, with minimal focus breathing
Linear manual focus for more precise manual focus and repeatable focus changes
More physical controls, including an AF/MF switch, PowerZoom control, and a focus hold button
Dust and moisture resistant design
Internally focusing and zooming design
Close minimum focus of 20cm (Autofocus = 0.14x magnification) or 17cm (Manual Focus = 0.18x magnification)
World’s smallest ultra-wide APS-C zoom

This is a beautiful, well crafted lens that is in many ways similar to Sony’s full frame series of recent G primes (24mm F2.8, 40mm F2.5, and 50mm F2.5 G primes – click the hyperlinks for reviews of each lens). Though small and light, it feels premium, and its optical performance certainly backs that up, delivering beautifully detailed images all across the frame even at F4:

The final retail price hasn’t been announced as of the time of this review, though Sony gives a range of $700-800 USD. That’s not cheap, but it is certainly much cheaper and smaller than the full frame 16-35mm PZ lens, which will retail at $1200 USD. This will almost certainly become an indispensable tool for those who do vlogging or want a wide angle lens with zoom capabilities. The constant maximum aperture of F4 means that exposure doesn’t change as you zoom, giving you even more flexibility for both stills and video.

Ultimately you will have to decide if the premium price point matches the premium performance, but hopefully this review will help you make an informed decision. If you prefer to watch reviews, you can check out my detailed video review below.

I want to thank Sony Canada (and Gentec) for the loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. The opinions here are completely my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a6400 along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

Sony 10-20PZ Build, Design and Handling

One of the key areas of emphasis with each of these three new lenses is for them to be compact. The 10-20PZ definitely lives up to that, with a squat profile that is wider (68mm/2.67″) than it is long (55mm/2.16″). The 62mm front filter thread is not as common as the 58mm or 67mm filter sizes that flank it, but there are a number of lenses that share this filter size.

That makes this lens even smaller than the 10-18mm F4 OSS, which measured 70.1 x 63.5 mm. It’s also lighter at 179g (6.3oz) vs 225g (7.94oz). The closest competing lens is Tamron’s 11-20mm F2.8 RXD (my review here), which weighs in at 335g and is 30mm longer, though, to be fair, that lens also has a maximum aperture of F2.8.

All of this boils down to the fact that Sony has managed to deliver a high performing lens that is truly compact, again proving that premium doesn’t have to mean “big”.

As noted in the intro, Sony has given the 10-20mm F4 PZ G some premium features, including a weather sealed build (dust and moisture resistant). I don’t have access to the diagram to count the seal points, but I have seen one, and it showed seals at the vital internal points (rings and switches) along with the rubber gasket at the lens mount shown here.

Unlike the 15mm F1.4 G lens, the 10-20PZ has no aperture ring. I suspect there simply wasn’t room in the design, as they already have a lot packed in here. My least favorite part of the design is how close the two existing rings are, as they are so close together (and so similarly sized) that it is very easy to grab the wrong one. I’ve definitely ended up zooming when I wanted to manually focus (to take advantage of the closer minimum focus distance). I much prefer using the PowerZoom toggle to zoom either in video or stills as I find the zoom ring less intuitive to use. It needs to be there in case someone is doing some kind of gearing instead, but I suspect that most people will use the toggle like myself.

Speaking of that toggle: it is definitely the smoothest way to zoom in or out while shooting video. That’s true if you’re handholding for video, and of course even more true if you are working off a tripod or gimbal and zooming remotely via Bluetooth or the app. The amount of zoom range will depend on whether or not you have Sony’s Smart Zoom feature enabled on your camera. Smart Zoom allows you to take full advantage of the sensor and means that you can zoom in a bit without relying on loss of quality due to a digital zoom (where pixels are lost). When shooting stills, I could see an on screen (or in viewfinder) display that shows the range between 10-20mm, but when shooting video (With Smart Zoom enabled) I could zoom in an additional 1.5x beyond 20mm (or to roughly 30mm). That’s going to come in handy, obviously, and the toggle on the lens enables me to take advantage of that feature in an easy way that I don’t typically have access to with other lenses.

The manual focus ring moves smoothly, and, as noted, behaves in a linear fashion to allow for focus repeatability, which is very important in video work so that you can set up precise and repeatable focus pulls. The focus action is very light, however, and lacks the precision of the best focus rings.

We’ve also got a focus hold button (which can be programmed to a variety of functions in the camera menu) along with an AF/MF switch, which I always welcome as the most logical and efficient means of switching between the two. The addition of the zoom toggle means that the AF/MF switch is located quite low, so you’ll have to retrain your muscle memory on where to reach for it.

The included lens hood is petal shaped, flares out a bit, and is relatively shallow. It can be reversed for storage without adding too much bulk to the footprint of the lens in a bag.

There is no image stabilization (OSS) in the lens, so you’ll have to depend on in camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped. This is the biggest omission from the previous 10-18mm lens, and as I was primarily testing on an a6400 (which has no IBIS), I sorely missed that stabilization when grabbing “run and gun” video. The lightweight combination of camera and lens makes handholding video without stabilization difficult.

Inside we have a seven bladed aperture with rounded blades. The aperture shape will initially stay rounded when stopping the lens down but will eventually become polygonal at smaller apertures. When you start with a maximum aperture of F4 and a maximum focal length of 20mm, however, the chances of having significant bokeh at aperture values of F8 or F11 are unlikely.

Minimum focus distance here is 20cm when autofocusing, but you can focus a bit closer (17cm) when manually focusing, which gives you a significantly higher magnification level (0.14x vs 0.18x). The latter figure is obviously much more useful, so bear that in mind when you want to get really close. And that is very close, by the way. It feels like you are about to bump into your subject that distance, as that is 17cm from the sensor…and you have to subtract the length of the lens (and possibly lens hood). With the hood attached I measure 9.5cm, which means that you are only 7.5cm from your subject. Here’s what the manual focus magnification figure looks like:

That’s quite useful, obviously, and we’ve still got a strong optical performance at that close distance, with a fairly flat plan of focus, good contrast, and good detail. I was very impressed with the detail on this handheld minimum focus distance shot:

The F4 aperture along with the wide angle of view means that the background isn’t particularly blurred, but the detail is great. The big upside for video work is that you can get very close to subjects and still continue to get autofocus results. Lenses with a long minimum focus distance can be very limiting when shooting video.

This is a nicely executed little package, with a nice mix of features and compactness. The Sony 10-20PZ is proof positive of the size and weight savings you can achieve when you do dedicated engineering for a smaller sensor size.

Sony PZ 10-20mm F4 G Autofocus Performance

The Sony 70-350mm F4.5-6.3 G and 16-55mm F2.8 G lenses had previously been Sony’s only APS-C lenses to be given Sony’s linear motor focus system, but Sony has changed all of that with these most recent releases. Each of the 11mm F1.8, 10-20 PZ, and 15mm F1.4 G have received linear focus motors (and the 15mm received two to help drive its larger elements!). The linear focus system works great on the 10-20PZ, with fast, accurate, and silent autofocus. I spent more time on the video side with this lens, as that is really the primary purpose of it. I tracked people playing basketball and the lens had no problem keeping up with action throughout.

It helps that so much remains in focus at this aperture/focal length combination, but you could also see that subjects were being tracked and that focus was in the right place. I would recommend watching the video review if you want more illustrative content on the video focus performance, which is hard to demonstrate in a text review.

I tested for focus transitions and confidence in tracking my face (like when holding up my hand in front of the camera and then allowing it to refocus on my face). Everything was smooth and confident. Sony has also prioritized minimizing focus breathing in the optical design of these new “hybrid” lenses, and while focus breathing isn’t non-existent, it is minimal.

Focus speed for stills was excellent, with quick acquisitions of subjects at close or further distances.

Here’s another shot that shows accurate focus (closer subjects illustrate this better than distant subjects with a wide angle lens).

I had no problem with slightly further subjects, either, with focus quickly and accurately locking on.

Throughout my test period I don’t think that I ever heard any noise associated with focus at all whether shooting videos or stills. The linear motor focus system delivered fast, quiet, and accurate results. This is a premium focus system…and it shows. I have some hope that a future Sony APS-C camera with a more robust focus system will be able to take even more advantage of lenses like this.

Sony 10-20PZ Image Quality

First of all, let’s take a look at that focal range. I think this interior shot shows the flexibility of the zoom range, first at 10mm:

…and then at 20mm:

It’s a little less dramatic outside, but you can see a significant difference in the framing options presented here.

The equivalent of 15mm (full frame) on the wide end is very wide, and definitely allows for some dramatic results.

The MTF charts that I’ve seen from this lens suggested a very high level of performance, and that’s reflected in the real world results. It’s very important for a lens that starts at F4 to already be sharp at F4, and that’s what we’ve got here. You can see from this real world (handheld) F4 result that detail and contrast are excellent at a pixel level.

The lens performs well in a lot of the technical merits, including a good control of LoCA (Longitudinal Chromatic Aberrations). I don’t see fringing in the transition at the window sill or beyond in the bokeh highlights.

Even more important in a wide angle lens is to control lateral CA (LaCA) that show up near the edges of the frame (and can ruin landscape and architectural shots). Note that there is minimal fringing on the branches against the bright sky here.

That’s a good start in a wide angle zoom, but how about distortion and vignette? I’ve spent time with all three of these new wide angle lenses from Sony, and it is clear that when they were making engineering choices, it was distortion that was the area they let slip in order to keep the lenses compact. We’ve got a significant amount of barrel distortion at 10mm:

To achieve my manually corrected result I needed to dial in a lot of distortion correction (+39) and a moderate amount of vignette correction (+53, or right over two stops). The latter is not really a big deal (I’ve seen MUCH worse), but the former will definitely need correction. My manual correction showed only a bit of a mustache pattern, meaning that it is harder to get a perfect manual correction, but the good news is that as a first party lens, the Sony 10-20PZ will receive premium correction support both in camera and in software, so this shouldn’t be a serious issue for you in real world use.

Case in point: I shot the ceiling in the huge fieldhouse where I testing for the basketball tracking. The uncorrected RAW image shows the barrel distortion bulges, but the JPEG (corrected in camera) shows nice, clean lines. The only downside is that you can see that a fair portion of the image has been lost in that correction process. I suspect that the lens is probably slightly wider than 10mm uncorrected to allow for the correct focal length after correction.

You will want to correct that distortion, however, as it does show up in real images. Look at the curved ductwork at the top of this image (uncorrected):

Both the vignette and distortion become much more mild by the middle of the zoom range, with only a +7 required at 15mm for the distortion (no mustache pattern) and a +30 for the vignette. At 20mm the distortion flips to a mild pincushion pattern that is easily corrected with a -6 and a very mild +22 for the vignette. So, the barrel distortion at 10mm is the only real issue here, and the correction profile seems to do a good job there.

So how about resolution and contrast? We’ll get answers from my test chart, which you can see here:

I’ve used the 24 MP Sony a6400 for this test, which is currently as high as Sony’s APS-C cameras venture. Here are high magnification (about 200%) crops from across the 10mm frame at F4 (Center, Mid-frame, and lower right corner):

These show a very high level of contrast and resolution all across the frame, just like our real world result suggested.

There is little advantage to stopping down at 10mm. F5.6 looks much like F4, and F8 actually looks like it has a hair less contrast in different places across the frame. F5.6 is often a good landscape aperture, though you can shoot without penalty at F4, too. You can see that this real world shot at 10mm is nicely detailed at F5.6 across the frame:

Our minimum aperture throughout the zoom range is F22, though you take a pretty horrendous hit to resolution and contrast due to diffraction at F22:

You don’t really want to go there.

Moving on to the middle of the range shows continued excellence. We’ve got crisp results across the frame again at F4:

As before, there isn’t much advantage to stopping down. You’re getting very close to peak performance at F4, with very minimal gains to be had when stopping down.

At 20mm the excellence continues with only the slightest drop in detail. I continue to find very consistent resolution across the frame, with only minimal drop-off towards the edges.

I find that there is slightly more potential for improvement when stopping down at 20mm. That’s particularly true in the corners, which show greater brightness and clarity at 5.6:

Bottom line is that resolution and contrast are excellent both throughout the zoom range and across the image circle. This is a high performing lens optically.

Another important design aspect for a wide angle lens is flare resistance. I didn’t really see any issue with this in my tests. You can see the slightest bit of ghosting in the middle image (at F11), but even in very bright sun I didn’t see loss of contrast or much in terms of ghosting.

A wide angle of view means that you will rarely have the background completely out of focus, so don’t expect this lens to be a big “bokeh maker”. Depth of field is quite large unless you are close to minimum focus distance. Even the short distance to the exercise bike in the last photo shows most of the other bikes in the long line also in some degree of focus.

In some ways, though, this isn’t really a criticism but more a comment on the nature of the focal length and aperture. This isn’t a lens designed for this purpose; it is a lens designed to have a lot in focus at once, and it thrives on that level.

Colors are rich, images look great, and the resolution is consistently good across the zoom range. If you’d like to see more photos, check out my image gallery here.

Conclusion

The Sony PZ 10-20mm F4 G joins Sony E 15mm F1.4 G as one of those rare Sony APS-C lenses that feels on par with the companies full frame options. This is a lens designed primarily for video work, though I liked it just fine as a photography lens as well. What I really enjoy, however, is Power Zoom toggle and the ability to easily take advantage of zooming while shooting video. Add to this that I can take advantage of Sony’s Smart Zoom in a way that I typically can’t, and I feel like you’ve got a killer combination for vlogging and wide angle filming in general. At the moment Sony’s APS-C cameras have a bit of a crop when shooting 4K, so the ability to go as wide as this lens does is very valuable. You can get a LOT in the frame, even when someone crouches right in front of the camera!

The list of strengths is long, from the quality of the build (including weather sealing), video focused features, excellent autofocus, and a truly excellent image quality performance. The list of negatives is very short and mostly limited to the strong barrel distortion, though the correction profile will help rectify that. There are many applications for a lens with a focal length like this, and landscapes certainly fall into that category:

If you are an APS-C shooter and have been wishing for a truly video-oriented lens for your camera, the Sony 10-20PZ should be high on your list. I completed my review prior to the public announcement for the lens, and Sony had not yet settled on the price, though they said it would fall between $699 and $799 USD. Considering that the predecessor for this lens was more expensive, this feels like a pretty good value for a lens with this kind of versatility. Owners of cameras like the Sony ZV-E10 should love this lens. It’s great to see Sony giving some fresh attention to the APS-C space!

Pros:

Nicely built lens with a feature set more like Sony’s full frame offerings
Quality degree of weather sealing
PowerZoom function works very well
PowerZoom toggle allows you to easily take advantage of Sony’s Smart Zoom
Linear focus motor produces fast, quiet focus
Low focus breathing
Consistently excellent sharpness and contrast
Good flare resistance
Good bokeh rendering
Good control of chromatic aberrations
Extremely compact size

Cons:

No image stabilization
Focus and zoom rings too close and too similar
Strong barrel distortion at 10mm

Gear Used:

Purchase the Sony 10-20mm F4 PZ G @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony E 11mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony E 15mm F1.4 G @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony a6600 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Peak Design Leash Strap: Peak Design Store | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

Keywords: Sony E 10-20mm Review, Sony 10-20mm F4 PZ G Review, Sony 10-20mm, F4, f/4, G, PZ, Power Zoom, APS-C, Sony a6600, Sony Alpha, a6600 Review, Sony, a6600, Review, Dustin Abbott, a6500, a6400, Alpha 1, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, Autofocus, CA, Video AF, Autofocus, Eye AF, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, Sample Images, Sample Video, Vlogging, Let the Light In, Burst, Action

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Sony PZ 10-20mm F4 G Image Gallery

Dustin Abbott

June 7th, 2022

I’ve been openly questioning of Sony’s commitment to its APS-C platform, as both camera and lens releases in that space have been few and far between over the past 3 years. Sony’s development on full frame has been rather frenzied during that same period, with a number of new camera and what I consider a golden age for lens development. I’ve reviewed one lens after another that I really, really liked in the full frame space, which tells me that Sony has really hit its stride as a camera lens maker. But APS-C has seemed to be on the back burner. And while I still see a lot of room for Sony to deliver a robust sports-oriented APS-C body (something to contend with the new Canon EOS R7 would be nice!), they are taking large strides to shore up the wide angle end of their APS-C catalog with three releases: the E 10-20mm F4 PZ OSS (Powerzoom), the E 15mm F1.4 G, and the Sony E 11mm F1.8 lens. This isn’t the first time that Sony has done some of its better APS-C lenses in bunches, as the last “G” lenses (mid-tier superior lenses) for APS-C came together in 2019: the Sony E 70-350mm F4.5-6.3 G OSS (my review here) and the Sony E 16-55mm F2.8 G. I’ve been fortunate enough to have gotten to spend some time with all three of these new releases, and so I’ll follow up my coverage of the 15mm F1.4 G (my review here) with the zoom in this lineup – the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G.

The key here is the PZ, which refers to PowerZoom. Sony has had an existing wide angle zoom for APS-C in the form of the E 10-18mm F4 OSS lens, but there is a recognition that more and more photographers actually do a mix of photos and video. We call these “hybrid” photographers, and it is clear that Sony has been designing its cameras with this in mind. Their a6300 was a breakthrough in this regard, allowing photographers to capture really good 4K video in an APS-C body at a time when most of the competition was stuck at 1080P. But there also needs to be some concessions to the unique needs of video in lenses as well, and that’s where the PowerZoom (PZ) comes into play. The 10-20PZ is essentially an APS-C counterpart to the recent full frame FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G lens with a full frame equivalent of 15-30mm (1.5x APS-C crop factor). The PowerZoom capability means that not only can you smoothly zoom in and out with the switch on the side of the lens (with much smoother zooms than you can achieve with a ring), but if you have the right accessory (a Bluetooth remote or wireless shooting grip like the GP-VPT2BT or even just using the Sony app), you have the option of off-camera control. This gives the smoothest results of all, of course, as you can have the camera on a tripod and have no vibration introduced into the process. This is a next level option for video shooters, and Sony has set the price point actually below that of the 10-18mm F4 despite the larger zoom range and new features (though the new lens loses the Optical Stabilizer that the older lens had).

Sony reserves the G designation for its mid-tier lenses and G Master for its superior lenses, and I’ve found that there is a lot of value to be found in the G lineup. These lenses have more advanced features like weather sealing and a focus hold button, and Sony has packed a lot features into a very small package here.

Superior G Lens image quality with two ED elements and one ED Aspherical element
Linear motor autofocus
A focus on video performance, with minimal focus breathing
Linear manual focus for more precise manual focus and repeatable focus changes
More physical controls, including an AF/MF switch, PowerZoom control, and a focus hold button
Dust and moisture resistant design
Internally focusing and zooming design
Close minimum focus of 20cm (Autofocus = 0.14x magnification) or 17cm (Manual Focus = 0.18x magnification)
World’s smallest ultra-wide APS-C zoom

This is a beautiful, well crafted lens that is in many ways similar to Sony’s full frame series of recent G primes (24mm F2.8, 40mm F2.5, and 50mm F2.5 G primes – click the hyperlinks for reviews of each lens). Though small and light, it feels premium, and its optical performance certainly backs that up, delivering beautifully detailed images all across the frame even at F4:

The final retail price hasn’t been announced as of the time of this review, though Sony gives a range of $700-800 USD. That’s not cheap, but it is certainly much cheaper and smaller than the full frame 16-35mm PZ lens, which will retail at $1200 USD. This will almost certainly become an indispensable tool for those who do vlogging or want a wide angle lens with zoom capabilities. The constant maximum aperture of F4 means that exposure doesn’t change as you zoom, giving you even more flexibility for both stills and video.

Ultimately you will have to decide if the premium price point matches the premium performance, but you can learn more by watching my definitive video review or reading my text review of the PZ 10-20mm…or just enjoy the photos below.

I want to thank Sony Canada (and Gentec) for the loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. The opinions here are completely my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a6400 along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

Photos of the Sony PZ 10-20mm F4 G

Photos Taken with the Sony PZ 10-20mm F4 G

Gear Used:

Purchase the Sony 10-20mm F4 PZ G @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony E 11mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony E 15mm F1.4 G @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony a6600 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Peak Design Leash Strap: Peak Design Store | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

Keywords: Sony E 10-20mm Review, Sony 10-20mm F4 PZ G Review, Sony 10-20mm, F4, f/4, G, PZ, Power Zoom, APS-C, Sony a6600, Sony Alpha, a6600 Review, Sony, a6600, Review, Dustin Abbott, a6500, a6400, Alpha 1, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, Autofocus, CA, Video AF, Autofocus, Eye AF, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, Sample Images, Sample Video, Vlogging, Let the Light In, Burst, Action

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

NiSi V7 Landscape Filter System Review + Gallery

Dustin Abbott

March 31st, 2022

My first encounter with the company NiSi was actually to review their first lens. NiSi has historically been a company that has made filters for other people’s lenses, and a search of their products shows a lot of filters with very high reviews. But at some point they clearly decided that their optical glass expertise could just as easily go into the construction of lenses themselves, which has produced the very intriguing NiSi 15mm F4 ASPH lens. That positive experience made me open to checking out NiSi’s main event – filters and filter systems. I’ve been testing their new V7 Filter System over the past few months in a variety of environments; from the Arctic temperature of Canada in deep winter:

…to the sun-kissed beaches of South Carolina:

The V7 Filter System proved to be a great companion in both environments, and I’ll quickly break down why in mini-review. If you want a deeper dive into the review, I would recommend watching my video review. It’s easier to visually demonstrate some things rather than just describing them.

The NiSi V7 Filter System is not designed around adding filters to certain lenses that cannot use traditional screw-in filters. One of the earliest such systems that I reviewed was for adding filters to the Samyang 14mm F2.8 manual focus lens. That system was basically a huge pain. It was large and clunky, difficult to mount, and the filters were not of the highest quality. I’ve reviewed other such systems for other lenses along the way, and, while the quality was frequently better, they still ended up being rather large and cumbersome. The V7 Filter system is not designed around adapting a specific lens for filter use, but rather for giving versatility for using filters for any lens with traditional filter threads in sizes up to 82mm. The byproduct of this is that the basic kit is nicely compact and comes with a really nice case to store it all in:

That kit comes with several step-up rings in the most popular sizes (67mm, 72mm, 77mm), though you may need to purchase an additional step up ring if your lens doesn’t have one of those filter thread sizes. Fortunately step up rings are inexpensive.

There are two primary reasons to invest in a square filter system like this (this is considered a 100mm square system): the first is that stacking circular filters with a wide angle lens often leads to vignetting. The angle of view is so wide that the filters start to cause darkness along the edges of the frame. A square filter system is wider than the lens diameter and helps avoid this even when using multiple filters. In this case you can add up to 3 square filters along with the included circular polarizing filter without fear of vignette. The circular polarizer is a good one; optically sound and well made. A clever part of the design gives you an external dial that will allow you to rotate the filter even when it is covered by the filter system. You can use just the circular polarizer portion of the filter system without attaching the square holder, so that could give you a secondary value by just using that filter if all you want is polarizing, like this:

The second big reason to use square filter systems is for the advantage of being able to use graduated filters. Grad filters don’t have a solid neutral density effect but have the effect only on a part of the filter with either a hard transition or a gradual transition. The NiSi graduated filters come in a 100 x 150mm size to allow you to slide them up and down. This can really boost your images by balancing exposure. In this scene, for example, the bright sky and buildings made for a darker foreground.

By using a medium graduated ND filter on the sky portion of the image, I was able to balance the exposure, and, as a bonus, give a little more character to a somewhat boring sky.

I flipped it around for a different shot. The underside of a pier on the Atlantic was in shadow, while the waves crashing in were bright and well lit. I used the grad-ND on the water to bring down the highlights there and thus allowing the pier supports (in shadow) to be properly lit in this shot.

The square filter holder is easy to add onto the circular section (which mounts first via the filter threads of the lens) by using a unique locking screw that allows you to pull it back first (allowing the square filter system to be attached) and then by tightening it down so you have no fear of the filter holder coming off.

A secondary feature that I really like is that filters are held in place by a passive tension system that does a great job of exerting consistent pressure on the filters to hold them in place but gives enough freedom to slide them into the proper position. There’s nothing that you have to remember to tighten down, which is great, as I’ve been in the situation where I was desperately grabbing at an expensive filter that started to slide out of a filter holder when I went to move the tripod to a new position.

The square 100mm filters have a foam surround that keeps stray light from penetrating (and offers some protection). All of NiSi’s filters have nano-coatings on both sides to make them resistant to scratching, oils, etc… I love using ND filters for getting long exposures in a variety of lighting conditions. Here, for example, I was able to smooth out the movement of the waves crashing in under that same pier and get a nicely moody shot.

Performance of the filters was good. NiSi boasts that their filters are “True-Color”, and I can attest that I didn’t see a color cast introduced into my images. Here’s a shot of the same scene shown earlier, save this time with a 10 stop ND filter along with the CP-L filter attached:

You can see that the color balance is very close to the original scene. I didn’t feel like I had to do work in post to “fix” white balance with any of the image I took with the system.

I also felt like my resolution results held up with the filters attached. Here’s a long exposure image taken with the ND1000 (ten stop) and CP-L filters. You can see from the crop that there is still perfect detail in the scene even on the fairly demanding sensor of the Canon EOS R5 (45MP) that I used for the shot.

I was very impressed with the packaging and presentation of everything that I tested. Everything comes with some kind of carrying sleeve or pouch to help protect it, and included booklets give you tips, instructions, and charts for getting the most out of your filters (and the right exposure!)

So let’s talk pricing. Filter systems like the V7 tend to be expensive, and that’s true to some degree here, though NiSi undercuts a lot of other brands by a fair bit. You have a number of options of kit sizes essentially depending on what all you need.

The basic filter holder and circular polarizing filter setup runs about $250 USD, but if you step up to something like the “Starter Kit”, you get essentially what I’ve used in this review – a system that includes both a ND1000 filter and the graduated medium-ND filter. That kit will run you right over $500, and is obviously very popular, as it is already backordered.

Larger kits come with even more filter options and the price climbs relative to what all is included.

The advantage of buying kits is that the price of individual items drops relative to buying them separately, but you also need to be sure that you get what you need for your work and not just get extra pieces that are going to sit in the bag. I will note for those of you that like to IR work that these filters are design with IR in mind.

I have no significant complaints about the NiSi V7. I did my review in winter, which is not really the best time of year for me in terms of getting great long exposure images (everything is frozen over!!), but I was happy with both the handling of the system and the results I was able to get. I was able to pack the filter system along with 5 filters in two pouches small enough to fit into the front pocket of my backpack for travel, so it was easy to bring along with me. This system isn’t cheap, but it is also isn’t lens specific, which means that you can purchase one time and use it for pretty much the rest of your photography career as long as you take care of everything. So get out there and make some magic!

The best way to get a deeper look at and demonstration of this system is by checking out my video below…or you can just enjoy the photos I’ve had a chance to take with V7 Filter system below.

Thank you to NiSi for sending me the V7 system for review. As always, this is a completely independent review. The opinions here are completely my own.

Photos taken with the NiSi V7 Filter System

Gear Used:

Purchase the V7 Filter System at B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the NiSi 15mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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

Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Sony a9 Camera: B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay
Sony a7RIV Camera: B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Peak Design Leash Strap: Peak Design Store | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

Keywords: NiSi V7, NiSi, V7, Filter System, NiSi V7 Filter System Review, Demonstration, Myrtle Beach, Ocean, Snow, NiSi 15mm F4 review, NiSi 15 F4, F/4, Wide Angle, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Sony a9, sony a7III, sony a7RIV, a7R3, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1, Canon RF, Nikon Z, Fuji X, Landscape Photography, Filters

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

NiSi 15mm F4 ASPH Review

Dustin Abbott

September 27th, 2021

NiSi has historically been a company that has made filters for other people’s lenses, and a search of their products shows a lot of filters with very high reviews. But at some point they clearly decided that their optical glass expertise could just as easily go into the construction of lenses themselves, which has resulted in their first lens, the very intriguing NiSi 15mm F4 ASPH. This wide angle prime (it actually has an angle of view more like a 14.5mm lens) is extremely wide, but with lower distortion than most equivalent lenses. Furthermore, by avoiding the challenges inherit in designing a very large aperture lens, they have been able to produce a lens that is compact (80.5mm in length), can use traditional screw in filters (72mm size), and that weighs only 470g despite a very nice all metal and glass construction. As first lens design attempts go, this is a very good one. I’ve been able to get very good results from the NiSi15 (as we’ll call it for brevity in this review) even on my demanding 50MP sensor on the Sony Alpha 1 that I’ve used for this review.

This “killer app” with this new NiSi 15mm shows up in the photo below, namely the ten straight aperture blades that produce stunning sunstars even at F4. Yes, the blades are never fully retracted, and this design allows for beautifully rendered sunstars with long, clearly defined shafts of light that add terrific visual interest to photos. Flare resistance is good overall, too (though not perfect), allowing you to shoot into the light and capture the beauty of brightly lit scenes.

At a price point of under $500, the NiSi 15mm is reasonably priced relative to performance, allowing photographers a chance to get a very wide angle of view on their Sony FE (reviewed here), Canon RF, Nikon Z, or Fujifilm X mount cameras. The lens isn’t perfect, but it is a lot of lens for the money and has relatively few flaws. You can certainly get some beautiful and dynamic images with it!

So should you consider the NiSi15 for yourself? You can either watch my video review or read on in this text review to help yourself make an informed decision.

Thank you to NiSi for sending me a loaner of the lens for review. As always, this is a completely independent review. The opinions here are completely my own.

NiSi15 Build and Handling

Gone are the days where new lensmakers started with cheap plastic lenses. These days it seems like many of them start with a classic Zeiss-like approach to lens design – all metal and glass. That’s the reality here, too. The NiSi15 has a beautiful build quality with a classic aesthetic. It’s primarily a black anodized metal finish with a silver accent ring in the middle.

That silver accent ring has a practical function, though, as it has the hyperfocal distance markings for various aperture values there. I did test hyperfocusing a bit, but, as per usual, found that I actually got more reliable results by just magnifying the area that I wanted to focus on. The NiSi15 has an extremely wide angle of view (112°), which makes it wider than the Laowa 15mm F2 Zero D lens (110°) but not quite as wide as the Sony FE 14mm F1.8 GM (114°). NiSi indicated to me that the lens is actually a 14.5mm lens, which seems to be accurate from comparison with these two lenses. It certainly delivers a dynamically wide angle of view:

There is a low profile aperture ring with one third stop detents, though there are only markings for the full stops (F4, 5.6, 8, etc…) The aperture ring moves smoothly and precisely, though there is no option to declick it.

The focus ring moves extremely smoothly, with near perfect damping that does remind me of a Zeiss lens. All focus is internal, so the lens retains a constant length at all times. The focus throw is fairly good as well (wide angle lenses often have shorter focus throws). I did find that there wasn’t a lot of room between one meter and infinity, and it is possible to get inaccurately focused landscape results if you don’t focus precisely in that zone. Infinity focus was basically right at the mechanical hard stop. I often pulled back just a fraction to ensure perfect infinity focus, though I don’t think there was a significant different between the hard stop and my “fraction less” position. This made landscape focus pretty simple.

The NiSi15 is a nicely compact lens for a full frame wide angle. It is 75.6mm in diameter and 80.5 mm in length and weighs 470g (3 x 3.2″ and 1 lb), making it just a little smaller and lighter than the Laowa 15mm F2 lens.

This leaves you with a relatively common 72mm front filter thread. This allows you to use traditional screw in filters (a big plus) and is also small enough that the smaller 100mm square filter systems will also work on it.

There is a fairly shallow metal lens hood included with a petal-shaped design. The bright orange/yellow branding on the hood reminded me a bit of the Zeiss Otus series. The lens is compact enough with the hood in place that I mostly just kept it in place, though it can be reversed for storage.

There are no electronic contacts or a weather sealing gasket at the lens mount. This is a fully manual lens, meaning that you won’t get EXIF data about aperture or lens designation embedded in your files. You’ll also have to manually input the focal length into your camera if you have one that has in-body-image-stabilization. This is pretty much par for the course with many such lenses, though I do wish at least some basic electronic communication could be introduced.

The headline feature here is that NiSi has (wisely) elected to forego the modern standard of rounded aperture blades and has instead employed ten straight blades in the aperture iris. If this was a “bokeh lens”, that would produce less desirable bokeh highlights, but a wide angle lens with a maximum aperture of F4 isn’t going to have a lot of opportunities to produce a lot of bokeh highlights.

What it can produce, however, is sunstars. By employing straight blades they have enabled the lens to produce beautifully defined sunstars that add a lot of character to images.

Furthermore, they’ve designed the lens where the blades show a bit even at F4, meaning you can get those sunstars without stopping down. This will allow you to get creative images even at night, for example.

The NiSi15 can focus as closely as 20cm, which allows for a decent though unexceptional 0.13x magnification figure. That’s well below the 0.25x of the Laowa but better than the 0.10x of the Sony 14mm GM. Here’s what MFD on the NiSi looks like:

Here’s about as close as you can get and about as much bokeh as you’re going to see from the lens:

The bokeh here is okay but unexceptional. That’s not really the strength of this lens. I found a friend’s Audi and an early morning sunrise produced a more interesting image.

All told, the NiSi15 is a nicely built lens that works well. The mechanical engineering seems precise, and the rings move nicely. This is a great first lens for NiSi.

NiSi15 Image Quality

The NiSi15 enters an arena with several existing competitors optically. The Samyang AF 14mm F2.8 (my review here of the Canon RF mount – same optics) provides a slightly wider angle of view and autofocus at roughly the same price (the MSRP is higher at $799 USD but the lens is frequently discounted to a similar price point. The Laowa 15mm F2 Zero D (my review here) has a slightly narrower angle of view but considerably wider maximum aperture, but is also the most expensive at $849 USD. The NiSi15 can be had for $499 USD, which makes it the natural bargain of the main choices. But can it compete optically?

First of all, a look at MTF charts for the NiSi (#1), Laowa (#2), and Samyang (#3).

These are not really apples to apples comparisons, as the NiSi has a smaller maximum aperture, but it is instructive nonetheless. It reveals that the overall sharpness curve is pretty similar across these lenses, with very sharp centers, good mid-frames, and fairly good corners (the NiSi’s greatest edge is there, at least at the lenses maximum apertures). The only true direct comparison from the MTF charts is found between the NiSi and Samyang at F8, where it shows a similar performance in the center but with the Samyang winning on the edges. In fact, NiSi gives MTF charts at F4, F8, and F11, and, while it shows some slightly varied sharpness curves (there’s a bit more inconsistency at F4), the lens actually doesn’t really get sharper stopped down and actually loses a bit in the corners when stopped down to F8 or F11. It’s an unusual performance in that peak average sharpness is found wide open at F4. I was curious to see if my tests and real world results followed that same pattern.

Let’s orient ourselves by first checking in with a real world image with a lot of depth and detail:

Obviously there is a lot of detail captured here on my 50MP Sony Alpha 1 sensor, which I would say that the NiSi performed just fine on. It’s worth noting that this is a slightly better performance than, say, the Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS at 15mm, and that is a $2400 USD lens.

Laowa really touts the low distortion of their 15mm F2 (that’s what “Zero D” means), but the reality is that the NiSi15 performs fairly similarly. A look at my Vignette and Distortion chart shows very low levels of distortion:

I used only a +2 to correct an almost imperceptible amount of barrel distortion, though I’m not sure that correcting it is even worthwhile, as it reveals a very mild mustache pattern. There’s not enough distortion there to present a problem for essentially any kind of application. Real world lines look nice and straight:

Vignette is moderately heavy (I corrected with a +68), which is about on par with the Samyang and considerably less than the Laowa 15mm F2. Most of these wide angle lenses have a fair amount of vignette, and nothing stood out to me as unusual about the NiSi15. In fact, the positive is that the vignette cleaned up without adding any kind of false color to the corners, which can be an issue at times with these type lenses.

I also didn’t see any kind of issue with chromatic aberrations of either the longitudinal or lateral kind. There was little fringing to be seen of any kind. Here’s a look at various scenarios where that fringing might show up.

So far we are doing pretty good. The typical major flaws of wide angle lenses are 1) high distortion 2) heavy vignette 3) lateral chromatic aberrations. None of these are a problem here. So how about sharpness?

Here’s a look globally at my test chart:

And here is a look at the crops from across the frame at F4 (center, mid-frame, and then bottom right corner):

That a consistently good performance across the frame, and even the corners look quite good. According the MTF charts, we shouldn’t really expect more resolution with the lens stopped down, and, while I do think that is accurate, I felt like there was slightly more contrast when I compared the F4 result to F5.6 on the right below:

When I compared F5.6 to F8, however, I saw what looked like essentially an identical result, so I would say that sharpness and contrast peaks at F5.6. Real world results show a lot of detail across the frame at F5.6:

Designing a low distortion, high resolution ultra wide angle lens is seriously challenging, and there’s no question that NiSi has pretty much nailed things here. I was able to capture a lot of compelling images with high detail during my review period.

Another key metric for a wide angle lens is the ability to resist flaring, particularly when the “killer app” is to produce beautiful sunbursts. You don’t get those without putting a bright source of light in the frame. Fortunately I do think that flare resistance is very good here, though not perfect. The NiSi15 gets very high marks for resistance to veiling, or a loss of contrast when bright lights are in the frame. Contrast remains very high with the sun directly in the frame.

I did see a few minor ghosting artifacts (little blobs of false color caused by flare), but they were extremely mild and essentially non-destructive.

They will get a little more pronounced if you stop the lens down (often the case), so expect a more pronounced “optical path” flare pattern, like here:

The unique good news here is that you don’t actually need to stop down to get the sunstar effect, so, well, don’t! You might have also noticed in all of these images that contrast remained excellent in all of these examples; that aspect of flare resistance is impeccable.

I find wide angle lenses great for getting visually arresting images. The NiSi15 falls in what I consider the ultra-wide “sweet spot”, where it is extremely wide but not so wide that composition becomes impossible. Get close to things and allow the optics to produce interesting results:

If you are too far away (like in a landscape scene), you end up with a lot of empty space in the foreground, which is rarely interesting. This shot isn’t terrible, but there’s a lot of empty water here.

I shot the same scene with a 75mm lens and got a much more interesting result.

You have to learn the art of composing with a wide angle lens.

Let’s talk color for a moment. I found the colors to be more saturated than, say, the Laowa 15mm F2, but this is no Zeiss lens, either. I found colors sometimes a little hard to process, as they seemed to push towards garish fairly quickly. I had to use a delicate touch to make sure that colors had a richly saturated look but without being extreme. The colors of this shot were some of my favorite from the lens, as the saturation levels look great. All I did here to the RAW image was pull down the highlights a bit and open the shadows; the colors are right out of camera.

You’ll pick up a lot of sky colors with a wide angle lens, which is wonderful if the sky is beautiful:

It is rather less amazing if there is a lot of bland sky in the frame:

My original point remains – use a wide angle lens to its strengths, and it will reward you with amazing images. Use it wrong, and you’ll probably end up discarding half of what you capture.

All told, this is a very good lens optically, and I felt like NiSi’s experience with optical glass showed here in their first lens. I would encourage you to check out many more images in the image gallery here.

Conclusion

I get “pitched” to look at new gear every day, and many times I have to say “no” due to the reality that I only have so much time. When NiSi reached out to me, I first went to the web address they sent me and did a little research of their new lens. The MTFs looked solid, the low distortion was appealing, and the idea to go with straight blades for the sunstars all seemed like wise design elements. I decided I would invest the time to review it, and I’m glad I did. There are reasonable alternatives to the NiSi 15mm F4 ASPH on the various lens mounts it is designed for (Sony FE, Nikon Z, Canon RF, and Fuji X), but the NiSi15 seems to offer very strong value for money to me. Yes, I would have liked an F2.8 aperture instead, and yes, I would always prefer weather sealing, but a nicely built, high performing wide angle lens for full frame cameras that costs less than $500 is fairly rare.

The NiSi 15mm F4 is a well made lens mechanically. Everything is all metal and glass and works just as it should. I also appreciate the compact nature of the lens that fits nicely on the various mirrorless cameras systems it is designed for.

There’s no question that you can get compelling images from the NiSi 15mm lens, and I hope this is the beginning of many more lenses to come. I enjoyed my time with the NiSi 15mm F4 ASPH…and its amazing sunstars!

Pros:

Excellent build quality
Internally focusing design
Great manual focus ring
Aperture ring works with precision
Compact size and reasonable weight
Gorgeous sunstars
Good resolution across the frame
Low distortion
Great price to performance ratio

Cons:

No weather sealing
Color rendition not top tier
Lens performance doesn’t really improve when stopping down

Gear Used:

Purchase the NiSi 15mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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

Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Sony a9 Camera: B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay
Sony a7RIV Camera: B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Peak Design Leash Strap: Peak Design Store | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

Purchase the NiSi 15mm F4 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3kkdSW8 | Amazon https://amzn.to/3AncCr3 | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3zlLxDj | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3EyeiAj | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/2YZ6reP

Keywords: NiSi 15mm F4, NiSi, 15mm, F4, ASPH, Sunstar, NiSi 15mm Review, NiSi 15mm F4 review, NiSi 15 F4, F/4, Wide Angle, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Sony a9, sony a7III, sony a7RIV, a7R3, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1, Canon RF, Nikon Z, Fuji X

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM PZ WR Review

Dustin Abbott

July 20th, 2023

Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Build and Handling

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM Autofocus Performance

Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Image Quality Breakdown

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Related Articles at DustinAbbott.net

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ Gallery

Dustin Abbott

July 20th, 2023

Photos of the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Photos Taken with the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Related Articles at DustinAbbott.net

Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN (iSeries) Review

Dustin Abbott

May 1st, 2023

Sigma i17 Build and Handling

Sigma 17mm F4 DN Autofocus

Sigma i17 Image Quality Breakdown

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

Purchase the Sigma 17mm F4 DN @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sigma 50mm F2 DN @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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

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

Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | | Camera Canada | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Use Code “DUSTINHDR” to get $10 off ($15 CDN) any Skylum product: Luminar, Aurora, or AirMagic

Related Articles at DustinAbbott.net

Sigma 17mm F4 DG DN (iSeries) Image Gallery)

Dustin Abbott

May 1st, 2023

Images of the Sigma 17mm F4

Photos Taken with the Sigma 17mm f4

Purchase the Sigma 17mm F4 DN @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sigma 50mm F2 DN @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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

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

Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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