The day started off with soft pastels in the sky, but before long the fat, heavy snowflakes that Aizu, Japan is famous for started to fall. To judge from the amount of snow weighing down roofs and banked along the sidewalks, it was hardly the first snowfall of the winter.
Aizu is famous for skiing, Onsen (traditional Japanese hot spring baths), and the production of saki, but we were there for none of these things. Our purpose in Aizu was to visit the factory where Sigma’s lenses (and cameras) are made. The snow was falling hard inside, but you can forget the typical mess that comes with snow once you step through the doors.
One of the first thing that stood out to me was just how pristine, well, everything was. There’s not a speck of dust on the floors. The walls are spartan and spotless. Before beginning the tour our shoes were covered with protective booties, our clothes with a white lab coat, and our hair with snow white Sigma branded baseball caps.
But its all intentional. Dust is the enemy of lens design, as we all know. If you buy a new lens, and you can see a speck of dust inside, it doesn’t really matter if you know it is optically irrelevant; many of us are looking for our lens to be replaced.
That’s not a positive outcome if you’re a lens maker, so Sigma and it’s 1850 employees are fastidious in keeping the facility as dust free as possible. They are producing a whopping 75,000 lenses and 2000 cameras per month in this factory, and they aren’t interested in any of them coming back with dust inside.
As a lens reviewer I haven’t necessarily put a lot of thought into the manufacturing process and all that goes into lens production. Most of the time my job is to critique the finished product; are the elements centered? Are there sticking points in the action of the rings? How much are chromatic aberrations or flare artifacts impacting the image quality? As a photographer or lens buyer, you’re probably concerned about the same things.
But it’s pretty remarkable to see the countless steps that have to be taken to keep you and I happy. (*Most of the interior images of the factory were taken by Mike Last and are used by permission. You can check out more of his work here.)
It starts in a large room full of engineers who are pounding out code, working on product design, firmware updates, and solving problems.
Sigma’s factory is unique in that almost all of the product design, development, and manufacturing is done in house. I walked through dozens of spaces where a variety of raw materials were being turned into components that would be assembled into a lens or camera. Aluminum, brass, magnesium, and other metal alloys start as ingots or long spools to be stamped, cut, carved, or machined in massive, spotless machines. Some finished components are no bigger than your finger nail, while other assemblies (like this aluminum housing for the front elements of the new 300-600mm F4 Sport) are pretty huge.
Engineered plastics, resins, and even carbon fiber are being molded into housings and hoods in robotic machine. Glass is molded, polished, and inspected for scratches, dust, or any other imperfection. Paints are applied by machine but also by hand in very precise work to fill etched areas on lens barrels.
Here’s a look at all the pieces that went into the popular 150-600mm Sport lens…all produced in house at this factory.
What stood out to me is the wide variety of smells. Each material has its own unique smell that permeates its lab or factory space. Also unique was the wide variety of temperatures, as some spaces have to be cool while others radiate heat.
Most lenses have have least nine or ten optical elements in them, and its not rare to have twenty or more in telephoto zooms. Each one of those glass elements are personally inspected, and I saw a few being rejected because of some imperfection. Each element has to be properly centered, which involves polishing the edges to ensure they all fit perfectly into the optical assembly to ensure proper optical performance.
Assembly of all those many components comes together in multiple labs, and it is a mixture of robotic and human collaboration to produce the end result. Optical tests follow along with final quality control inspections, and only then is a lens ready for retail packaging and shipment. I saw hundreds of employees working in a wide variety of disciplines to produce the end result.
I’m not sure that I can comment on the “happiness” of the employees (Japanese are rarely gregarious by nature) but I can speak to their precision and attention to detail. I saw no slackers.
At the end of the day, my job description doesn’t change. I’m here to critique, evaluate (and where appropriate) praise the end product, but I certainly came away with a fresh appreciation of just how much goes into production of a modern lens. We are living in an externally parodoxical time, as while the photography industry is shrinking year by year, we are actually in a golden age for design and quality across the industry. I’m glad that Sigma remains an integral part of that landscape.
Keywords: Aizu, Sigma, Sigma Corporation, BF, 24MP, 300-600mm Sport, Sigma 300-600mm F4 DG OS Sport, DG, Sport, F4, 300-600mm, OS, 16-300mm, Contemporary, F3.5-6.7, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #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.
Hello from Tokyo – Takeaways from Sigma’s New Product Announcements
Dustin Abbott
February 25th, 2025
It has been rare that I’ve had a chance to accept opportunities to travel to press events in my career as a photographer and influencer, my wife and team encouraged me to accept an invitation to Japan to be present in person for Sigma’s February 2025 new product announcement. Sigma decided to bring in a number of industry professionals and influencers for this particular event, as Sigma CEO Kazuto Yamaki took the stage to highlight a few corporate direction shifts along with the announcement of two new lenses and a new camera.
In Kazuto’s remarks he highlighted a recognition that the industry has changed due to the rise of smartphones and the sheer number of people who elect to use their phone’s camera rather than a dedicated imaging device (true). To that end they have designed a new camera, which they call the BF. The idea is for a simpler, purer user interface that allows people to focus on just taking photos.
In using the UI and the simplified control schemes, I found it took me a bit to wrap my head around the unique controls, but I think it does work reasonably well.
I’ll be doing a deeper dive review in the coming weeks, but the thing that stands out the most to me is how beautiful the camera is…particular in the silvery white finish and paired with the newly released silver versions of a number of Sigma’s iSeries lenses. The camera is crafted out of a single aluminum ingot, so there is no screws and panel attachment points. They had a display that showed various stages of the aluminum ingot being transformed into the chassis of the camera. It makes for a beautiful looking camera.
The Sigma BF is built around a 24MP full frame sensor, and, interestingly, there is no card slot. Instead the camera features 230GB of internal storage and has a USB-C 3.2 port on the side for fast media transfer. One potential misstep is the lack of an kind of wireless capabilities, which may limit those who either want to transfer images wirelessly to their smartphones or even post them directly to social media.
This is an interchangeable lens camera utilizing the L mount, so it will be compatible not only with Sigma L mount lenses but also any lens from another brand using the L mount.
Autofocus seemed to work pretty well in my limited testing at the event, but I will dive more deeply into that in my full review.
Previous Sigma cameras have been very niche, and I suspect the only way that will be different this time around is if the sheer minimalist beauty of the camera creates a viral “it factor” groundswell of response. In talking to a Sigma UK rep today I learned that preorders are already starting to roll in, so that’s a good sign. The announced MSRP will be $1999 USD.
The second announcement was for the new Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary lens. Superzoom lenses aren’t always that exciting, but there are a few very interesting things about this one. That zoom ratio of 18.8x is industry leading, but more interesting to me is that this is the first APS-C lens from Sigma to receive their new HLA (High Speed Linear Actuator) focus motor system, which is vastly better than their older STM focus motors. It also has the OS2 algorithm which is significantly better than their old optical stabilizers (OS) in other lenses that I’ve tested. This one is rated at 6 stops of OS, and in my short tests using my own camera, I found that stabilization is quite good even on the telephoto end (which is 450mm full frame equivalent).
(This is a handheld 300mm shot).
Also interesting is that this lens starts at the wider 16mm point, which does create engineering challenges but also opens up a lot of additional framing opportunities with that 24mm full frame equivalent angle of view.
Price will be $699 USD, and I suspect that this is a lens that will sell well for them and does offer some unique advantages over existing alternates. Also interesting is that this will be the first of Sigma’s lenses (that I’m aware of) this is simultaneously launching on Canon RF mount alongside the more conventional E-mount, L-mount, and Fuji X-mount options.
I’ve saved the best for last, as the announcement I was personally most excited about was the 300-600mm F4 DG OS | SPORT lens. Sigma had yet to release a true “super-telephoto” on FE and L mounts, and this one is exciting. It’s a big lens (167mm in diameter and 467.9mm in length) and weighs nearly 4 kilos (3985g), but it also delivers a constant F4 aperture all the way through 600mm, which puts it into very rare company. The Sony, Canon, and Nikon 600mm F4 lenses on their respective platforms all costs $13,000 or more ($14,000 for the Nikon), while the Sigma offers the versatility of being a zoom and also comes at a price tag of right under $7000 USD.
This lens seems to have it all, including the premium HLA focus motor for sports work, an effective 5.5 stop OS2 stabilization system, and a huge amount of controls, including a drop in filter system including the ability to rotate circular polarizers. I noted and tested the ability to preset focus positions where a new unique control ring can be rocked and instantly return focus to the preset position – great for sports like baseball, for example.
As a Sports lens, it has Sigma’s premium build quality, including a magnesium alloy body and carbon fiber lens hood and completed with a thorough weather sealing. It’s also Sigma’s first white super telephoto lens, and it looks beautiful.
I can only foresee two potential “flies in the ointment” for the 300-600mm Sport, and that is Sony’s limitation on burst rates for third party lenses, meaning that the sport bodies this lens will get mounted on (Alpha 1 and a9 series cameras) that can achieve much faster burst rates will be limited at 15 FPS. The second limiting factor on Sony FE will be the restriction on using teleconverters on third party lenses. Neither of these limitations will exist on L-mount, though the former concern is somewhat of a moot point considering that L-mount still lacks a truly amazing sports camera (at least at the time of this writing).
I look forward to putting the 300-600 Sport through its paces and rendering a true verdict on the performance.
This has been a fascinating experience. I’ve enjoyed meeting a number of my fellow influencers and reviewers and being able to “talk shop” with them. Stay tuned for my deeper looks at these products once I can get them into my standard review environments.
Keywords: Sigma, Sigma Corporation, BF, 24MP, 300-600mm Sport, Sigma 300-600mm F4 DG OS Sport, DG, Sport, F4, 300-600mm, OS, 16-300mm, Contemporary, F3.5-6.7, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #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.
Just a few months ago I reviewed the Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G lens, an intriguing lens that went wide enough at 20mm that many people could use it as their wide angle lens while still getting a “normal zoom” that reached as far as 70mm. I found it a great lens for travel, and I agreed with the argument from Sony that with modern, high resolution cameras it is relatively easy to crop in for more reach, but that doesn’t solve the problem of going wider. Tamron seems to have mirrored that argument, but taken it a bit further. Their newest lens is the interesting Tamron 17-50mm F4 Di III VXD, a lens that essentially works in reverse of the Sony design. Sony essentially take a standard zoom and made it wider, while Tamron has a taken a wide angle zoom and stretched it to reach 50mm. What’s more, their lens is an internally zooming lens that makes for a really intriguing gimbal lens due to the balance point staying constant. They have also aggressively priced the 17-40mm F4 at just $699 USD, which helps alleviate the biggest negative feedback I heard about the $1100 USD Sony lens; it was just too expensive. But is the Tamron a worthwhile option? We’ll explore that in the video review below or in the rest of this article.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a 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 a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
This focal range has a been a common one for APS-C zooms in the past, but this is the first time I’ve seen a lens quite like this one for full frame. The closest analog may be the Canon RF 14-35mm F4L IS, or, here on Sony, the Sony FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G. None of the focal lengths line up perfectly, obviously, so that leaves the Tamron as a fairly unique lens…particularly at this price point. Here’s a look at how the framing of a scene changes at each of the marked positions on the 17-50mm F4. (17, 20, 24, 28, 35, and 50mm):
What is interesting is that every single one of those focal lengths are sold as prime lenses, which shows just how many important focal lengths are covered by this zoom. Even more interesting is the fact that this lens covers all of those focal lengths very well, delivering extremely crisp results even on my high resolution Sony a7RV (61 MP).
The negative tradeoff here is that F4 is not a particularly bright aperture, so this isn’t going to be a top low light choice or allow you to play with depth of field much. Neither did the Sony 20-70mm, however, but I still found it a great travel choice. The Tamron can go even wider, however, delivering an angle of view as wide as 103°41′ compared to just 94° for the Sony. That’s going to be very useful in tighter spaces. Here’s the difference between 17 and 20mm:
The Tamron 17-50mm F4 VXD has a lot going for it – a nice build, good autofocus, good optics, and an excellent price. Is that going to be enough to steal away some of the Sony 20-70mm F4 G’s sales? We’ll explore that notion more thoroughly together.
Tamron 17-50mm F4 Build and Handling
The Tamron 17-50mm falls right in the middle of Tamron’s G2 releases, and the 28-75mm and 70-180mm G2 models have received significantly improved builds. Though this is a first generation lens, it does get a lot of the same treatment as those lenses, and, as a result, feels little more upscale. The most significant aspect of the design is the fact that it is internally zooming, and that comes with a number of positives.
It means that we have a constant length, for one. The lens is 114.4mm (4.5″) in length, which isn’t small, but it is still small enough to fit into all my camera bags while attached to the camera. It is only 74.8mm in diameter (2.94″), giving the lens a rather long and slender profile.
Tamron has been able to retain the 67mm front filter size that is shared across the vast majority of their mirrorless lenses, meaning that filter sharing is extremely easy if you own multiple lenses.
The lens weight is moderately light at 460g (16.2oz). That makes it a little lighter than the Sony 20-70mm.
Despite the moderate weight, the lens feels very well made. It is designed with a moisture resistance construction, starting with a gasket at the lens mount, internal seals at the rings, switches, and ports, and then a fluorine coating on the front element that allows for both protection and easy cleaning.
There is no dedicated aperture ring here (not really a feature that Tamron has embraced as of yet), but the aperture iris itself has 9 blades and retains a circular shape down to F8.
There are a couple of features on the barrel. One of those is a focus hold/custom button that can be programmed to various functions either from within the camera or through Tamron’s free Lens Utility software.
That software can be accessed via a weather sealed USB-C port that is one the side of the lens near the lens mount. This is a great feature as it not only gives a very quick way to do firmware updates, but it also gives you more customization control of the lens. You can program the custom button to switch the function of the focus ring between manual focus and acting as an aperture ring, for example, which helps to replace that missing aperture ring.
Some of those other programmable functions include a lot of customization of the manual focus ring. You can choose the direction of the ring, choose whether or not the action will be linear or non-linear, and even four different choices of how long the focus throw (ring rotation) will be. The quality of the manual focus is pretty good, with good weight on the ring and the ability to make focus essentially as fast or slow as you like by setting the focus rotation distance.
As an internally zooming lens, the zoom action is smooth and fast. Many people prefer an internally zooming lens as there is less chance of pulling in dust since no section of the lens barrel extends. This is also really valuable if you plan to use the 17-50mm F4 on a gimbal, as the balance is the same at 50mm as it is at 17mm.
Tamron has included a relatively shallow petal-shaped lens hood. It’s plastic and feels fine…but it’s nothing special. I prefer the way that Sigma does their hoods. They add on similar textures to the lens barrel so that the hood looks more integrated with the lens design.
Like most of Tamron’s recent zooms, there are separate minimum focus distances for the wide and telephoto ends. On the wide end you can focus as closely as just 19cm, though that leaves you very little working room as that leaves just 5.7cm (2.3″) beyond the front of the lens. You’ll almost certainly want to remove the lens hood to avoid shading the lens. You can achieve a nearly 0.22x, though with a lot of field curvature. Much better is the telephoto end, where you can focus as closely as 30cm (11.8″) and achieve a higher 0.26x magnification that also has a flatter plane of focus. Here’s what that looks like:
That’s quite useful, obviously, and allows you to get nice and close to subjects and blur out backgrounds despite the fairly narrow maximum aperture. Up close performance is fairly good though I did feel that contrast was reduced in some situations, like with this lock:
Getting up close to these leaves looks pretty great, however.
This is actually a fairly strong feature set for a $700 zoom lens. The build is nice and modern looking, and while the lens is largely engineered plastics, they feel quality in the hand. The rings move well, we’ve got the custom button, the USB-C button, an internally zooming design, and thorough weather sealing. If this lens had a Sony badge on it, it would almost certainly sell for $1000+. That makes the 17-50mm F4 feel like a good value.
Tamron 17-50mm F4 VXD Autofocus
The 17-50mm F4 has received Tamron’s best autofocus motor, called VXD, which stands for Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive. This is a high powered linear motor that makes autofocus quick, quiet, and accurate. There’s plenty here for both photography and video work. I could even catch Nala on the move with accurate focus.
While F4 is obviously not a particularly wide aperture, you can still get some subject isolation at 50mm, F4, and this shot shows how that focus grabbed on a narrow depth of field subject. I also had similar success in the same scene while shooting video.
I did a focus speed tests both indoors and outdoors and was generally impressed with focus speed and the confidence of focus acquisitions. Focus changes are near instantaneous, and I don’t think you’d see any real world difference between the Tamron 17-50mm F4 and the Sony 20-70mm F4 G. I saw good focus up close as well, like of this wide angle shot of a creeping vine turning a rich autumn red.
I shot a lot of video with this lens, as I think this is a very intriguing option for a lot of different video applications. Eye tracking was perfect for applications like vlogging even as I spun around with a quickly changing background. Here’s a screenshot from that video:
I had good eye tracking, whether it be human, animal, or insect:
My autofocus focus pulls test went very well, with quick, smooth pulls from one subject to another. There is next to no focus breathing with the lens, so there is little to draw attention to the focus transitions other than a different subject being in focus.
Likewise my “hand test” where I block the view of my face with my hand and then move the hand to allow focus to pop back to the eye went well. Transitions were smooth and confident.
That translates well to focus transitions in real world video as well. I could move from one subject to another with smooth focus transitions that make for nice video. I noticed good movement of focus as I used the lens on a gimbal as well and walked with the camera low to the ground.
I did a similar sequence where I walked in reverse as Nala followed me. The whole video sequence stays perfectly locked on her even though both of us are moving quickly. There’s a freeze frame from the video clip captured above.
I did test to see if this was a parfocal lens, but unfortunately it is not. The focus at 17mm and 50mm is quite a bit different. The good news is that autofocus was fast enough to keep up while zooming in and out while recording video.
The bottom line is that the Tamron 17-50mm F4 does everything you would want for autofocus. It is fast, quiet, and precise. This is definitely an area of strength for the lens.
Tamron 17-50mm F4 VXD Image Quality
The Tamron 17-50mm F4 has an optical design of 15 lens elements in 13 groups, including three LD (Low Dispersion), a GM (Glass Molded Aspherical), and two hybrid aspherical lens elements. We don’t have a high price tag here, but we do have a very high end optical performance. You can see from the MTF charts that the center of the frame is deadly sharp, and at 17mm that holds until the edge of the frame. 50mm isn’t much behind, though the corners are a bit softer. All in all, this is a very impressive MTF chart:
There’s no question that the lens delivers high sharpness and contrast in real world results across the zoom range.
We’ll work through the chart results by first looking at distortion and vignette. Here’s a look at the before and after of manual corrections to both at 17mm, then at 28mm, and finally at 50mm.
The drama is at 17mm, where we can tell that Tamron’s engineers had to really push to get this wide. The barrel distortion is both pronounced and complex, requiring at +44 to correct and leaving a fairly obvious mustache pattern behind. Likewise the vignette was also very heavy, requiring nearly maxing out the sliders (+94 – nearly four stops) to properly correct it. The Sony 20-70mm F4 was definitely better for having less vignette (only about 1 stop vs nearly 4 stops for the Tamron), but distortion was actually worse still. It required a +50 to correct and had a similarly complex mustache pattern behind it.
The correction profile does a pretty good job of cleaning up the distortion, though I found that more vignette correction was warranted.
Things are much cleaner in the rest of the zoom range. I only needed a +4 to correct for distortion at 28mm, and vignette was only a +35 to correct (right over 1 stop). At 50mm there was no distortion to correct and vignette was down to a +25, or about one stop, to correct.
I didn’t notice real world results being quite as extreme. Here’s an uncorrected result of a houseboat being towed out of the water, and it doesn’t look too bad.
I did see some longitudinal chromatic aberrations after the plane of focus in the form of a bit of green fringing.
I didn’t see much issue in real world use, however.
Lateral Chromatic Aberrations usually show up along the edges of the frame as fringing on either side of high contrast areas, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue here. You can see a nice, neutral transition from black to white on the corners of my test chart.
That’s good news, as you are far more likely to see lateral CA on a wide angle zoom in real world images than you are to see longitudinal CA.
So how about resolution and contrast? All chart tests done with a Sony a7RV (61MP) using a tripod and a two second timer. Here’s a look at my test chart:
And here are the crops (at roughly 170% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and extreme corner at F4:
We see that sharpness is extremely good all across the frame. Even the corners look quite good.
That means that real world landscape images at 17mm will look very nice all across the frame.
The punch in the middle 2/3rds of the frame is particularly good.
There is relatively little improvement in the middle of the frame stopping down to F5.6 or F8, but I did see improvement ton contrast in the midframe and corners. You can see that the image on the right has a little more pop (F5.6):
I prefer F8 to F5.6 as the ultimate landscape aperture, as that is where sharpness and contrast achieve peak consistency across the frame. After F8 diffraction will start to soften the image until at F22 the image looks quite soft.
There’s some give and take in moving to 20mm. The center looks possibly even better, and the image is brighter as you move towards the edge due to lower vignette. Sharpness in the corners isn’t quite as high, however.
This gives us an opportunity to compare with the Sony 20-70mm F4 G. The Sony is the easy winner in the center (it is AMAZINGLY sharp), but the Tamron wins in the outer portion of the frame, though not by as wide a margin.
I saw the same pattern when comparing at F5.6.
At 20mm the sharpness peaked across the frame at F8…just like at 17mm.
24mm is just slightly softer at some points in the frame and similar to 20mm at others. Real world results at 24mm look pretty nice here!
28mm is virtually identical to performance at 24mm. Here’s one at 29mm, F5.6:
35mm is a little softer in the center than 28mm, but sharper in the corners. None of the subsequent focal lengths have matched the high bar of consistency set at 17mm.
Stopping down to F8 ups the sharpness to excellent levels across the frame.
As before, real world results look pretty great. Here’s one at 36mm, F5.6:
50mm is a slight improvement over the middle of the zoom range, though not quite as excellent as 17mm. Real world results looked excellent whether I was shooting landscapes:
…or if I was shooting more narrow depth of field shots, like this:
This shot allows us to transition to a discussion of bokeh, which is good but not exceptional. You can see that the transition zone between focus and defocus isn’t bad in the image above, but nothing looks super creamy, either. A maximum aperture of F4 and maximum focal length of 50mm means that depth of field is often not going to be particularly shallow.
That just means that more is going to be in focus than what you might like in some situations, which leads to busier backgrounds.
Here’s another bokeh shot for you to evaluate for yourself.
This is a lens that succeeds more at having a lot in focus rather than being a lens with a lot out of focus.
I found color rendition to be very positive. Images had rich levels of saturation.
Here’s another that looks great:
Even gloomy looked pretty good!
Flare resistance was also quite good. The 17-50mm F4 sports Tamron’s second generation BBAR coatings (G2), and they help deliver an impressive resistance to ghosting or veiling. Even when panning across the sun at various apertures, I got next to no negative effects.
There’s a lot more good than bad in the optical performance. This is a lens sufficient to give you good results for both photo and video in most situations. It isn’t my top choice for interior work/real estate due to the higher distortion on the wide end. You can see many more beautiful images by visiting the image gallery here.
Conclusion
The Tamron 17-50mm F4 VXD is an intriguing lens if your priority is versatility of focal range in your wide angle zoom. Tamron already had a very good 17-28mm F2.8 RXD zoom lens for Sony (for $100 more), but obviously that zoom range is much more limited than this new zoom. The 17-50mm F4 is a more interesting lens for video work for a number of reasons. The internal zoom, the ability to tweak the behavior of the manual focus ring, and the improved autofocus system all add up to an excellent lens for video work.
Like the Sony 20-70mm F4, I would also consider the Tamron a very good travel lens. It is wide enough to frame a lot of buildings or landscape scenes, but the 50mm end would allow you to do some portraits or get someone to take photos of you while traveling.
This is a lot of lens for the $699 USD price point. We’ve got excellent autofocus, a very nice build, and a strong optical performance. I also really like the internally zooming design. Images from the lens look very nice, and video footage does as well. This could be a great option for vloggers or wedding videographers as well. The amount of choice for Sony FE is staggering now, but there’s also hope that this lens will soon come to Nikon Z (and maybe even Canon RF) in the future, and this lens will be even more welcome on those platforms.
Pros:
Internally zooming design
Excellent focal range
Good feature set
Strong weather sealing
Good customization options through free software
USB-C port for firmware updates
VXD focus motor delivers great autofocus results for photo and video
Keywords: Tamron, 17-50mm, F4, Di III, VXD, Tamron 17-50mm F4 Review, Tamron 17-50 Review, 17-50, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Portrait, Photography, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, Weather Sealing
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.
Just a few months ago I reviewed the Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G lens, an intriguing lens that went wide enough at 20mm that many people could use it as their wide angle lens while still getting a “normal zoom” that reached as far as 70mm. I found it a great lens for travel, and I agreed with the argument from Sony that with modern, high resolution cameras it is relatively easy to crop in for more reach, but that doesn’t solve the problem of going wider. Tamron seems to have mirrored that argument, but taken it a bit further. Their newest lens is the interesting Tamron 17-50mm F4 Di III VXD, a lens that essentially works in reverse of the Sony design. Sony essentially take a standard zoom and made it wider, while Tamron has a taken a wide angle zoom and stretched it to reach 50mm. What’s more, their lens is an internally zooming lens that makes for a really intriguing gimbal lens due to the balance point staying constant. They have also aggressively priced the 17-40mm F4 at just $699 USD, which helps alleviate the biggest negative feedback I heard about the $1100 USD Sony lens; it was just too expensive. But is the Tamron a worthwhile option? We’ll explore that in the video review below or in my text review here.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a 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 a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
This focal range has a been a common one for APS-C zooms in the past, but this is the first time I’ve seen a lens quite like this one for full frame. The closest analog may be the Canon RF 14-35mm F4L IS, or, here on Sony, the Sony FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G. None of the focal lengths line up perfectly, obviously, so that leaves the Tamron as a fairly unique lens…particularly at this price point. Here’s a look at how the framing of a scene changes at each of the marked positions on the 17-50mm F4. (17, 20, 24, 28, 35, and 50mm):
What is interesting is that every single one of those focal lengths are sold as prime lenses, which shows just how many important focal lengths are covered by this zoom. Even more interesting is the fact that this lens covers all of those focal lengths very well, delivering extremely crisp results even on my high resolution Sony a7RV (61 MP).
The negative tradeoff here is that F4 is not a particularly bright aperture, so this isn’t going to be a top low light choice or allow you to play with depth of field much. Neither did the Sony 20-70mm, however, but I still found it a great travel choice. The Tamron can go even wider, however, delivering an angle of view as wide as 103°41′ compared to just 94° for the Sony. That’s going to be very useful in tighter spaces. Here’s the difference between 17 and 20mm:
The Tamron 17-50mm F4 VXD has a lot going for it – a nice build, good autofocus, good optics, and an excellent price. Is that going to be enough to steal away some of the Sony 20-70mm F4 G’s sales?
Keywords: Tamron, 17-50mm, F4, Di III, VXD, Tamron 17-50mm F4 Review, Tamron 17-50 Review, 17-50, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Portrait, Photography, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, Weather Sealing
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.
I was in a press briefing regarding this lens when the Sony rep said something that resonated with me. He noted with today’s high resolution bodies (I currently do my Sony reviews on the 61MP a7RV body) that getting length is relatively easy – just crop. But going wider is a different story. So Sony is going wider with their most recent standard zoom. Whereas the typical zoom range is 24-70mm, Sony is going that extra bit wider with the FE 20-70mm F4 G lens, which is just enough to make this a very unique lens – a hybrid wide angle/standard zoom. The difference between 20 and 24mm is significant for landscape work. Look at how much more of the building is visible in this comparison:
That can make an even more dramatic difference indoors, allowing you to include a lot more in the frame.
Perhaps most importantly for many photographers, the new 20-70G (as we’ll call it for brevity in this review) goes wide enough that it can serve as the wide angle lens for many photographers, meaning that they need to spend the money on one less lens. Pairing the 20-70mm F4 with the amazing new 70-200mm F4 Macro G OSS II (my review here) would make for a lightweight, killer combo of lenses with near perfect image quality over what amounts to a 10x zoom ratio. That’s pretty tempting. The new 20-70G also makes for a unique travel lens, capable of giving you really wide results:
…but also the ability to zoom in and capture more details, like this:
That zoom ability makes it a reasonable portrait lens (though F4 isn’t exactly a dramatic maximum aperture), delivering crisp results with nice color and decent background blur.
There’s a lot here to attract photographers, particularly since the price point isn’t ridiculous (about $1100 USD). Are there any hidden fatal flaws here that should keep you from choosing this lens? You can judge for yourself by either watching my video review below or reading on to get the full picture.
Thanks to Sony USA for sending me a 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 a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
Sony 20-70G Build and Handling
Sony has managed to increase the zoom ratio here without dramatically increasing the size of the lens. While there is no direct analog for this lens, the much older 24-70mm F4 Zeiss lens is slightly smaller and lighter, but dramatically so. The F4 aperture of the 20-70G ensures that it is significantly smaller and lighter than the 24-70mm F2.8 GM II or competing 24-70mm F2.8 lenses. Tamron’s 20-40mm F2.8 VXD lens is as wide, but obviously lacks a lot of the standard zoom range. Here’s a look at how a few options compare:
The Sony 20-70G is relatively compact and is roughly the same size as my Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM – the closest size comparison I had.
The diameter of the lens is about 78.7mm (3.1″) and is 99mm (3.9″) in length. The weight is 488g or 17.2oz. The front filter thread is 72mm.
This is not an internally zooming lens as the inner barrel extends about 4cm when zoomed to 70mm.
The zoom action is smooth and well damped and the lens doesn’t seem to show any tendency towards zoom creep. This is good, as there isn’t a zoom lock on the lens.
Sony’s lenses have become increasingly feature rich in recent years, and that’s true here as well. That begins with a wide range of options for aperture control. This includes an aperture ring that can be used “clicked” with one-third-stop detents throughout the range from F4 to F22 or can be switched into auto for in-camera control. The aperture ring is thin but not difficult to find. The detents are on the firm side when in the clicked mode; you definitely feel each one of them.
There is also an option to declick the aperture on the right side of the lens. This allows the aperture ring to smoothly move through the aperture options and also allows for smooth aperture racks in video (though there is a bit of lag between ring input and the movement of the blades).
This particular switch is a little difficult to access as it is located on the bevel towards the lens mount. There isn’t a lot of room between the switch and the grip when the lens is mounted on the camera, and its position makes the ergonomics of reaching it difficult. Fortunately this is not a switch that most people will be reaching for often, so I don’t think it is a deal breaker.
On the opposite side there is an Iris Lock switch that will either lock you into the manual ring (if you don’t want to inadvertently move into automatic) or lock you into automatic if you aren’t an aperture ring person.
There are 9 aperture blades that help keep the aperture shape circular when stopped down.
On the left side of the lens there is an AF/MF switch along with a focus hold button (which can be programmed to a variety of functions from within the camera). There is a secondary focus hold button on the top of the lens which will be accessible when shooting in portrait orientation.
The minimum focus distances is 25cm (9.8″) and gives a very high 0.39x magnification.
The plane of focus isn’t perfectly flat, but there is good detail in the focus area. This will allow you to get very close and get some macro(ish) shots, like this shot of one of my honeybees:
That’s also very handy for video, as autofocus will continue right up until you are essentially on top of your subject.
This is thoroughly weather sealed lens, with roughly 14 seal points along with fluorine coatings on the front element.
That was particularly useful for me when shooting in the Mayan Riviera in Mexico, as the high heat and humidity means that everything immediately fogs up when coming out of an air conditioned environment. Weather sealing helps assure that there won’t be moisture inside that could produce mold or fungus over time.
The lens hood is petal-shaped and not particularly deep. There is no lock, but it bayonets on tightly and didn’t move.
Other than the ergonomic issues accessing a few of the minor switches, the lens handles very nicely and is a nice, compact fit on Sony’s full frame cameras.
Sony 20-70mm F4 Autofocus Performance
Sony has employed dual XD (extreme dynamic) Linear Motors to assure that autofocus is fast, quiet, and accurate. This is something that Sony has really perfected, as they use the appropriate number of XD motors and assure that autofocus is pretty much flawless.
This allowed me to nail focus in quick, reactionary situations, like this pelican coming in to knock a gull of its perch. My shutter speed was low for this kind of action (unexpected), but the focus was flawless and I actually like the dynamic result from the panning movement and shutter dragging here.
Getting eye focus on traditional subjects was easy, obviously. Here’s a shot of me and my new daughter-in-law:
Portrait and wedding photography will be a breeze with this lens and a decent camera body. Here’s the venue my son chose to be married at (you might recognize this location as one where the X-Men movies were filmed):
I came across a boa while out with the lens in Mexico, and, as you can see, focus was nailed on the eye:
The newest Sony cameras like the a7RV have insect detection mode, and that works nicely for nailing focus on one of my honeybees.
On the video front, video pulls are quick, quiet, and confident as you might expect with a first party Sony lens equipped with dual focus motors. There is a tiny amount of focus breathing. When I tested it on the a7RV and turned on the “Focus Breathing Compensation” setting there is a mild improvement and at very little crop because of the low amount of breathing to begin with. The lens also performed well (as expected) in my “hand test”, quickly transitioning back to tracking my eye after I blocked visibility of my eyes with my hand towards the lens.
My general focus results were excellent. I had zero issues either during stills or video focus:
Bottom line is that the autofocus is excellent.
Sony SEL2470G II Image Quality
At this stage I have come to expect that Sony’s new lens releases are typically going to be pretty fantastic optically, and that is definitely the case here. The MTF results show extremely sharp results at 20mm and with slightly poorer results at 70mm, though when stopped down the image quality is pretty much perfect at any point.
Image quality is pretty much pristine:
Longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA) typically show up as purple/magenta fringing before the plane of focus and blue/green fringing beyond the plane of focus due to colors not being perfectly focused together. They typically diminish as the lens is stopped down to smaller apertures. I didn’t see any real world LoCA, though that wasn’t unexpected in a lens with a wider focal range and smaller maximum aperture. A lens like this would be more likely to suffer with Lateral chromatic aberrations (LaCA) that show up as fringing on either side of contrast areas (like tree trunks, for example) along the edges of the frame. Unlike LoCA, they do not improve when stopping the aperture down, but are much easier to correct for (typically a one click “remove chromatic aberrations” box in editing software). We can see once again that there is no evidence of any fringing near the edges of the frame.
So that is great, but there is at least one ugly monster hiding behind the lens corrections…distortion. The barrel distortion at 20mm is extremely strong and is also very non-linear.
You can see a fairly pronounced amount of wave (mustache pattern) after a manual correction. I had to use a +50 correct the distortion (one of the higher values I’ve ever entered), though vignette was fairly mild at just a +20 to correct. Fortunately the correction profile does a cleaner job of correcting the distortion, though you can see that there is some mild barrel distortion that remains even after the correction profile.
The correction profile makes the lens usable in most situations, though this probably won’t be a great choice for doing real estate work. For most lines, however, I didn’t notice the distortion until I specifically tested for it.
At 70mm there is a mild amount of pincushion distortion (-8 to correct) that is linear and easy to correct. Vignette remains low at just a +29 to correct.
The correction profile will obviously make sure you never see any distortion at 70mm.
So, the barrel distortion at 20mm is strong, but we’ve otherwise got a good performance.
So how about sharpness? I’ve used the very high resolution (61MP) Sony a7RV for this series of tests, which obviously sets an exacting standard for sharpness and contrast. Here’s a look at the test chart:
And here are the 20mm F4 crops at about 200% magnification, taken from the center, then mid-frame, and then extreme lower right corner:
This is a lens that handles the 61MP resolution point over most of the frame without issue at F4. The far corners are a bit softer, but the performance in the center and mid-frame is extremely good.
At 100% magnification and with real world subjects detail looked good all across the frame at 20mm:
Stopping down to F5.6 helps the corners, though they are sharpest at F8:
F11 is just very slightly less sharp due to diffraction, with increased softening at F16 and then at F22. You can see a pretty radical difference between F4 and F22:
Sharpness improves a bit more at 24mm, with slightly stronger results all across the frame (including the corners).
Here’s a real world shot at 24mm:
The performance at 35mm is nearly identical to that at 24mm, which is to say, excellent. Here’s a shot of the sargassum that the ocean constantly delivers to Cancun in August:
50mm is again virtually identical, with extreme sharpness in the center and mid-frame and a dip in the corners. Here’s a 50mm shot:
Contrary to the MTF charts, the copy I tested actually performed the best at 70mm. I saw the best sharpness across the frame, with a stronger performance in the corners than at any other point. Take a look at the edge performance here:
Real world results look great. This nearly 100% crop from a shot of my wife shows excellent detail even at F4:
This F5.6 landscape shot shows great detail everywhere in the frame:
Bottom line is that image quality is excellent, though the corners sometimes need a mild stop down to be excellent.
Contrast and colors were excellent, with nice saturation levels and good “pop” to the images.
Here’s a shot with a wide range of different colors:
Here’s another that looks pretty fantastic.
Flare resistance is quite good, particularly at wider apertures.
I could see a few more ghosting artifacts if shooting at a smaller aperture like F11, but not bad.
Sunbursts are good but not great. The blades of the sunburst lack definition, but look generally okay.
A lens with a maximum aperture of F4 and maximum focal length of 70mm is not going to strongly blur out backgrounds, but the quality of the bokeh is generally fairly good.
Your best case scenario for creating bokeh will be when you can get close to your subject and have a bit of distance to the background.
A lens like this excels more at having more in focus and delivering great detail throughout. I liked it for travel, though I also took along a compact prime with a larger maximum aperture for when I wanted to get some shots with a shallower depth of field. In general, however, image quality is pretty great!
That extra 4mm may not seem like much, but for some shooters it will transform this lens from “ho-hum” to “wow!” It makes it far more useful for travel, weddings, and landscape work, as it means you could carry just this one lens rather than a wide angle and a standard zoom zoom. It’s a killer landscape lens:
The strong distortion at 20mm makes me less likely to suggest it for interior/real estate work, but lines were generally good enough for most other applications.
I really enjoyed this lens as a travel lens for capturing both photos and video. It doesn’t have OSS (Optical Steady Shot), but the excellent IBIS in Sony’s recent cameras like the a7RV make this pretty much a moot point. The Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G has a nice build, excellent autofocus, and overall excellent image quality. It’s a great package at a price point of right under $1100 USD, and should be the perfect lens for those less concerned with low light performance or shallow depth of field and who instead want flexibility in their zoom range while retaining very high image quality. By that metric the 20-70G really excels. This is the kind of lens that only comes along when a company has a full catalog of lenses and can afford to get a little more creative in lens design. It’s a great time to be a Sony shooter!
Pros:
Wider than any standard zoom before it
Compact size
Beautifully built and well sealed
Feature rich
Extremely fast and accurate autofocus
Very low focus breathing
Extremely sharp in the center and midframe throughout the zoom range
Very low vignette
Beautiful color
Mostly good flare resistance
Low aberrations
Cons:
Very strong barrel distortion at 20mm
Declick switch is difficult to access
Corner performance wide open at some focal lengths not exceptional
Keywords: Sony, Sony 20-70mm, 20-70mm, F4, G, Sony 20-70 G Review, FE 20-70mmmm F4, Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G, SEL2070G, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7IV, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Travel, Mexico, Cancun, Photography, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, Weather Sealing
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.
I was in a press briefing regarding this lens when the Sony rep said something that resonated with me. He noted with today’s high resolution bodies (I currently do my Sony reviews on the 61MP a7RV body) that getting length is relatively easy – just crop. But going wider is a different story. So Sony is going wider with their most recent standard zoom. Whereas the typical zoom range is 24-70mm, Sony is going that extra bit wider with the FE 20-70mm F4 G lens, which is just enough to make this a very unique lens – a hybrid wide angle/standard zoom. The difference between 20 and 24mm is significant for landscape work. Look at how much more of the building is visible in this comparison:
That can make an even more dramatic difference indoors, allowing you to include a lot more in the frame.
Perhaps most importantly for many photographers, the new 20-70G (as we’ll call it for brevity in this review) goes wide enough that it can serve as the wide angle lens for many photographers, meaning that they need to spend the money on one less lens. Pairing the 20-70mm F4 with the amazing new 70-200mm F4 Macro G OSS II (my review here) would make for a lightweight, killer combo of lenses with near perfect image quality over what amounts to a 10x zoom ratio. That’s pretty tempting. The new 20-70G also makes for a unique travel lens, capable of giving you really wide results:
…but also the ability to zoom in and capture more details, like this:
That zoom ability makes it a reasonable portrait lens (though F4 isn’t exactly a dramatic maximum aperture), delivering crisp results with nice color and decent background blur.
There’s a lot here to attract photographers, particularly since the price point isn’t ridiculous (about $1100 USD). Are there any hidden fatal flaws here that should keep you from choosing this lens? You can judge for yourself by either watching my video review below or reading the text review…or just enjoy the photos below.
Thanks to Sony USA for sending me a 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 a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
Keywords: Sony, Sony 20-70mm, 20-70mm, F4, G, Sony 20-70 G Review, FE 20-70mmmm F4, Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G, SEL2070G, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7IV, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Travel, Mexico, Cancun, Photography, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, Weather Sealing
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.
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.
Follow Me @ YouTube | Patreon | Instagram | Facebook | DA Merchandise | Flickr | 500pxThanks to Fujifilm Canada for loaning me this lens for review. As always, this is a completely independent review and my conclusions are my own.
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
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.
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!
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.
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