16-35 F4 FE Mount Ultra Wide Angle - at long last!

[Cyph]

Finally Sony have announced this lens, that had been speculated on for ages but not officially announced until last week. Something I'm seriously looking forward to throw onto my A7 and pair it up with my iOptron skytracker.

Specs are looking darn impressive, and the sample photos I've seen around the place are looking good.

Some very impressive sample photos at the following link - looks pretty sharp! I know there's a bit of post processing on those images, but I'm impressed to say the least! - http://www.sony.jp/ichigan/products/SEL1635Z/feature_1.html

Anyone else hanging out for it? :)

Cheers,

-- cyph

[Boo53]

Cyph, it certainly looks a nice lens, and if I didn't have a Tokina 11-16 for my aps-c bodies (A77, A65 )I'd jump at it as well.

It would be nice to have it on the A7r, make a lighter unit on the startracker, but I wish they'd try for some faster lenses. Better high ISO performance with only f4 seems a bit wasted

[arthurking83]

..... but I wish they'd try for some faster lenses. Better high ISO performance with only f4 seems a bit wasted

Two issues that immediately come to mind are:

1. lens would become disproportionately more massive for only a little gain in light gathering.
(the more predominant premise of the smaller mirrorless type cameras from Sony seems to revolve more around size/weight rather than purely image capture ability)

2. it's harder to manufacture faster aperture lenses for cameras with shorter backfocus distances. Because of the short flange distances, vignetting is more problematic.
While the lenses can have a smaller overall size(and hence weight), then equivalent lenses for longer flange distance cameras, the IQ suffers more at the periphery of the lenses.

As an example of what the issue is.
The notion of the shorter register distance cameras is that it allows the design of more compact lenses for a given specification.
If you compare two roughly similar lenses for the two format types(short register distance vs longer register distances) in the Zeiss 55/1.8 vs the Nikon 50/1.8 lenses, common sense would dictate that the Zeiss, should be smaller and lighter than the Nikon(and you could substitute any other SLR lens brand for Nikon here too).

The Zeiss is about 5mm shorter than the Nikon lens, but in the other two important physical dimensions .... it's larger(and by a considerable margin .. relatively speaking).

LensRental has an interesting(if you're into this geeky stuff!) article (in a manner of speaking) on the subject, written a few months ago and comparing these different types of lenses.

[ricktas]

Hope we get to see some of your photography soon Cyph. Would be good to see what you can actually do photographically.

[AnnieP]

Finally Sony have announced this lens, that had been speculated on for ages but not officially announced until last week. Something I'm seriously looking forward to throw onto my A7 and pair it up with my iOptron skytracker.

Specs are looking darn impressive, and the sample photos I've seen around the place are looking good.

Some very impressive sample photos at the following link - looks pretty sharp! I know there's a bit of post processing on those images, but I'm impressed to say the least! - http://www.sony.jp/ichigan/products/SEL1635Z/feature_1.html

Anyone else hanging out for it? :)

Cheers,

-- cyph

Hi Cyph, since selling almost all my Nikon gear I've been shooting solely with the FE55 1.8. Like you I have been hanging out for the 16 - 35. I'm getting a bit bored of having to stitch all my landscape images at the moment! I also have my eye on the Rokinon 14mm 2.8!

[antony]

Has anyone actually used this lens? Any feedback on this lens?
Currently I only have two full frame e-mount lenses: FE 35mm/F2.8 and and FE 24-70mm/F4 and I use the zoom one 98% of the time. Not sure if 16-35mm/F4 is a good addition.

[dervish16]

Has anyone actually used this lens? Any feedback on this lens?

I've been using it for a few months now Antony and I love it. I used to use the Canon 24mm TS-E MkII, which was amazing IQ wise but the 16-35mm f/4 is so much more versatile and compact. The IQ is also great for what it is. In my opinion from using other similar UWA zoom lenses, it's one of the best. It performs very similar to the Canon 16-35mm f/4 which is a superb lens too. The Sony has slightly better sharpness in the center and the canon is slightly better in the corners. The build quality is really nice and I've used it in the rain multiple times and never had any water leak in internally.