Review on Sony 16 35Mm Vario Tessar Mount Lens by Kenneth Barnes

If you own a Sony E Series digital camera, look no further: this is your ultra wide-angle zoom. It has Zeiss pop, high sharpness and great bokeh. I stopped and went to the ultra wide part of the zoom, the depth of field stayed forever. At full frame, it covers all wide-angle settings, but with the normal distortion characteristic of an ultra-wide-angle zoom. No pain, no gain, dear reader. If you're an owner of Sony's APSC-series cameras, this is still a decent all-around lens, ranging from normal to fairly wide, with a one-step penalty compared to the competition. It gets a lot more painful on Prime 1.4, nobody portrays a night shooter on F4. The downside here is that the lens is pretty slow and you'll quickly run out of options in the dark as the APSC series cameras generate noise faster than theirs full frame counterparts. Pumping up the ISO on a 6000/Nex series (or any of the SLT series other than the A99 full frame) is not the same as full frame. Sorry kids, physics is physics and photons are photons, you can't do anything about that. One stop can mean the difference between a usable photo and something else. Two feet, even more. Mounted on a sturdy tripod and for its intended purpose of photographing landscapes and architecture, this lens is simply superb. If you get stuck in a bottleneck, you can zoom out and capture shots that "normal" footage just can't deliver. With this lens you can get really close and it's hanging in a fairy tale. This means that cropping a border photo in a post is not necessary, you can do it right in the camera and without risk to life and health. It's a real problem when things like barbed wire and winding roads full of motorbikes and oncoming cars get in your way. It's also a real problem when you're working in very tight spaces, where your subject is in one place and there's a large, buzzing obstacle like a wall or building right next to it. I can't tell you how many pictures were possible based on the range of the lens alone. This lens is one of my favorite lenses in my gift bag, there are almost no shots that this little gem doesn't fit in my full frame and the whole shop fits on a tripod. It's my go-to gun for landscape and architecture shots, it gets more work done than my 24-70 and spends more time on camera than its older brother. Since he's almost always in front of the camera, he takes more thoughtful and well-composed shots on a tripod. Your mileage may differ from mine, but if you have a full frame, this lens shouldn't just be in your bag or backpack, it deserves pride of place. In the APSC shooter, this is a very decent, albeit more limited, option than the G 2.8 series. It's sharper, has better pop and all the amazing qualities that Zeiss brings to the table, but it's a notch slower and doesn't have a telephoto lens to speak of. As a 'normal' lens for APSC cameras it's overkill, take its custom made brother 35mm 1.4 or 35mm 2.8 if you're looking for 'normal' in APSC format. For the smaller format the lens has sold four stars, maybe even four and a half, but there are too many compromises here to give it five stars for the NEX/6000 series cameras, it's too far; It's too slow and lacks range, any discussion of bokeh is a very ambiguous approach as f4 brings too much depth of field into play even in full frame. The bokeh is gorgeous, don't get me wrong, it's typically Zeiss buttery smooth, creamy perfection with a hint of edginess, but forget about trying to erase either the foreground or background to zero, that's a task for a Prime 1.4 . This lens in its element has an aperture of up to 8 or 11, even 5.8 is more than decent. When unfolded, it's a little soft in the corners, while still offering more depth of field than you're likely to want in most situations. In the sense that it's a very standard ultra wide-angle lens, with all the baggage that comes with it: distortion that needs to be corrected in post-processing, softness at full aperture, some serious weirdness in your shots when they're not perfectly flat at the widest part of the zoom. . If you know about ultra-wides, you know the drill. If you like that kind of lens then this particular example is one of the best and for Sony full frame cameras it's the best, period; until Sony produces the G Master 16-35 clocked at 2.8.