This is the Sony 24-50mm f/2.8 G lens and I honestly feel
like I can review this in less than 60 seconds.
Optically, it fits somewhere in between the 24-70mm G Master I
and the 24-70mm G Master II.
Better than the Mark I, slightly worse than the Mark 2,
but it is much smaller, only 440 grams,
and obviously only goes to 50mm on the long end.
But it's also reversed to what you might expect,
at 24mm, the barrel extends
and at 50mm, it retracts.
But it's half the price of the 24-70mm G Master II.
So you're getting a smaller lens that weighs less,
doesn't zoom as far, but costs significantly less.
And it's good quality, it's G lens, and honestly,
it's very similar to a lot of the other Sony lenses
we reviewed recently in terms of both their benefits,
but also their shortcomings.
I like it for the price and maybe it is a handy lens
for this focal range that people could take advantage of
and it balances quite nicely
on the new compact cameras like the a7C II, a7CR.
Review over.
But I realized that people are gonna wanna know more
than that, but if that's all you wanted to know, good,
but then you're gonna miss out on the next thing
we're gonna do, which is that I've been wanting to use
this TV for more than just what I've been using it for.
Originally I set up thinking we could do remote interviews
and stuff like that, but I haven't done one yet.
So who better to bring on for our first
remote interview guest to discuss this lens
then the creator who said this:
- Do we really need lens reviews?
Who gives a sh-
- So let's bring on Patrick Tomasso and then after that,
we'll open up Lightroom and we'll do all the pixel peeping
that I know many of you enjoy.
So I brought you on because we both have this new Sony lens,
the 24-50mm, and I'm curious to get your experience on it.
I haven't actually given any kinda disclosure,
so maybe this is an opportunity to do that.
Sony lent me this lens.
They also sent me an a7CR again as a loaner.
I think they're trying to showcase
how well they kind of balance together.
Sony didn't sponsor this video,
and obviously I'm gonna send this stuff back,
I don't get to keep it, whatever.
This video does have an actual sponsor, though,
and that's Storyblocks.
Thank you for dealing with that, Patrick.
Now tell me, what do you think about the lens?
- I bought my a7 IV coming on two years now, I guess.
And at the time it was a pretty big investment for me
because I was coming from Lumix and Fuji and I was like,
I really don't wanna spend a whole lot of money
on Sony glass, and so back then when I dropped
like four grand on an a7 IV, I looked to Sigma options
to get something affordable for this camera.
And so I ended up buying like the 28-70mm Sigma,
I got the 16-28mm Sigma, so two lenses,
both were around a thousand dollars.
But had this lens been out back then,
I probably would've bought this lens
'cause around 1200, 1500 bucks
I think they're talking about the pricing for this thing.
- I think it's gonna be 1100 US, which puts it like...
- Cool.
- Almost, actually slightly less than half price
of the GM II.
- Which in my opinion is huge.
I think that's actually a really big deal.
Yeah, I find that that 24-70mm too expensive.
I mean, not for anything, it's just like,
I like affordable lenses.
For me, I don't see the $2,000 or whatever it is
that thing costs, like, in the image,
like, in terms of return on investment.
I've been fine with my Sigmas
and I know they're not the most optically perfect lenses,
but they get the job done.
I don't have clients complaining and they were affordable.
And I'm finding the same thing with this lens now, too.
And sorry, just to, I keep pointing at it
'cause I'm actually shooting with it right now
as my webcam with the a7 IV.
- I was wondering why you weren't holding it as a prop.
- I'm shooting on it, yeah.
- You're not feeling like you're gonna miss anything,
missing that 20 mil on the long end there?
- I mean, look, I'm much more into the wide side of things
than wanting more reach.
Like, I always find myself, like, I wish I could go wider.
Would it be nice if this thing was more like a 20-70mm?
You know Sony, or sorry, Panasonic makes a kit lens
that's 20-60mm and I've always found like, oh my God,
that's such a nice sweet reach.
From 20-60mm on full frame is really nice.
The problem with that lens is it's a kit lens,
so it's f/3.5-5.6. - Right.
- So getting something around a 20-60mm at f/2.8 would be ideal,
but at this price point for the optical quality,
getting the focus breathing compensation,
all just, like, Sony bells and whistles,
the great autofocus and stuff like that.
Also even like the declicked aperture,
amazing for video and whatnot.
You're getting that whole Sony experience
at a really great price that I'm like,
okay, yeah, 24mm isn't the widest thing in the world,
but it's pretty practical wide.
And the 50mm is totally fine for me.
Like I said, if you have a really good Sony
with a crop mode, you know,
like a7 IV, a7Cs and stuff like that,
I think if I had an a7S III, right?
Where you don't have that crop mode,
I'd be thinking differently for sure.
But because I can throw this thing in super 35 mode
and get more reach out of it, like 1.5x,
I don't feel like I'm losing anything
on that telephoto side, right?
- Have you been tripped up by the 24mm extension,
50mm retraction zoom thing? (laughs)
- Yeah, I hoped we were gonna talk about that.
'cause like, as soon as I grabbed it,
I was like, it was so off-putting to me at first.
I was like, oh, I don't know if I can use this lens.
Like, this is really bizarre to me.
It feels so strange, especially if you're someone
who walks around with a camera,
which I think this is sort of the ideal target for this,
like, you have a little a7C,
you're gonna leave it at 24mm, right?
Like, you're not gonna leave it at 50mm,
but your brain wants to leave it at 50mm
because that's the compact mode, right?
And so that to me is a little weird.
It's taken, I mean we've had it
for a couple weeks now, right?
And I've done a few shoots with it and I still find myself
collapsing it, so I keep putting it at 50mm
and then I go to turn my camera on, I'm like,
why the hell is everything so punched in?
- Yeah, I've had that exact experience.
- I honestly think it's like the great kit- (dog barking)
Oh, there's Beef barking.
Are you picking that up, you hear him barking?
- Oh, I forgot about the doggo. Yeah, I haven't met him yet.
- Yeah, I got a dog. Beefo, you good?
(dog barking)
Beef?
- This is totally staying in the video.
You gonna make a video on the lens?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
- Okay, so we don't wanna spoil everything.
How should we end this call, you got anything?
- Get me out of this box.
- Okay, let's do a quick walk around the build of the lens.
First of all, for comparison, I've got two lenses here.
I've got the 35mm G Master and the 20mm G.
And you can see that it's sort of somewhere
in between those two.
It almost just feels like a compact prime
in terms of its size.
Now obviously this is when it's retracted
because it does extend when you go to 24mm,
making it a little bit longer,
but still shorter than a regular standard zoom.
It has an 11-bladed iris, so the bokeh is very smooth
and circular and it has two linear autofocus motors
that Sony is saying will allow it to keep up
with the A9 III's 120 frames per second.
It's got many of the features you'd expect to see
on a G series or above lens.
We have a zoom ring, a focus ring, and then an aperture ring
as well, which can be clicked or declicked,
and it goes all the way from f/2.8 to f/22.
There's also an AF/MF switch.
The only thing that's missing that I tend to appreciate
on some of the other lenses is the aperture lock
so that if I set it's A, I can lock it,
and it won't come off of that.
This does not have that switch.
Has a 67mm front filter thread,
which again is similar to the other lenses I just mentioned.
It's rated as being dust and moisture resistant.
And the manual focus is also linear
with a throw that's about 130 degrees. I would say
If you started here, you would get to about down there
when you reached all the way from minimum to infinity.
And the total weight for this thing,
if I haven't mentioned already, is 440 grams.
So almost exactly a pound.
And for comparison, the 24-70mm G Master II is 695 grams.
So there's a significant weight reduction
by getting rid of that 20 millimeters on the long side.
Now I wanna show you some test images
and we can pixel peep here in Lightroom,
but first lemme tell you about the sponsor
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Thanks for listening.
Now let's get into Lightroom.
Okay, first up, I just have two images here
to show the close focusing.
The magnification of this lens is 0.3x with autofocus
and 0.33x with manual focus.
This is the 50mm version.
This is a Rubik's cube,
so you have a sense of, you know, scale.
And then this is a 24 millimeter,
so actually, you get better reproduction on the wide end.
Now obviously you're gonna get more distortion,
you're gonna get closer,
you're gonna mitigate your light a little bit more,
ut if you wanna get as close as possible, 24 millimeters.
And it's not bad for a zoom lens like this
and for some other lens I've seen,
the macro reproduction isn't terrible.
It's obviously not a true macro, not even close,
but you can get pretty close for what kind of lens it is.
Now let's move along here, comparing the distortion
that I just talked about as well as some vignetting.
I do not have the profiles enabled for this,
but obviously, vignetting and distortion can generally
be handled either in post or with profiles in camera.
This is at 50 millimeters,
so you can see there's a little bit of barrel distortion
and not much in the way of vignetting.
It's pretty decent.
At 24 millimeters, however, we get serious corner
illumination issues and major barrel distortion.
So this one is definitely gonna need some correction
on the 24 millimeter side.
Now let's take a look at chromatic aberration,
mainly the longitudinal chromatic aberration,
which is as you go outta focus both foreground
and background, adding fringing into those areas,
that usually can only be resolved by stopping down.
If we look here, zoom right in,
this one is the 50 millimeter side of things
and it's actually pretty good.
Let's pull it just a little bit more.
As we go left and right, I'm seeing mostly black and white.
The cut mat is black and white,
so we wanna see no color really.
And I'm not seeing too much.
If we get pretty nitpicky here
with the pixel peeping as we go down,
there's a slight amount of magenta alongside here,
but it is extremely well controlled,
which I am impressed by.
And I'm seeing a little bit of like a teal color up in here.
But again, this is zoomed way in.
If we look at it here, does it look black and white? Yes.
Along the lines? Yes. Good.
That's all you can really ask for for LoCA.
And then this is the 24 millimeter side of things.
Again, very clean, very neutral.
I'm not seeing too much color on any of the lines.
So again, really good job.
I have no concerns for chromatic aberration on this lens.
Let's talk about bokeh.
So this is on 50 millimeter
and we're seeing some cat's eye in the corner.
This is wide open at f/2.8, obviously.
And if we look at the 24 millimeter side, same thing.
Different shape, but still quite a bit of cutting in there.
If you stop down to f/5, which is what we have here,
they mostly round out.
like I mentioned, this is an 11-bladed iris,
which we can see here, and then if we try to evaluate
just quality of the orbs when wide open,
this is what we get, mostly pretty smooth.
I don't find it to be anything remarkable.
Like, there is a bit of an outer membrane.
I am seeing a little bit of busyness on the inside.
You know, this is a 7/10 bokeh.
It's fine, it's okay, you know?
Like...
Whatever.
I do see a little bit of color fringing
on the 24 millimeter side.
Let's take a look at the 50 millimeter
and see if we have it there as well.
Not as bad.
So not as bad for the fringing on the 50 mil,
but there is some, as you can see here, on the 24 mil.
So overall the bokeh is, for an f/2.8 zoom
that goes 24-50mm for this price,
it's probably on par for what it should be.
Nothing miraculous.
And then I wanna talk a little bit about the parfocal
because I was impressed by this.
I did a couple different focuses. Like focus wide,
then zoom to tight, focus tight, zoom to wide,
and I was getting really, really good results.
So have a look here.
If we see the sort of sharpness of the text here-
Is this loaded?
I think so.
And then we zoom and take the shot again.
Still very, very sharp.
And then same thing, if we take the shot wide
and then zoom in afterwards, it's still really sharp.
So I would give it a high score in the parfocal department.
And it also does reasonably well
to keep up with, like, crash zooms.
It's not like that's what you would do a lot in 24-50mm,
but if you want to, the focus doesn't lag behind too much.
So that's good as well.
And then regarding focus on these types of pulls,
focus breathing is quite noticeable.
Now keep in mind, you're gonna probably be pairing this
with a body that has focus breathing compensation
because even the ones that don't
that I've been complaining about,
we've seen that firmware announcement
that said that they should be getting it as well.
So focus breathing compensation should deal
with any focus breathing, but in its current state,
if you use it on a camera like I did with the a1
that doesn't have focus breathing compensation yet,
I found that there was quite a bit.
I'm probably playing it over top of me talking right now.
And both at 50 millimeters and at 24 millimeters,
I found it to be quite noticeable
and a bit distracting at times.
Overall, I think this is a great lens.
You know, there's nothing miraculous about it
and I think for some people, it's not too exciting,
but I think if you're somebody that lives
in that 24-50mm zone, you are gonna look at this lens
and say, "Hey! That's where I shoot most of the time.
Definitely I'll take the half price deal
compared to the 24-70mm GM II."
And why wouldn't you?
I mean you're getting so much of the same benefits
and yeah, some of the same cons.
So really, it's a no brainer.
If you're somebody that mainly shoots 24-50mm,
you're just giving up 20 millimeter on the long side
and this weird thing where it extends at 24 millimeters.
But other than that, it's a great option for the money
and I think it's a darn good lens, and I agree with Patrick,
would make a pretty sweet kit lens.
Make sure you check out Patrick's video.
Thanks to him for coming on.
I dunno why I keep pointing to the TV,
he's not there anymore.
But he'll probably have some different things to say,
so go watch his video and yeah, see you in the next one.
Alright... I'm done.
- Get me out of this box.