Today we're discussing this, the Sony 14mm G Master.
It's like other G Master Primes, but wider
and with less focus breathing.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and I got 99 Primes, but a Fifty ain’t one.
Alright. As usual, some disclosure:
Sony lent me this lens to make this review.
I do not get to keep it, no money changed hands,
and Sony does not get any input on this video's production
or get to preview it before it's posted.
I also want to thank Sigma for lending me their 14mm f/1.8
for comparison, which, interestingly, I believe
is the only other native 14mm f/1.8 lens available
for Sony E, but it is a massive lens.
It's got that built-in MC-11 neck thing.
It's significantly larger than the G Master
and weighs over 1200g with the caps on,
compared to the 500g on the Sony.
So it's 2.4x heavier, which you can definitely
feel on the wrists because of the extra length.
And yet the Sony has the same aperture range
from f/1.8 to f/16, the same features,
and it's even the same price at $1599 USD.
So that makes it a bit of a no-brainer,
assuming that the Sony performs as well as the Sigma,
and I'm happy to report that it definitely does.
But before we get into the test shots,
let's talk a bit more about the build and focusing.
The Sony is your typical G Master lens in that it has
a de-clickable aperture ring, a function button,
AF/MF switch, and a linear focusing ring.
Both of these lenses will grant you accurate,
repeatable focus with similar throws of about 130-140 degrees.
But the Sigma is mechanical and has a window with witness marks,
where the Sony is completely electronic.
The Sigma's ring is stiffer, but not in a nicely
dampened way, and it can actually cause
some shake in your shots to get it started.
The Sony’s ring is a touch loose,
but nicer to use overall.
The Sigma is a lot louder too--
[whirring & clicking]
--and that carries over into autofocus.
The Sigma actually performs quite well
in most autofocus situations.
It's not quite as fast as the Sony
if you're quickly changing subjects,
but it was quite accurate and very reliable.
The only con is that it's very audible while it does it,
so on-camera microphones will definitely pick it up.
[whirring]
The Sony, on the other hand,
is silent and focuses flawlessly,
and the Sony lens is one of their best-performing
G Masters when it comes to focus breathing.
Often the two biggest cons with the G Masters
is that they focus breathe quite heavily
and that they cost too much compared to the Sigmas.
Well, in this case, with the 14mm,
the breathing is much better controlled.
It's not perfect, but acceptable,
and they match the Sigma’s price, so that's exciting
if you're shopping for a 14mm lens.
The Sony is also excellently weather sealed
and features a better cap design, but be aware
that you can't screw filters onto the front of this lens,
and instead you have to use their custom rear filter cutout,
similar to their ultra-wide zooms.
The Sony also claims to have
a better minimum focusing distance
of 25cm compared to the 27cm on the Sigma,
but when you actually compare the images,
the Sigma appears to be focusing closer,
but I think this is a by-product of how these lenses
handle distortion differently.
But here, let's take a look at my test shots
so I can show you what I mean.
Okay, so these first two shots here
are as close as you can focus on this Rubik's Cube,
so you can get an idea of how close you can get.
And there's no lens corrections on
for anything for either of these lenses.
So this is the Sigma,
and then if I switch over here, this is the Sony.
So even though the Sony can physically focus closer,
do you see how the Sigma looks like it's bigger in the frame?
It almost looks like you're getting a better reproduction.
But look at the surrounding around that Rubik's Cube,
and also look at the table and the edges of the Rubik's Cube,
like if it's barreling out or pincushioning in,
and you can see that there's sort of a distortion
that's making it sort of get closer.
And it's not just perspective distortion,
which I can show you in a second, but even look at
the phone, that black object that’s just inching
into the frame, or the straight line on the table.
What the Sony is doing really well in these shots
is minimizing distortion.
Now, it still has perspective distortion,
if you get really close with a wide angle lens.
Like, here's a shot of a diner downtown,
and you can see it looks really weird and bulbous
and stuff. You can still create that look,
that's more of a wide angle thing.
But it's about the lines being straight
and not curved, you know, rectilinear versus curvilinear.
So if we look at, say, these two images here
of this chart-- so this one is the Sony,
and then this one is the Sigma.
So you can really see how it's flexing there.
Here's a good example that I took of my studio,
which is still pretty close,
where you’d think you'd get some problems.
And just to give you an idea, the camera was on a tripod,
like, literally right there, like, just out of the frame.
It’s crazy how close it was, and yet
you can see all this depth.
And what you're looking at here is 35mm,
so that's what a 14mm looks like placed right there.
But look at the lines.
You know, even in the corners there,
they remain really straight and really nice.
You don't really start to get any weirdness until
the extreme corners down here, when you can see that wheel
is being stretched, and the same thing happens,
you know, down in this corner.
But the bulk of the frame, you know,
there's a lot of vertical things in the shot,
and pretty much everything is remaining really nicely straight
with not much bowing at all, so that's great.
Now, I asked Sony how they're able to do this,
and this is the marketing blurb that they gave me:
that this lens incorporates two extreme aspheric lens elements,
one in the front and one in the rear,
and the one in the front is the largest and very curved
with a complex design and manufacturing to make it
highly accurate and sharp from centre to outer edges.
There's also an aspheric lens element in the middle,
and the combination of these three elements is what
makes this lens so “special,” as they call it.
Sharp throughout, beautiful bokeh, and rectilinear,
meaning little to no noticeable distortion.
These elements also correct for sagittal coma flare,
which is the bow tie or butterfly effect that can be
seen when focusing on stars, and very few lenses render stars
perfectly this round, according to Sony.
I haven't tested on astro, but that's the explanation
as to how it's able to handle distortion so well,
if you understand how lenses are designed.
Now, when it comes to that bokeh they were talking about,
I have a couple samples here that we can look at.
Obviously when we're talking ultra-wide lenses,
don't expect a lot of big, awesome out-of-focus orbs.
You're not really gonna get that.
So here I've got the Sigma and the Sony, both at 1.8.
And if we punch in here, we can see that the Sony
is doing better-- The Sony is on the right--
because the Sigma here does have quite a bit of onion-ringing
in the bokeh, where the Sony does not.
And as we move out toward the edge,
they both suffer from some distortion problems here.
But not only does the Sony remain more round,
but it's not being as stretched as much as the Sigma is,
And if we swap them out for the 2.8 versions
to see how they do now, the Sigma does round off
a little bit better in the corner there,
but still quite a bit of onion-ringing throughout.
And let's take a look at the centre here...
and still, pretty much the same thing. The Sony is doing better,
and they're both showing equal aperture blades.
I think both of these are a nine-bladed aperture.
So, similar, it's just that the bokeh
on the Sigma is a bit dirtier.
And while we’re in here, let's take a quick look
at some chromatic aberration shots I did.
This one is not for chromatic aberration,
I just thought it was kind of wild.
I had the lens literally, like, right at the bench,
and it still could see the entire-- it's kind of trippy.
I just find this lens trippy. It's a bit wide for me.
Normally the widest I go is 20mm,
so messing around with the 14mm has been kind of fun
to see things from a different perspective.
But anyway, let's take a look here.
This one is the Sony lens,
and if we punch into where I'm focused,
we're looking for-- well, both chromatic aberration.
Right now we’re looking for longitudinal to see
if there's different colours at the foreground and background
elements as we focus in and out, and there's not really at all.
So the longitudinal, which is the harder one to correct,
is really great on the Sony.
We jump over to the Sigma... not so much.
So we can see that we're getting some blue-cyan in the foreground
and moving into that sort of amber colour in the background.
And we're also seeing some stuff laterally.
Now, the Sony, although it's much better longitudinally,
isn't perfect laterally,
and I can show you an example of that over here.
I think I have a fence shot.
Yeah, so here's one, again,
to show the performance
that you can expect to get from chromatic aberration.
You know, up against the sky, longitudinal is great.
If we follow along the fence here, we're not seeing anything
weird colour-fringing-wise as we move throughout.
But if you were to shoot--
I have a really exaggerated example here.
It's not a great example, but if you were to sort of shoot
aimlessly with things at different focus depths
up against the sky, you will notice some lateral issues.
So this, like I said, shot is completely pointless.
I was doing a weird focus on it to show you
these different branches,
and some of the branches do have some issues.
I might have to punch in to be able to show you,
but you will start to see some fringing
on some of them, you know, lateral.
But you can fix this easily if you just jump over
to the “Develop” tab and go to “Lens Corrections.”
You know, and we can just go manual here,
and if you just put on a little bit of
the Defringe, it takes it away.
So that's the reason why lateral is no big deal,
but it is there when you have sort of a busy shot like this.
But a shot like this that you might actually
have a more logical control over your focus,
I didn't notice any chromatic aberration at all.
So better than Sigma, and nothing to really worry about
in that regard. It's been a pretty terrible last few days
for shooting, so I don't really have a lot of
great sample images, but I took a couple just kind of,
you know, mediocre shots to show you
some colour rendering and also some detail.
So as you can see, the greens
and these pink colours really pop.
The lens renders colours really nicely.
And if we punch way in here, you know,
we've got a ton of detail here to work with.
This was shot on the a1, so we're looking at 50MP here.
Very sharp, plenty of detail in the centre.
It's gonna get out to the corners not as sharp, obviously.
That's just a wide angle issue.
And you can see a little bit of the focus fall off here.
Again, I wouldn't really consider an ultra-wide
to be something that you'd want to look at for really creamy,
you know, transitioning out-of-focus areas.
I did one of these so you could see kind of, like, how the rocks
do transition. You know, it's OK.
It has a bit of a harsh kind of fall off here,
but again, it's to be expected when you shoot wide.
You're not generally trying to do this kind of stuff.
It'd be more for a fun perspective of a single object.
You're not really trying to make,
you know, creamy depth like this.
You can see it’s-- it's OK.
Again, the G Masters do a good job at this,
but it's not amazing. But you could do
something more like this. Again, this is not an amazing shot,
but now the focus makes a lot more sense,
because you're getting a more smooth kind of transition.
I did a bunch of shots here of this area in my kitchen
where I could focus in the centre on some shots,
on this one, but then also redo the shot in the corner.
And I did this at f/1.8,
f/2, 2.8, 4, and 5.6, and f/8, I think?
I went through those stops. I stopped at f/8.
And a tip on this lens: I found that you get
a significant improvement just from going to f/2.
So this is at 1.8, and if I jump to f/2,
look for vignetting in a bit of the corners there,
you can see that you get quite a bit.
Back and forth. And then 2.8, you get a bit more.
That's when it really brightens up in the corners.
No corrections are on during this.
And then there's not really much more to be had after that.
The sweet spot in this lens is somewhere between f/2.8 and f/4,
and I found the same thing for sharpness.
So you can see that the 2.8 is quite a bit
sharper than the 1.8, but if we go more than that,
it doesn’t really get much better.
Maybe f/4 is a slight bit sharper, but...
So here's the same shot again. f/1.8 versus f/8.
If we look in the center-- I'm actually focused
in the corner now--
that the f/8 is still sharper in the center,
even when focused in the corner, than the 1.8.
But if we look at the corner
as well, that... I don't know.
It's not that much better,
f/8 in the corner, when focused in the corner.
So what this means, what you should take from this,
is that even if you stop down all the way to f/8,
you're not going to sharpen up your corners that much,
so I wouldn't-- it's not a lens where it's, like,
you get to 5.6 and the corners are perfect.
What's happening in the corners isn't dependent so much
on aperture and more of just the way that it's wide
and how it's handling distortion and that kind of thing.
And I just have one more example here to show
how great this lens is handling distortion
and keeping things rectilinear.
I've got a fence all the way in the foreground here
that goes all the way along to the background.
The lines are straight from edge to edge.
And I focused on this house here,
and this was a shot that was done at f/2.8,
and we're getting really good detail,
even all the way back at this house.
Looks great. You can see details even in the window there.
Now, when it comes to flare, both lenses
definitely showed some, but differently.
The Sigma suffered from a massive loss of contrast
and lots of glare and ghosting,
where the Sony was more controlled
when it comes to the contrast, but instead
it displayed these rims of larger blue orbs that I assume
are reflections of the bulbous front element.
Lastly, when it comes to sun stars, well,
I didn't get any, because the sun hasn't shown itself here
in the last several days long enough for me to capture it.
But I think I might know someone who can help me
with not only grabbing some sun stars,
but also offers perspective on how this lens stacks up
to the ultra-wide zooms from Sony and Sigma
for today's “Second Opinion” segment, featuring Jared Polin.
Hey Gerald, thank you for having me in your video.
And yes, it is actually sunny in Philadelphia.
That's funny! It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia!
And yeah, I got some sun stars at f/8 with the 14mm 1.8.
So you asked me to give my thoughts on these zooms
versus the prime, and which direction that I would go.
Now, I went out and photographed in Philadelphia.
The first place that I went was the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
aka where Rocky ran up the stairs.
That is a great place to test out these lenses,
set up a tripod, set up the Sony a1,
and just change lenses without moving anything else.
So I would shoot the 12-24 at 14,
the 14mm-- of course, it's a prime-- at 14,
and then the Sigma 14-24 2.8 at 14.
I have sample RAW files that you guys can download.
Gerald will put the link down below, and that way
you can decide for yourself which ones you think are better.
Now, I also ran the 14 1.8 through its paces
in a photojournalistic situation,
photographing an artist,
as well as taking it to the Japanese garden in Philadelphia.
Now, my feelings on it: I was surprised at how light it was.
It is a light lens for 14mm at 1.8.
At first I didn't think it was a lens that I was going
to really like because it's a prime and I prefer having
the zooms, but if you're in a situation
where you want to do astrophotography
or you aren't worried about having to zoom
because you could get closer or get further away,
this is a fantastic option.
It was sharp, it's super fast, it's super light,
it's super compact. It's $1599.
You got the money, that's gonna be a fantastic option.
The 14-24 f/2.8 Sigma is also a pretty small lens
in comparison to the 12-24 f/2.8,
and I used this in a real world situation
out on the campaign trail with Bernie Sanders,
and it was nice and sharp, the focus was fast.
I used it on the Sony a7R IV
as well as the a9 II, and it did a great job out there,
and this is a $1299 lens.
And now we've got the 12-24 f/2.8 G Master,
which is a beast of a lens that carries a beast of a price
at $2900, but this is my go-to for wide angle.
That 12mm from 12-14 of the art museum stairs
just gives you a little bit more.
I like the versatility. Is it heavy?
Yeah. Is it bigger? Yeah. Is it more expensive?
Yes. But at the end of the day.
if you're somebody who just goes out and shoots
and you just need a wide angle on the E-mount,
the Sigma 14-24 is a fantastic option at $1299.
If you don't need the zoom and you can spend
a little bit more money, this 14 f/1.8 is very nice.
Do I think there's a big difference between the 1.8
and the 2.8 to make up for that extra money?
I mean, a couple hundred bucks if you don't need the zoom?
Sure, go with it. If you want that 1.8,
if you shoot stars, if you want the best
of the best with honours, sir, that Sony has to offer
for the 14mm 1.8 prime, then go with it.
I am personally sticking with the 12-24
just because I like having this range.
Yes, it's more expensive, but this is what I do every day.
Look, you can't go wrong with either of these.
I think they are all great options.
If you're just out there looking for your first
wide angle lens, I don't go with a prime
as my first wide angle, I go with the 14-24 f/2.8 Sigma here.
If you're not an every day, all day professional,
you're going to get great results with this
and have some versatility,
and an extra couple hundred bucks in your pocket.
So, Gerald, did we get Undone enough?
Do I-- do I take my shirt off? Is that how it works?
I'll leave my shirt on
and throw it back to you in Canada... eh?
Thanks, Jared. And make sure you guys check out his video, too,
which likely will be uploaded the same time as mine,
so you can watch that next if you haven't seen it already.
Now, normally this part in the video is where
I would try and offer up some value considerations,
and I think Jared did a great job of that regarding the zooms,
but when it comes to the primes, there's really nothing to say.
The Sony is smaller, better, faster, and the same price.
The Sigma still performs quite well,
so if you own it already and are happy,
I probably wouldn't worry about switching
to the Sony unless the size really bothers you.
But if you're looking to get your first 14mm prime
for Sony E, the G Master is definitely the way to go.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
entertaining, or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up,
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.