about the 24 millimeter g master about a year ago and it has become one of my favorite lenses
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about the 24 millimeter g master i bought this lens about a year ago mostly just to do
some astrophotography stuff but it has become one of my favorite lenses for both photo work
and video work especially now the a74 has arrived with focus breathing compensation
the main reason i bought this lens and i was willing to spend as much money as this lens cost
is for photo work and especially low light photo work but this thing takes incredible photos
regardless of where you are and what you shoot it really is an excellent lens it is one of the
sharpest lenses that i've ever used and it's sharp all the way edge to edge and it's incredibly sharp
even wide open at f 1.4 which is amazing if you do astrophotography work or very low light stuff
this lens performs incredibly well it is really nice bokeh rendering in the background and you
can get a pretty close focus distance with this the main reason i bought this lens was for photo
work and mostly for astro photography because it's something i love doing up here especially in the
winter when we have long very long dark nights but this thing excels at so many different kinds
of photos and i just the more i've used it the more i've really enjoyed using it for photos one
thing that really stood out to me about this lens when i started using it is how sharp it
is even wide open at f 1.4 it is incredibly sharp all the way from edge to edge and that
is just amazing to be able to use it wide open at f 1.4 because you can use it in really low light
situations and you don't have to stop it down to get a little bit better sharpness and another
thing that stands out to me is on the opposite end of 1.4 when you stop down all the way to f16
and you want to get nice sun stars or star bursts this lens actually gives you really really nice
starbursts and because it has 11 aperture blades they really come out well and have lots of very
clear really nicely defined starbursts which is nice and i haven't noticed that this lens suffers
too much from flaring i mean it does obviously have a little bit of flaring but it's really not
that bad considering it's a 24 millimeter and i've shot with it in some pretty harsh
conditions now for video work at first i didn't like this lens at all because it has a lot of
focus breathing most of the g master primes do have a fair amount of focus breathing but then
they came out with the a74 and the a74 has focus breathing compensation which is basically where
the camera knows how much it needs to crop in and how to compensate for the lens as it
focuses so essentially it takes focus breathing totally out of the equation now as far as the
the lens itself everything it films is beautiful and especially if you're shooting in you know with
really shallow depth of field the fact that you have really good autofocus in the a7s iii the a74
the a1 all of which i've shot with this lens it just handles those situations beautifully
because it has really good autofocus in it sony's put a really great autofocus system in this lens
but now with the focus breathing compensation it takes it to a whole nother level in the fact
that you can shoot at incredibly shallow depths of field and there's no focus breathing at all in the
footage now yes it does crop in to do that but if you frame yourself up and you know what you want
then it just it's amazing but a whole other reason i bought this lens was to be able to film at night
under nothing but moonlight i wanted to be able to go out and and film myself you know shooting stars
uh shooting the aurora hopefully someday if i can ever get everything to work the weather and my
schedule to align so i go out shoot the aurora with the time that the aurora is actually on
display but with this lens you can get just i mean i've this footage here it still kills me that i
can film myself in the moonlight at iso 51000 and get a usable video uh we are here there's the moon
which is going to be a lunar eclipse so i thought it'd be cool to film it or time lapse it with the
tamron 35 to 150. it's incredible to me that i can go out and shoot myself with nothing but moonlight
and stars with something like the a7s iii and this lens or in most a lot of cases the a74 and this
lens i use the a7 3 most the time because it goes much higher in iso and it keeps it cleaner at much
higher isos so like 40 to 80 000 iso i can still get some usable stuff out of the a7 s3 which is
mind-blowing because it makes it look almost like the noonday sun but it's incredible to be able to
film yourself in such low light situations now if you're not pushing the extreme insane low light
like that you still this lens performs really well and you can get incredibly beautiful imagery and
video out of this lens because the lens has no built-in stabilization i don't really use
it as a vlogging lens i use this the 24 to 105 g uh which has some image stabilization
built in and it definitely makes a difference it certainly helps get better stabilization
but even without stabilization this lens does work well as a vlogging quote-unquote lens where you
can hand hold it hold it out but it's a little tight i think something like the 20 millimeter
1.8 which i'll have a review of coming soon works a little bit better but uh you know in a pinch
this lens will definitely work especially if you lock it off on a tripod and and stand a few feet
away there are a few things you need to be aware of about this lens one it is weather sealed which
is great for somebody like me you shoot out in all kinds extreme conditions but one of my favorite
things about it is it has a manual aperture ring so you can set your aperture manually to whatever
it is and the camera won't override it this ring overrides the camera no matter what but
if you want to control it from in the camera you can set it to auto and then the camera whatever
you set through the camera body will control the lens and actually yeah that's really nice
i end up using the aperture ring a lot nice thing about it too is it's clicked or de-clicked so if
you're shooting photos and you want to be able to smoothly change your aperture from
wide open to stop down to f16 you can do that or you can leave it clicked for doing photography
and really being able to get right on your uh your different points of aperture it does have
a button here to be able to use for focus hold or program it to whatever you want in the sony camera
and then it has an autofocus manual focus switch which i use a lot more than i ever
thought i would because when i'm out doing star work i don't like to get into the menus
of the sony camera if i don't have to so i can just switch it from autofocus to manual focus
and then get it and i have my camera set up to where anytime i touch the manual focus wheel
anytime i touch the focus wheel and it's in manual focus it automatically will punch in overall build
quality is really nice and something else that i love about this lens is it's really lightweight it
doesn't weigh much it works great on gimbals and yeah because it doesn't weigh much i don't worry
about throwing it in my bag and taking it with me places it has a 67 millimeter filter thread
which is great because most of my nd filters and variable nd filters are all 67 millimeters
apparently i need to clean this lens a little bit because it looks a little dirty overall
this lens is really solidly built it's really well weather sealed and it is an absolute blast
to film and to shoot with especially now that the a74 has focus breathing compensation now at
fourteen hundred dollars it's not cheap but you can't find it on sale occasionally from sometimes
13 maybe even 1250 dollars u.s and if you can and you have the budget for it i would highly
recommend you pick it up if it's on sale and it's a lens that you need one thing that people wonder
about is what kind of lens what kind of glass should i invest in should i get a better camera
body or should i get better glass and i always recommend that you get better glass this lens has
now been with me through three different camera bodies the a7 3 the a7s iii which i'm filming
on and the a74 i've used this on the a1 the a92 i've used it on the a 7r3 i might have even used
it on the a7r4 when i've used that from time to time but i've used this lens on a lot of different
bodies and it will continue to last me for a long time regardless of what camera bodies i use
just because glass will tend to carry you through a lot of different camera bodies and this lens
is no exception to that if you want to see other lenses that work
really well on sony cameras that i've tested here at alaska click or tap right there
i'll see in one of those videos as always if you have questions ask me in the comments below or
join my live stream which happens wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern time
or we can actually have a conversation till then i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers