- I've mentioned it on this channel before,
I am a big fan of zoom lenses
and the versatility that they offer
when you're out shooting in the field.
And as of recently,
the Sony 16-35 G Master
has basically been living on my camera for all the projects
that I've been shooting.
And while I absolutely love what you can do with this lens
and the versatility and the image quality,
I was looking for something specific
that was a little bit smaller, lighter,
and still covered me on that ultra wide range,
because sometimes if I'm filming myself vlogging
or hiking up the side of a mountain,
maybe I don't want that big and heavy of a lens.
So I recently decided to pick up
the Sony 20-millimeter F1.8 G lens
to see if it could fill that gap for me.
There were a ton of times while using the 16-35
that I caught myself shooting at 20 millimeters.
I think there's something nice about this focal length
that's a little bit wider
than that kind of standard 24-millimeter look,
but not so wide as to look kind of distorted,
like a 16-millimeter.
So for me, the 20-millimeter focal length
sounded like it was perfect for vlogging
and that kind of thing,
as well as the size
and weight of this tiny little lens.
Now, because I had such a specific use case for this lens,
I decided to test it in a very specific way.
I shot a vlog hiking up a mountain
with only the 20-millimeter on my FX3.
So what we're gonna do today
is I'm gonna show you that entire video,
and then we're gonna come back after,
and I'm gonna give you kind of the pros and cons
of what I found while I was using this lens.
So let's head out on an adventure,
and maybe we'll secure the cup while we're out there.
(upbeat music)
The following vlog was shot entirely
on the Sony 20 millimeter F1.8 G lens,
except for one short clip shot on a 70-200.
Can you find that clip?
Leave a comment below.
So I made a decision to do something this weekend,
and I'm still trying to figure out
whether it was really a good idea or not,
but it all starts at about two o'clock this morning,
so let's go back for a second.
(calm music)
So my wife has been out of town for a couple of days
on a little girls trip
with a couple of her good girlfriends.
They're out there having fun.
And I had this crazy idea
that I should get up really early one morning
and try and go for a hike somewhere
in the Rocky Mountains.
And if you don't know, I live in Edmonton,
which is basically a four,
maybe five-hour drive from the Rocky Mountains
in kind of any direction.
So if I wanna do a nice,
beautiful morning hike,
that means I have to get up stupid early
and drive four and a half hours before I can even start.
So here we are.
(grinder grinding)
So the hike that we're gonna do today
is something called Little Lougheed or Lougheed.
From what I can tell, the views look absolutely incredible.
And that's usually how I choose which hike
I'm gonna go on.
And lately I've been developing a bit of a ritual
when I go on hikes,
where I'm doing a reasonably hard hike,
I'll bring a little baggy full of Oreos and a coffee,
and I'll make sure that I have that at whatever the peak
of my hike is.
(soft upbeat music)
So this morning I've actually got two coffees.
This one is for the top of the hike.
And this one is for getting my ass out of bed so early.
I'm about an hour and a half into the drive so far,
and driving during sunrise
is actually surprisingly beautiful.
I don't know why I say surprisingly,
it's not really surprising.
I would've loved to have been hiking during the sunrise,
but obviously with the four and a half hour drive
to get to the trail head,
that's not gonna happen.
I'm set to be there for about eight o'clock.
Things are reasonably on time-ish.
I know that these kinds of places
get pretty packed pretty early on.
So hopefully I can still catch it before it's too full.
So I just pulled over and taking a quick break here
and stretching the legs a little bit.
I think I'm about 45 minutes away from where I need to be.
And I just hit the kind of threshold,
where you're coming out of like the foothills
and going into the Rocky Mountains,
and it's just amazingly beautiful.
This is like my favorite part of this entire drive.
(traffic roaring)
It's also really loud because of all the traffic going by,
but you know what?
You win some, you lose some.
(upbeat music)
So I got up at 2:00 this morning.
I got ready.
I got on the road by about three o'clock,
and with a couple of little stops in there,
it took me about five hours to get here.
It's about 8:37 right now.
Most people are saying it's about
four and a half hours round trip.
It's supposed to be somewhere
between five and seven kilometers.
That was kind of a debate on the internet.
And then somewhere between like 700 and 900 meters
of elevation.
So it's a pretty steep one.
It's too bad that by the time that I get up to the top,
the sun is going to be right up in the top of the sky.
(upbeat music)
Did a little stretch,
got the muscles a little warmed up,
got the backpack all packed up,
everything I think I'll need.
Now we're off to find the trail head.
Let's do this.
(peaceful music)
(stream sloshing)
(Dunna sighs)
This is a very steep hike,
but I think I just hit my first kind of wow spot.
Check this out.
I'm sure that's only gonna get better as I go up,
but, wow, good spot for a quick break.
So I'm about two kilometers in.
I see a little jut out
where I think there's kind of like a bonus viewpoint.
So I'm gonna follow that and see what happens here.
Wow, it is pretty bonkers out here.
So this looks like it kind of cuts along the side
of the mountain,
instead of continuing kind of upwards.
I don't know if this is the way I want to go,
but I kind of want to just check it out
and see if there are any cool photos or anything.
Okay, this is ridiculous.
It looks so good over there.
I'm not excited to have to trek back over this,
'cause the terrain is terrible,
but I could see a rock just right there.
And I really wanna go explore for a photo.
Okay, now that we've done that,
back to the main trail.
I'm pretty sure these pink ribbons
mean I'm going the right way.
They're a little bit tough to see at times.
And the path is the same.
It's not super easy to tell where you're going all the time.
For example, I'm pretty sure all those rocks I went over,
I didn't have to go over those.
And speaking of going over rocks,
I think I another ribbon right up there,
and this is my path to get there, fun.
(Dunna grunts)
I found another ribbon. All right.
The hike is definitely getting harder as I go up.
But the view is opening up,
and, boy, both sides now you can see the water
behind me here,
but on the other side,
there's like this valley,
and this kind of like...
I don't even know how to describe it.
I'm just gonna show you.
I'm taking way too much time for filming now.
I'm running severely behind.
I think I might be getting reasonably close
to the peak now though.
It's a little tough to tell.
(upbeat music)
All right, it's looking like I'm pretty close
to the final scramble to the top here,
so you're probably not gonna see much
for footage of this.
Someone must've run out of pink ribbon, I guess.
It's at times like these when you start to go,
"Well, you know what?
It was really beautiful back there.
How much more beautiful could it possibly be at the top?"
And you start to consider
maybe just having that cookies and coffee treat right now,
setting up shop here on the rocks,
and living out the rest of my life here
on the side of a mountain
with six Oreos and a cup of coffee.
Sounds pretty good,
but I better finish.
(upbeat music)
Well, we officially made it all the way up.
It was definitely a tough one.
I expected it to be something similar to Ha Ling,
which I've done a couple of times now.
And it's like a good, difficult one.
I would say this one was probably more physically demanding,
and there are a couple of spots
where it's tough to know if you're going the right way.
There were some times when I set up the camera
and walked past it
and had to go back to it,
that on the way back,
I could see where the path actually was.
But it is absolutely stunning up here.
As you can see behind me,
there's just like the most beautiful blue water.
There are peaks all around us, 360-degree views,
definitely worth the hike.
Overall, I'm feeling pretty great about it.
I just wish that I had a way to teleport back down,
so I didn't have to do the way down.
I'm 100% thankful for my new shoes that I got they're
trail runners, as opposed to hiking boots.
There were a couple of times
when maybe I could've used hiking boots,
closer to the start,
where it was kind of wet and stuff.
But for the most part,
the trail runners were perfect, lots of grip,
but they're still like light and agile.
According to my app,
I've been going for three hours and 42 minutes,
traveled 3.8 kilometers,
and an elevation gain of 972 meters,
which is farther than it said online,
as well as more elevation gain.
So not sure what happened there,
But because of that,
and because vlogging takes a lot of time,
and because of the back and forth
that I have to do to make sure
that I'm getting all the shots,
I have to go like now,
or I'm gonna be late,
because I still have a four and a half hour drive home.
So thanks for coming along on this hike with me.
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
I'm sorry, I couldn't share my Oreos with you.
Have a good day.
So first and foremost, after that experience,
this is now my favorite vlogging lens
for the Sony Full Frame system.
Like I said before,
the field of view is wide enough for me
without getting that kind of super ultra wide look,
and the size and weight of it made it so much easier
to use than my 16-35 G Master.
I recently shot in a couple of similar situations
to that with the 16-35 G Master,
but it really does become a heavy burden after a while,
pun intended.
So obviously now you've seen a lot of video footage
from the 20-millimeter.
You even saw one photo in there
that was taken with the 20-millimeter.
I have absolutely zero complaints about the image quality.
It's absolutely fantastic.
One thing that I didn't necessarily think
that I was gonna like
that I actually ended up enjoying
was the aperture ring that they have on it.
I kind of figured I'd probably just leave it in the A mode,
which allows you to control it from the camera itself.
But I did end up actually using that aperture ring
quite a bit while I was on that hike.
You can also put it into de-clicked mode,
if you want to,
but I just left it in the clicked mode,
because that was what worked for me.
We've also got an autofocus toggle switch
as well as a custom button on it.
And it's got Sony's newest autofocus motor system in it,
which is absolutely fantastic, completely silent,
and part of the reason why they're able
to make this lens so small.
I mentioned earlier that that 20-millimeter
doesn't quite give you that ultra wide,
distorted kind of look.
And that was one of the things
that I really noticed about vlogging on this,
you don't quite have that same kind of wobble on the edges
as you do when you're shooting at 16 millimeters.
And having an F1.8 aperture
really gives a nice look to a vlog.
I don't think there's anything wrong
with shooting a vlog at F4,
or whatever your lens can do,
but I really do like the kind of produced look
of a shallow depth of field lens,
especially on something like a vlog,
where you might not typically see that,
and especially at an ultra wide focal length.
The autofocus and face tracking with this lens
were absolutely fantastic.
It's so smooth.
It's just something that I didn't have to worry about
the whole time that I was out on that hike.
Now, there was one thing,
just one thing that I ran into as a problem with this lens,
and that is focus breathing.
If you're doing any kind of focus pull,
you're definitely gonna notice some focus breathing
with this lens.
That being said, in practical use during that vlog,
I didn't really run into any shots
where it ruined the shot for me by any means.
Just something that you might wanna kind of keep in mind
while you're shooting.
It comes in at $900 US or $1,200 Canadian
when it's not on sale,
which is not the cheapest lens in the world,
but I do think it's worth it
for what you're getting out of this lens.
But as always, I wanna hear what you think.
So let me know down in the comments section
what you thought of the 20-millimeter F1.8.
Is this something that you might be interested in?
And on your way down there,
make sure to hit that like and subscribe button,
hit the bell notification,
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching,
and I'll see you next time.
It doesn't matter if I'm at the top of a mountain,
I will secure the cup.
(upbeat music)