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Guides, lenses, Opinion

Sony FE Lenses: The honest Guide for the A7/A9/A1 Series

284 Comments

Choose the right lens for your Sony Alpha with the help of our independent knowledge gained by writing many in-depth reviews.

We have an in-depth knowledge of many of the lenses listed here not only because we have used them, but also because we have reviewed many of them in detail. We are also independent from any lens manufacturer and when you check our reviews you will see that we do not hesitate to name any shortcomings of a lens.
We will also talk about lens aberrations, if you don’t know too much about these terms maybe have a look at our article Lens aberrations explained first.

Originally the idea of this guide was to include all available fullframe E-mount lenses. The number of fullframe E-mount lenses has significantly grown over the years though, so that has become an impossible task.

From now on this article will only include lenses that we find currently recommendable. That will make this article much easier to navigate and read and therefore more valuable. It should also make it easier for us to keep it up to date, as we don’t have to waste a lot of time adding uninteresting or mediocre lenses anymore. I also removed most of the super tele lenses, as we have too little experience with them. The aim is to generally keep this article below 10000 words, which is still a whole lot.

We do also have guides for:
9-18mm ultra wideangle FE lenses
20-28mm wide angle lenses
35mm FE lenses
50mm FE lenses
85-200mm FE portrait lenses
Macro lenses for the FE system
These guides often contain some older lenses not listed here (anymore).

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

Last update: March 2025
A lot of new lenses added, many older/discontinued/outdated lenses removed.

Continue reading Sony FE Lenses: The honest Guide for the A7/A9/A1 Series →

Guides, Sony Alpha 7

Guide to best Sony E-Mount 35mm Lenses for A7/A9/A1 series

Video 108 Comments

review sharpness 42mp high resolution sample test vergleich comparison bokeh handling build quality a7riii autofocus af close macro

35mm is a very popular focal length with a wide range of applications ranging from landscape over astrophotography to environmental portraiture and many consider it the best choice when only using one prime lens. We decided to summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few legacy 35mm lenses for the Sony A7 series to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the best 35mm lens for your needs.

We also have a general guide to FE-lenses, 9-18mm ultra wide angle lenses, guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses, 50mm lenses, 85-200mm portrait lenses and macro lenses.

Unlike most other review sites we have no association with any lens manufacturer apart from occasionally loaning a lens for a review. We prefer independence over fancy trips and nice meals.

Before any short introduction we tell you how long we have used a lens and if we have borrowed it from a manufacturer. But in most cases we have bought the lenses new from retail stores or on the used market. If you want to support our independent reviews please consider using one of the affiliate links. It doesn’t cost you anything and helps us a lot.

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

Last update: March 2025, cleaned up a bit

Continue reading Guide to best Sony E-Mount 35mm Lenses for A7/A9/A1 series →

Canon EF-Mount, Guides, Leica M, lenses, Olympus OM, Sony A-mount, Sony E-mount

Guide to the best Portrait Lenses – Sony A7/A9/A1 series

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We summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few legacy lenses in the 85-200mm bracket for the Sony A7/A9/A1 series to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the best portrait lens for your needs.

We also have a general guide to FE-lenses, 9-18mm ultra wide angle lenses, guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses, 35mm lenses, 50mm lenses and macro lenses.

Unlike most other review sites we have no association with any lens manufacturer apart from occasionally loaning a lens for a review. No fancy trips and meals.

Before any short introduction we tell you how long we have used a lens and if we have borrowed it from a manufacturer. But in most cases we have bought the lenses new from retail stores or on the used market. 

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

If you purchase the lens through one of the affiliate-links in this article we get a small compensation with no additional cost to you.

Last update: March 2025, several lenses added, cleaned up

Continue reading Guide to the best Portrait Lenses – Sony A7/A9/A1 series →

Canon EF-Mount, Canon FD-Mount, lenses, Minolta SR mount, Sony E-mount

Guide to wide-angle lenses for Sony A7/A9/A1 series

111 Comments
Sony A7rII | Zeiss Loxia 21mm 2.8 | f/8.0

We summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few manual legacy lenses in the 20-28mm bracket to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the right wide-angle lens for your Sony A7/A9/A1 camera. In this summary we also included some adapted lenses we think are worth mentioning. We didn’t include any zoom lenses, you can find those in our general guide to FE lenses as well as the guide to 9-18mm ultra wide angle lenses.

You may also want to check out our guides to 35mm lenses, 50mm lenses and 85-200mm portrait lenses.

Some of these lenses are manual focus only (MF) whereas others feature auto focus (AF). There is also a noticeable amount of lenses listed here that do not feature electronic contacts to communicate with the camera (no Exif).

We have no association with any manufacturer apart from occasionally loaning a lens for a review. Before any short introduction we tell you how long we have used a lens and if we have borrowed it from a manufacturer. But in most cases we have bought the lenses on the market. If you want to support our independent reviews please consider using one of the affiliate links. It doesn’t cost you anything and helps us a lot.

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

Last update: March 2025, Voigtländer 28mm 1.5E Nokton, Viltrox 28mm 4.5 AF added

Continue reading Guide to wide-angle lenses for Sony A7/A9/A1 series →

Guides, lenses, Sony Alpha 7

Guide to the best 50mm Lenses for full frame Sony E-mount cameras: A7/A9/A1

70 Comments
zhong yi mitakon 50mm 0.95 m-mount leica m10 sony a7riii a7riv sharpness bokeh resolution contrast review
Sony A7rII | Zhong YI 50mm 0.95 M | f/0.95

The 50mm lens is what used to be called a “standard” lens, though perhaps a very slightly shorter focal length gives the absolutely most natural perspective. For some of us here at Phillipreeve.net it’s a length we adore, and have more 50s than any other focal length. Others of us are less keen, finding it usually too short or too long. Obviously there is no right answer here, it depends on how each photographer sees the world.

We also have a general guide to FE-lenses, 9-18mm ultra wide angle lenses, guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses, 35mm lenses, 85-200mm portrait lenses and macro lenses.

But it is a very versatile focal length with a wide range of applications. It can be used for slightly formal portraits, moderately environmental portraits, landscape, architecture – most things except wildlife or sport. You can also, with a little quality loss, crop down to a more formal portrait angle of view, and you can – with a gain in both quality and hassle – stitch frames to get wider angles of view for certain kinds of landscape.

In this article we summarize our experience with all the native E-mount 50mm lenses to give you a independent resource in one place for choosing the best 50 mm lens for your needs. We will cover AF E-mount, MF E-mount with electronic contacts, and lenses with the E-mount but no contacts.

Unlike most other review sites we have no association with any lens manufacturer apart from occasionally borrowing a lens for a review. We prefer independence over fancy trips and nice meals.

Before discussing each lens, we tell you which of us had or has the lens, and whether it was purchased or borrowed for review. In most cases we have bought the lenses new from retail stores or on the used market. 

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

If you purchase the lens through one of the affiliate-links in this article we get a small compensation with no additional cost to you.

Last update: March 2025, Sigma 50mm 1.2 and Sony 50mm 1.4 GM added, Sony 50 1.2 GM, 50mm 2.5 G and Sigma 50mm 2.0 DG DN updated, cleaned up

Continue reading Guide to the best 50mm Lenses for full frame Sony E-mount cameras: A7/A9/A1 →