Choose the right lens for your Sony Alpha with the help of our independent knowledge gained by writing many in-depth reviews.
We are a team of four photographers who all use the FE system and this blog is focused on lens reviews. So we have an in-depth knowledge of these lenses not only because we use them all the time but also because we have reviewed most 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.
In this article we only list lenses which have electronic contacts to communicate aperture and focal length to the camera. There are also quite a few lenses which have an E-mount but no electronic contacts. Most of these are SLR-lenses with a modified mount and we decided against covering these because we think that most of them are not very attractive lenses. We do however cover the Laowa 2/15 and Mitakon 0.95/50 because those are attractive lenses for some photographers.
All native full frame lenses for the Sony FE mount (as of March 2018)
10-15mm
Voigtländer 5.6/10 (manual focus)
Sony A7rII | Voigtländer 10mm 5.6 HWH E | f/16
Strengths
Weaknesses
Widest lens available
Small size
Good sunstars and flare resistance
Huge vingetting
Corner sharpness not great
Recommendation: if you want the widest rectilinear lens available this is it.
The Minolta MC 1.2/58 is probably Minolta’s most famous lens and a personal favorite of mine. In this in-depth review I have a close look at the Minolta’s qualities and also at its weaknesses.
Sony A7rII with Laowa Magic Shift Converter and 12mm 2.8 Zero-D lens
You ask what the heck a Magic Shift Converter is? This is a 1.4x tele converter for wide angle lenses and adds ±10mm shift movement. It for example turns Laowa’s 12mm 2.8 in a 17mm 4.0 ±10mm shift lens. In this review you will find out how this can be useful and what the influence on the image quality of the master lens is.
Sample Images
Sony A7rII | Laowa 12mm 2.8 Zero-D on Magic Shift Converter | f/8.0Sony A7rII | Laowa 12mm 2.8 Zero-D on Magic Shift Converter | f/8.0Sony A7rII | Laowa 12mm 2.8 Zero-D on Magic Shift Converter | f/4.0
Phillip was kind enough to ask me to write a review of one of my favorite lenses: The Leica R Apo-Elmarit 180mm/F2.8 E67.
I love this lens because it is optically excellent from wide open, lacks field curvature, has pleasing rendering, is well corrected, is small enough to comfortably hand hold, and is bright enough at F2.8 to use even in less than optimal light. I use this lens on Sony because there is no comparable native lens available.
It has been called the world’s best medium telephoto lens. While I cannot confirm or deny this claim, it is indeed a very fine optic in my experience. As will be seen below, it has many virtues and few weaknesses.
Sample Images
Images shown in this review can be found here in higher resolution.