If you are looking for used lenses or cameras, Japan can be a real dream destination. Having already been there two times myself I know from first hand experience that it isn’t easy to locate some of the more interesting stores though. My Finnish expat friend Juha Kannisto – who is living in Tokyo – has been helping out photographers from all over the world for years already when it comes to this topic.
I thought it would be useful to collect all this knowledge and turn it into an easy-to-access article, so here we are.
In 2023 there are plenty of lens manufacturers originating from China speaking to various different target audiences. While some are the Primark of the lens industry – simply trying to offer cheaper alternatives to the reknown manufacturers of lower quality – others have become the actual innovators in the photography lens business.
Having used more than 60 of those lenses from 14 different manufacturers I thought it is a good time to highlight the best ones I came across.
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 five 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 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.
In this article we mainly 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 some of the attractive ones that have been specifically designed for E-mount.
We summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few manual legacy lenses in the 9-18mm bracket to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the right super- to ultra-wide-angle lens for your Sony A7 cameras. In this summary we also included some adapted lenses we think are worth mentioning.
We have no association with any lens 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 new from retail stores or on the used market.
Many of these lenses are manual focus only (MF) whereas some of them 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).
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: November 2023, 7Artisans/Brightin Star 9mm 5.6 added, Sony FE 16-35mm 2.8 GM II added, Sony FE 12-24mm 2.8 GM and Sony FE 14mm 1.8 GM updated
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.
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.
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