{"id":26499,"date":"2018-05-18T07:42:23","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T23:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=26499"},"modified":"2018-05-28T20:58:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T12:58:58","slug":"sony-fe-16-35mm-f4-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/05\/18\/sony-fe-16-35mm-f4-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of the whole bunch of new lens acquisitions for the Sony A73, the one new lens that has widen the range of photography I enjoy doing has been the Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0. Specifically, I’ve not used wide-angles much since the Sigma 10-20mm (eqv 15-30mm)\u00a0 for the old Nikon D300 ten years ago. That old lens was fairly sharp – extreme corners notwithstanding naturally – but slow at f4-f5.6. More seriously though – the Sigma had pretty severe barrel distortion that wasn’t always easy to correct in post-processing.<\/p>\n

Due in large part because of our upcoming trip to Bali, and also that now that our kids are growing older and don’t need as much hand-holding when we’re on vacation as they did just a few years ago, I’ve been considering revisiting the kind of landscape and wide-angle I enjoyed during our pre-kid vacations from ten years ago. The Bali 2008 trip especially comes to mind, with the wide-angle shots of Uluwatu, Tanah Lot, Jatiluwih Rice Terraces, and of Mt. Batur. So, serious thought was put into looking at wide-angle zooms as one of the early lens acquisitions.<\/p>\n

There are no shortage of wide-angles usable on the Sony A73. And again, that’s not even counting the non-native lenses that can be adapted for the Sony Alpha 7 cameras. Native-lens wise, Sony has three wide-angle zooms: two in the G line, and one in the GM line. In the former is the ultra wide-angle Sony FE 12-24mm f4.0 and the FE 16-35mm f4.0. In the latter is the Sony FE 16-35mm f2.8. Pricing wise, the FE 16-35mm f4.0 is the cheapest, but all three are regarded to be very high quality lenses. Against that in my shortlist was a pre-loved Carousell-listed Tamron 15-30mm f2.8 that I could use with the Sigma MC-11 adapter.<\/p>\n

Deciding which wide-angle was hard. I was initially decided to go with the Tamron, saving myself a few hundred dollars and also get that additional stop of light on the lens. On the other hand, the Tamron’s front lens element protrudes, making impossible any use of screw-on filters. And as with non-native lenses, there are always possible compatibility issues down the line. The price difference between this used Tamron and a new Sony FE f4.0 was just about SGD200. The general advice has always been where possible and all things else being equal, always go with native lenses. So, I eventually went with the FE 16-35mm f4.0 on account that the price difference of that few hundred dollars wasn’t enough to make up for possible issues if Sony makes subtle changes to its mount electronics. This is in stark-contrast to the > SGD700 difference in pricing for the 70-200mm f2.8 lens I also decided on. Will blog about that in a later post!<\/p>\n

Unlike the Sony FE 24-105mm f4.0, there were noticeably more used copies of the FE 16-35mm f4.0 on the local enthusiast sites. But many owners were pricing their pre-loved copies at just SGD100-200 less than street price. Again, not nearly enough delta to warrant any risks inherent in acquiring used equipment. So, I picked up a new copy of the lens from my usual camera store haunt.<\/p>\n

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The Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0. Lovely design and comfortable to hold, as have been all of Sony’s lenses I’ve picked up so far.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My early impressions: the 16-35mm f4.0 is better balanced with the A73 than the front-heavy bulk of 24-105mm –\u00a0 on account that it’s both shorter (length of 98.5mm vs 113.3mm) ) and lighter (518g vs 663g). Like the 24-105mm, the lens barrel feels slightly stiff, and hopefully will loosen up after extended use. Unlike that lens, the 16-35mm f4.0 doesn’t have a independent focus-lock button – pretty handy. And finally, it uses a 72mm filter thread – but fortunately, I have an old Marumi DHG circlar polarizer for this thread diameter from the old Nikon days.<\/p>\n

The first stash of pictures below were taken on the weekend of the purchase:<\/p>\n

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1\/5s, f4.0 @ 17mm, ISO3200 – and handheld, looking down from our front balcony! A remarkably clean image for ISO3200.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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0.4s, f4.0 @ 17mm, ISO3200. Attractive light stars observed at Tranquil World.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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1\/60s, f5.0 @ 16mm, ISO125 near the Minton’s children slide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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1\/60s, f5.0 @ 16mm, ISO100, and a shot assisted by the Marumi CPL filter. The reflections off the lily pond weren’t actually visible to the naked eye at the time this picture was taken – around 11AM on the weekend morning.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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1\/60s, f5.0 @ 16mm, ISO100. A very clean lily pond after its refurbishment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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1\/60s, f4.0 @ 35mm, ISO640. Trying out the 16-35mm f4.0 at the shop of purchase: M S Color @ AMK Hub.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The posts in this series:<\/p>\n

Samyang 35mm f2.8 FE<\/a><\/p>\n

Sony FE 50mm f1.8<\/a><\/p>\n

Sony FE 24-105mm f4.0<\/a><\/p>\n

Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0<\/p>\n

Sony FE 85mm f1.8<\/a><\/p>\n

Tamron 70-200mm f2.8<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of the whole bunch of new lens acquisitions for the Sony A73, the one new lens that has widen the range of photography I enjoy doing has been the Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0. Specifically, I’ve not used wide-angles much since<\/p>\n

Read More Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[608,612],"class_list":["post-26499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photography-cameras","tag-sony-a7-iii","tag-sony-fe-16-35mm-f4-0","wpcat-13-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/blog-2018-minton-A7_01783-tranquil-world.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}