johnctharp wrote:
This is the kicker- Sony compromised IQ on the 24-70/4, possibly for the sake of size. The 24-105/4 just needs to be solid all around, not necessarily even outstanding, to be really tempting.
And the samples I've seen so far are a cut above say the Sigma 24-105/4 | Art, let alone the Canon 24-105L I/II and 24-120/4G. Lens looks worthy of 42MP, if not necessarily at f/4, definitely by one stop down. Should make an effective reportage/event lens, and potentially a decent landscape lens if one wants the extra reach/doesn't want the extra size/weight of the outstanding 24-70/2.8GM, or alternatively a bag of primes....Show more →
This is what I'm hoping. Trying not to get my hopes up too high! Luckily (?) I'm not in a position to make any more gear purchases ATM so I'm forced to wait until we see more reviews. If it meets or exceeds the Sigma I'll make it my next lens purchase. I'm not much of a zoom shooter but there are certainly times when I can't be changing lenses and this would cover my whole range of primes.
ZoranC wrote:
Here is a question I ask myself as owner of 24-70 GM: Would it be worth it to me to get a stop slower lens and potentially lower IQ too just to save half of a pound and get little extra reach?
Save a fair amount of weight, extra reach, and half the price ---
We don't know if it's a significant IQ compromise.
If the IQ is very high, then it's a question of whether you *need* 2.8 aperture.
In my mind -- Low light event shooters NEED those 2.8 zooms, there is no real substitute.
Flash photographers, outdoor daylight photographers... the F4 may be more than good enough, especially if supplemented with primes.
Personally, I prefer prime shooting and will use primes for my "serious" stuff. But sometimes I absolutely need the convenience of a zoom -- I'm thinking the F4 is a better fit for me.
On the other hand, if I was really just going with zooms.... I would feel more compelled to go with 2.8.
Not about the price. It is possible that a few got lucky with their sample of the Zony zoom. I gave up after two attempts.
RobCD wrote:
I think the 28-70 being better than the 24-70 f4 is wishful thinking unless you are talking about price and not performance. The 24-70 f4 is a disappointment in many respects but being worse than the 28-70 is not one of them. I'm not knocking the 28-70 because it should be worse considering the price but still it is worse.
i am hoping it is a solid lens as it will end up in my railroad photo charter bag, i have the 24-70 gm and while it is a great lens, rail charters in the daytime many times call for that extra reach
realVivek wrote:
Not about the price. It is possible that a few got lucky with their sample of the Zony zoom. I gave up after two attempts.
I'm one of the lucky ones as my 24-70 f/4 is quite acceptable for landscapes - especially after f/7.1. So it will be interesting to see how the 24-70 f4 compares to the 24-105 from 24-70. Its also interesting that the 24-105 has image stabilization! What I don't like is its weight! As it is 65% heavier than the 24-70 f/4.
garyrn wrote:
i am hoping it is a solid lens as it will end up in my railroad photo charter bag, i have the 24-70 gm and while it is a great lens, rail charters in the daytime many times call for that extra reach
Yup. I learned the hard way not to change lenses riding on a train pulled by a steam locomotive! Ash and soot all over my sensor. Stupid move. Needed a good zoom for a trip like that. Maybe this will be ticket!
FF coverage and 5x zoom makes me nervous about performance, and I agree with @dbehrens that weight is already to high (for walkabout anyway). Nikon really aces this domain with their kit DX zooms, both the standard range 18-55 and the longer 55-200: lightweight, stabilized, collapsible, decent AF, amazing optical performance, cheap as dirt. I don't hesitate to use them on my D500 for a comfortable carry. So far, Alpha 7 only makes sense to me with select primes.
rico wrote:
FF coverage and 5x zoom makes me nervous about performance, and I agree with @dbehrens@ that weight is already to high (for walkabout anyway). Nikon really aces this domain with their kit DX zooms, both the standard range 18-55 and the longer 55-200: lightweight, stabilized, collapsible, decent AF, amazing optical performance, cheap as dirt. I don't hesitate to use them on my D500 for a comfortable carry. So far, Alpha 7 only makes sense to me with select primes.
I think Fuji aces that domain with their 18-55 and 55-200. Nikon's kit lenses are ho hum like the other apsc systems.
A comparable focal length in APS-C would be 16-70. That extra reach makes a difference in lens design. Of course, comparing APS-C to FF lenses in the case is pretty much beside the point.
My prediction is this lens will (at best) always be softer in the corners at 24mm (and quite soft outside the center 1/3 wide open) unless stopped down. Stopped down it will be better than the Sony 24-70 but only marginally. It will actually do slightly better (and certainly better than the competition) at the long end of the zoom. Sony always seems quick to compromise on distortion so I believe, with all corrections off, there will be a lot of that and a heavy vignette at 24mm.
It is Sony. It is a lens. Many people will just never look past those two faults but I think it will be a very important part of the Sony lens lineup. If it can survive the internet echo-chamber it may achieve the same general acceptance as the Canon 24-105mm.
rico wrote:
FF coverage and 5x zoom makes me nervous about performance, and I agree with @dbehrens@ that weight is already to high (for walkabout anyway). Nikon really aces this domain with their kit DX zooms, both the standard range 18-55 and the longer 55-200: lightweight, stabilized, collapsible, decent AF, amazing optical performance, cheap as dirt. I don't hesitate to use them on my D500 for a comfortable carry. So far, Alpha 7 only makes sense to me with select primes.
If we're going to start comparing different sensor sizes and apertures, let's toss the Sony RX100 V in the mix! That one wins for size and weight, hands down!
The other side: full frame zooms are far harder to design to the satisfaction of most users. The weight is far lower than the Canon equivalent (663g -vs- 785g) which would also need an adapter to work on Sony cameras.
Sony people are far more likely to be 'hard markers' than C/N people, it goes with the territory. Any lens has to compete with all and sundry on FE, whereas in Canon land it's like winning the local high school foot race. They are just starting to wonder about Sigma and Tamron beating their lenses, lol. Our guys would have had it all dissected and reported in double quick time! But then, many quality conscious ex-Canon people are now among us, as the avant garde of the coming exodus.
Expect 3.5% distortion at 24mm out to 2% at 105mm, good overall performance on 24mp, CA well-controlled. I'd caution about 42mp in demanding use, corner inspections, LoCA etc. Sony make some great lenses, we can agree, Joel, and they are generally recognised as such, the wide zooms, FE55, GM. Not all, and second place guys have to try hardest to oust the leader. They could have arranged a tie up with Tamron, maybe with better results for mid ranking lenses.
rico, I looked through the CY production and was surprised to see the zooms being a very small percentage of overall counts. Easy to see why they concentrated on primes ever since, the irony being they were so good at the zooms.
32 posts about “how good” is a lens no one really had a chance to test yet
While speculations maybe entertaining, I’ll wait for the actual lens to be available...
philip_pj wrote:
rico, I looked through the CY production and was surprised to see the zooms being a very small percentage of overall counts. Easy to see why they concentrated on primes ever since, the irony being they were so good at the zooms.
Well, "they" includes Tomioka as owned by Yashica and Kyocera. Oberkochen only produced select lenses to jump-start the Contax RTS product line. 1974 was not the Golden Era of high performance zooms, and most designs in the CZ library were primes. None of the C/Y zooms impressed me except the 100-300 that appeared all by itself late in the game. By the time zooms in general didn't suck, Contax and film technology were going the way of the dodo. Given the pixel explosion of modern sensors, I feel that zooms are once again struggling to perform acceptably, and primes (again) rule the roost. I just don't believe in zooms above 3x except for drunken partycams!
Anticipation is half the fun in most human activities ;-)
It also serves a very useful purpose in establishing the general parameters of what is expected by the group, gives people a rough guide of what to expect. No one has to join the fun, of course. It's just free form chat, the electronic version of shooting the breeze with some buddies. A lot of us have been here a long while and enjoy that part of it.
As I said, I do think it's entertaining (and educational)
(Better title to the thread would have been nice, "what do we expect", rather than "how good"
rico wrote:
Well, "they" includes Tomioka as owned by Yashica and Kyocera. Oberkochen only produced select lenses to jump-start the Contax RTS product line. 1974 was not the Golden Era of high performance zooms, and most designs in the CZ library were primes. None of the C/Y zooms impressed me except the 100-300 that appeared all by itself late in the game. By the time zooms in general didn't suck, Contax and film technology were going the way of the dodo. Given the pixel explosion of modern sensors, I feel that zooms are once again struggling to perform acceptably, and primes (again) rule the roost. I just don't believe in zooms above 3x except for drunken partycams!...Show more →
I think that's the bigger issue. Manufacturers are trying to do too much (more than 3x) in a single zoom lens. They are making them fast (heavy), quick focusing (heavy) and with image stabilization (heavy). Personally I wish someone would make some decent manual focus zooms. My favorite lens is still the Leica 16-18-21 WATE, which is a brilliant, lightweight and sharp MF zoom. There are some great 35-70 MF zooms from Leica, Angénieux and C-Y Zeiss as well. And these lens are still in high demand! So why can't someone manufacture some high quality, MF, lightweight f/4 zooms like a 16-35, 35-70 and 70-200?
philip_pj wrote:
Sony people are far more likely to be 'hard markers' than C/N people, it goes with the territory. Any lens has to compete with all and sundry on FE, whereas in Canon land it's like winning the local high school foot race. They are just starting to wonder about Sigma and Tamron beating their lenses, lol. Our guys would have had it all dissected and reported in double quick time! But then, many quality conscious ex-Canon people are now among us, as the avant garde of the coming exodus.
Us versus them- less than quality conscious implied...
Seriously? Nikon has been rolling a 36MP Sony sensor longer than Sony has- and Canon still has 50MP, and has had it longer than Sony has had 42MP. And they're not 'quality conscious'?
You're making me laugh, man. What you get with C/N is a wider diversity of photographers, for only a few of whom Sony is capable of actually catering to. Sony is on their third A7, with its third ergonomic and UI revision, and still trying to catch up to what Canon and Nikon have long perfected in their semi-professional lines. Not even sure why, either, as Sony did a pretty outstanding job with their ergonomics on their DSLTs...
But what really got me rolling?
'Coming exodus'- as if that isn't straight up trolling. You know it is .
And what's funny, is that we can reasonably expect Canon and Nikon to hit hard when they decide to fully commit their product lines to mirrorless. Sony is still in the business of copying mirrorless features from them, after all!
johnctharp wrote:
Nikon has been rolling a 36MP Sony sensor longer than Sony has- and Canon still has 50MP, and has had it longer than Sony has had 42MP.
We think 42 MP is plenty, but we're dying to try out pixel shift
johnctharp wrote:
And what's funny, is that we can reasonably expect Canon and Nikon to hit hard when they decide to fully commit their product lines to mirrorless. Sony is still in the business of copying mirrorless features from them, after all!
C/N Must implement IBIS to win in FF mirrorless. Sadly, I don't think they will.
Back to the topic, the Sony 24-105 looks a bit better than the two latest Canon iterations, based on MTF alone. Since I don't have a 24-105 mm lens, the Sony would definitely be a lens I would look closer at if I get a 70 MP A7r mk IV some day.
johnctharp wrote:
what's funny, is that we can reasonably expect Canon and Nikon to hit hard when they decide to fully commit their product lines to mirrorless. Sony is still in the business of copying mirrorless features from them, after all!
What's funny to me is that you are asserting that Sony is copying mirrorless features from manufacturers that make weak mirrorless cameras. What C/N did IBIS emerge from? Zero blackout EVF? Trolling behavior indeed.
