p.7 #1 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
I'm in the same boat I'm thinking about doing a 14-24-35 gm prime combo both for landscape and astro landscapes. Only issue is the 24 gm doesn't have the great flare resistance which is a bit of a downer for me.
NatDeroxL7 wrote:
I’ll give it a try, figure having the 12-24 GM already I can’t go wrong if I decide to just return it and I don’t see the 12-24 GM retail taking a hit from this lens as it is more niche.
The weight and size difference is significant, and paired with the 24GM I might find the two primes to be more flexible than the zoom when needing to account for night video or time lapse shooting (24GM is a must-have) and lower weight by pairing the 14GM instead of the 12-24.
p.7 #2 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
Where are the comparisons Sony did to the Sigma? I haven't found those yet.
My guess is the Sigma will have better vignetting, worse coma, and marginally worse sharpness. The issue with the Sigma is the coma was pretty bad until 2.5.
p.7 #3 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
hiepphotog wrote:
I strongly believe that Sony optimized the infinity performance on this lens and sacrifice the closer distance performance to keep the size and weight down; a few reviews pointed out at closer distance, the corners are smeared/soft, very much in line with what Lenstip is testing. So I don't think the Lenstip's copy is defective, just that they were testing the lens at the non optimized range. A few direct comparisons out there between the GM and Sigma show that the GM is sharper in the corners at WO. I already have the Sigma DG DN zoom but I'm sure to pick this up. I think it's time to sell my CV 50 APO to go full on GM....Show more →
Only an actual macro lens is optimized for closer reproduction over infinity. The floating elements have been in wide optics for some time now to reduce the fall off at these closer focus distances, and in fact have given rise to closer focus than was offered in the past.
p.7 #4 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
Well got my order in but now I know that for May & June I will be eating mac & cheese with both the 50/1.2 and 14/1.8 both coming within two weeks of each other. The 35/1.4 only came a month earlier due to its delays so 2nd quarter is a financial disaster.
p.7 #5 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
Ramen is tasty as well!
swldstn wrote:
Well got my order in but now I know that for May & June I will be eating mac & cheese with both the 50/1.2 and 14/1.8 both coming within two weeks of each other. The 35/1.4 only came a month earlier due to its delays so 2nd quarter is a financial disaster.
Even with the dpreview samples you can see that the lens is not outstandingly sharp if you look very closely.
I think size / weight and sun stars are great. The sharpness wouldn't convince me. There is no practical and portable solution (for travel) for filters.
Albert's pictures are (as always with every lens) outstanding, but they rarely show the true potential of a lens because they are extremely heavily edited (though I like the processing style very much) and are often composed of several images. All lenses look great when Albert uses them. With the less edited images (for example the bokeh examples), the images don't look very sharp on my screens. ...Show more →
So option A in Roger's law of new product introduction, right?
p.7 #8 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM review by Albert Dros: “I can’t really think of any other lens I would want for landscape photography right now”. Take that man's other lenses away, right now! At least it indicates he gave it a good workout. From the few seen thus far, it looks excellent, great transparency. You have to look at the big picture here, and 14mm give you a very big picture.
p.7 #9 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
I pre-ordered the 14mm GM this morning at B&H. Don’t know if they were having some systems errors, but when I chose my saved Payboo card for payment, it came back as an error and made me enter my card info again.
Got it to work, but noticed my Payboo card was charged immediately. Usually that doesn’t happen until the product is available and being prepared for shipment.
Wondering if anybody else experienced the same or similar thing?
p.7 #10 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
k-h.a.w wrote:
Thanks Hiep. So which 50 GM do you have in mind? TIA, K-H.
There is only one GM 50 , unless you meant which GMs in general. Then pretty much all of the recent ones this year with similar AF capability: 50, 35 and 14. I'm really hoping for a 28, 100 and 200 as well.
p.7 #11 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
dshao1 wrote:
I pre-ordered the 14mm GM this morning at B&H. Don’t know if they were having some systems errors, but when I chose my saved Payboo card for payment, it came back as an error and made me enter my card info again.
Got it to work, but noticed my Payboo card was charged immediately. Usually that doesn’t happen until the product is available and being prepared for shipment.
Wondering if anybody else experienced the same or similar thing?
Somewhat different experience for me. I tried to use my Payboo card and it was declined. It turned out when I checked that Payboo's system was down. Then I discovered that because they had not yet credited last month's payment to my account, with a second charge pending, they would not accept this third charge for the 14mm. I charged it to a different card, but once that first payment gets credited I will see if B&H can let me swap to the Payboo card.
p.7 #12 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
Thanks for sharing your experience, its more complicated than my experience. I hope B&H and Synchrony can work things out for you.
dallvr wrote:
Somewhat different experience for me. I tried to use my Payboo card and it was declined. It turned out when I checked that Payboo's system was down. Then I discovered that because they had not yet credited last month's payment to my account, with a second charge pending, they would not accept this third charge for the 14mm. I charged it to a different card, but once that first payment gets credited I will see if B&H can let me swap to the Payboo card.
p.7 #13 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
hiepphotog wrote:
There is only one GM 50 , unless you meant which GMs in general. Then pretty much all of the recent ones this year with similar AF capability: 50, 35 and 14. I'm really hoping for a 28, 100 and 200 as well.
p.7 #15 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
philip_pj wrote:
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM review by Albert Dros: “I can’t really think of any other lens I would want for landscape photography right now”. Take that man's other lenses away, right now! At least it indicates he gave it a good workout. From the few seen thus far, it looks excellent, great transparency. You have to look at the big picture here, and 14mm give you a very big picture.
I think he means that in the context of 'there aren't any holes left now is Sony's wide-angle lens line up' now that the 14GM is out - hence someones exasperated comment on another thread asking Albert to tell Sony we still need a 28mm! I'll second that.
p.7 #16 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
HelBen85 wrote:
Sorry, but regarding sample images I prefer to have a look at the raws and the raws of DPreview look good, but not outstanding. But our personal standards might be different.
The term 100 percent crop / 100 percent view is used inflationarily. Among other things, it depends on the resolution and size of the respective display.
For example: On my 27 inch 5k screen everything looks very sharp in the 100 percent view, on my 24 inch full HD screen the 100 percent view is much more critical. This means that I use the 200 percent view on the 5k screen to assess sharpness, just as I used to use the 100 percent view on the Full HD screens.
Because I can't check it, I'm skeptical about 100 percent crops in general.
Furthermore, the Sigma 14mm is four years old. We can then compare the Sony lens with future competition lenses. At the moment, the image sharpness should be compared with the Sigma 14-24mm or the Sony 12-24mm and as a newer fixed focal length the 14mm GM should actually surpass both at 14mm. ...Show more →
Performance in the corners of many lenses test lower at Lenstip, than on other review sites, in my experience: this is because they use dcraw to demosaic the camera raws, rather than Adobe: this is to normalize conversions and avoid Adobe's 'baked-in' sharpening with their conversions, which I suspect varies from lens to lens, center to corner - depending on how much 'help' it needs.
Also, it seems that the 14GM has pronounced rear field curvature at closer distances, although I'm not sure if LensTip refocuses the lens at the aps-c corner or full-frame corner when measuring (I assume they do, but they never respond to any of my emails). As Roger Circala has noted, field curvature can depend on subject distance, and I assume - as an astro-specific lens, that Sony has designed it to flatten at infinity.
Zooms like the Sigma 14-24mm f2.8 DGDN are optimized for their wide end, and have four more elements than the Sony 14mm f1.8 GM, so its not that surprising that its edges and corners may be a bit sharper than the 14GM; the Sony is sharper in the center though, as you would expect in a prime.
Relative to its size and weight, the Sony 14mmF1.8GM looks to be an excellent performer. I have no doubt that Sony had the ability to build a lens with razer-sharp corners wide open, but they chose not too, because that would of increased the size and weight too much and narrowed the lens' appeal for uses other than astro.
Also, judging images at 200% on-screen can be a bit dodgy, as you are including another software variable in the equation
p.7 #17 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
Petegh wrote:
Performance in the corners of many lenses test lower at Lenstip, than on other review sites, in my experience: this is because they use dcraw to demosaic the camera raws, rather than Adobe: this is to normalize conversions and avoid Adobe's 'baked-in' sharpening with their conversions, which I suspect varies from lens to lens, center to corner - depending on how much 'help' it needs.
Also, it seems that the 14GM has pronounced rear field curvature at closer distances, although I'm not sure if LensTip refocuses the lens at the aps-c corner or full-frame corner when measuring (I assume they do, but they never respond to any of my emails). As Roger Circala has noted, field curvature can depend on subject distance, and I assume - as an astro-specific lens, that Sony has designed it to flatten at infinity.
Zooms like the Sigma 14-24mm f2.8 DGDN are optimized for their wide end, and have four more elements than the Sony 14mm f1.8 GM, so its not that surprising that its edges and corners may be a bit sharper than the 14GM; the Sony is sharper in the center though, as you would expect in a prime.
Relative to its size and weight, the Sony 14mmF1.8GM looks to be an excellent performer. I have no doubt that Sony had the ability to build a lens with razer-sharp corners wide open, but they chose not too, because that would of increased the size and weight too much and narrowed the lens' appeal for uses other than astro.
Also, judging images at 200% on-screen can be a bit dodgy, as you are including another software variable in the equation...Show more →
Thank you, interesting.
But as I have said several times, according to this review, not only do the FE edges fall off, but also the AFC edges, and that with at all f-stops.
Accordingly, the resolution in large parts of the picture would not be outstanding.
I will continue to have a look at the reviews and my mind may change, but so far I am disappointed. I was expecting a 16mm GM, with a front filter thread and classleading sharpness over the entire frame from about f2.8.
For the price and what I've read and seen so far, it's not enough for me.
But maybe it is enough for you and many ohers. I am pretty sure many will buy this GM enthusiastically. I wish them a lot of fun and look forward to the pictures.
p.7 #18 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
Thank you, 14mm GM and those selling their current wide angle primes. I just picked up a Laowa 15mm f/2 on the B&S Board for less than a third of the GM cost. I acknowledge the Laowa isn't in the same league as the GM, but these new releases give us some real bargains at FM Buy and Sell.
p.7 #19 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
FJR1 wrote:
Thank you, 14mm GM and those selling their current wide angle primes. I just picked up a Laowa 15mm f/2 on the B&S Board for less than a third of the GM cost. I acknowledge the Laowa isn't in the same league as the GM, but these new releases give us some real bargains at FM Buy and Sell.
I have a pretty good Laowa 15mm f2.
It may be less sharp than the GM at open apertures, but at the latest at f8 my copy is really very good over the entire image including the full frame corners.
And according to this test report https://www.lenstip.com/525.4-Lens_review-Venus_Optics_LAOWA_15_mm_f_2_ZERO-D_Image_resolution.html, the difference to the GM should hardly exist, at least at f8 (resolution-wise).
In addition, it is relatively small and light, almost a macro lens and has a front filter thread. Only the missing electronic contacts are annoying.
p.7 #20 · Pre-order: Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM ($1,598)
HelBen85 wrote:
I have a pretty good Laowa 15mm f2.
It may be less sharp than the GM at open apertures, but at the latest at f8 my copy is really very good over the entire image including the full frame corners.
And according to this test report https://www.lenstip.com/525.4-Lens_review-Venus_Optics_LAOWA_15_mm_f_2_ZERO-D_Image_resolution.html, the difference to the GM should hardly exist, at least at f8 (resolution-wise).
In addition, it is relatively small and light, almost a macro lens and has a front filter thread. Only the missing electronic contacts are annoying.
I've had multiple copies of that lens and it really is a great lens.
