Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I hadn't really thought about it that way before. A photo can fall into a trendy look with no staying power very easily. Perhaps, as ultra-wide lenses go, a 14m could be likened to a nice classic black suit whereas 10mm could be likened to a zoot suit.
Stefan Official wrote:
To make this more tangible: if you shoot at 14 mm, f/2.0, ISO 1000, and 8 seconds, you would need to expose almost 3 seconds longer with the 16 mm due to the darker corners to achieve comparable corner brightness. That is already a lot really a lot.
8s compared to 11s, is what, only 0.5EV difference at the corner between the lens? That seems to be a big discrepancy compared to your earlier numbers.
Not saying it's a good lens. I returned my copy the same day due to corner sharpness and vignetting. Just pointing out where your numbers don't seem to make sense.
A couple of quick pictures of this lens next to my other two Sony ultrawides--Tamron 17-28/2.8 and Voigtlander 15/4.5. All 3 are really good lenses in their own way
grahamgibson wrote:
A couple of quick pictures of this lens next to my other two Sony ultrawides--Tamron 17-28/2.8 and Voigtlander 15/4.5. All 3 are really good lenses in their own way
Stefan Official wrote:
What also disappointed me greatly about the 16 mm lens is the AF. It is extremely slow at night and often fails to focus on the subjects. When I'm not taking photos of stars, I use everything with AF at night and have never had any problems with my previous lenses, neither with the 14 mm f1.8 from Sony nor with the 28-70 mm f2.0 from Sony. It's pretty fast and absolutely accurate, but the 16 mm lens pumps back and forth for a long time and often can't focus at all in the end. It's great during the day, but at night it doesn't perform well in so many ways. The 14 mm f1.8 lens, on the other hand, doesn't have this problem. Why is that? I don't think I need to explain that if you put two and two together....Show more →
I have not noticed any appreciable difference in focus speed or accuracy between the 14mm GM and 16mm G. What camera(s) are you seeing this behavior with? What AF mode?
The AF problem only occurs at night. I take photos with an A7RV with the latest firmware. I don't have this problem with any other lens. Please note that by night, I mean really dark places, not the bright city centre of Tokyo with lots of light. 50% of all my photos from the last 30 years were taken at night, maybe even more. Take a look at my photo profile. Night photography is my passion. I have tested these two lenses extensively because I am travelling to see the Northern Lights in four weeks and will not compromise on quality. I will only use the 16 mm during the day when I want to use filters. Otherwise, at night, I will use the 14 mm or the 28-70 f2.0 for photographing the Northern Lights because of the better quality. The 16 mm failed the test here.
I took the lens out to shoot the stars when I was at Lake Tahoe a few weeks ago. Not the darkest skies, but better than where I live. Only a hint of the milky way at this time of year. This is a vertical stack of 4 overlapping single exposures.
Honestly, I have no idea what this photo is supposed to show.
It also would have helped to include some basic information, for example that it was taken with a 15-second exposure, ISO 800, and a Sony A1.
You can see that the exposure time was a bit too long. The Earths rotation causes slight star trailing in the corners. Its not very noticeable because the image was downscaled to just 1864 Χ 2048 pixels. Downsizing merges pixels and hides some of the softness.
On the left side you can also see that the lens is slightly decentered compared to the opposite side.
The image has been cropped and put into a new aspect ratio so these are no longer the true sensor corners. With the vertical format, heavy downscaling, the chosen subject, and the type of light pollution, the vignetting is partly masked, but still visible. The sharpness falloff towards the edges is clearly noticeable as well.
Even with post-processing, these issues couldnt be fixed.
My photos on Flickr are always available in full resolution. Since Flickr only shows about 20 MP in the browser, you need to download the files to properly judge the real sharpness. Downloads are not blocked on my account this protection could be bypassed in three clicks anyway and only the full files reveal the actual resolution and image quality.
Conclusion: This photo was edited, cropped, heavily downscaled, and masked in several areas. Because of that, its not suitable as a test for a lens.
Yikes, I'm just posting an image I took with this lens for people to see, like a lot of people do in this forum. It's not meant as a lens test, I did not post a full size sample for critical review, and it's clearly edited as I stated.
grahamgibson wrote:
Yikes, I'm just posting an image I took with this lens for people to see, like a lot of people do in this forum. It's not meant as a lens test, I did not post a full size sample for critical review, and it's clearly edited as I stated.
Sorry to bother you again with this question, but I'm thinking about 16G as a really compact and fast option (I already have the Sigma 14-24/2.8 so I'm not really interested in another bulbous front element ).
Do you notice any issues with AF in low light with 16G (I don't really use AF at night without lights on non-contrasty objects, so I guess my expectations aren't high) ?
BTW, I think the photo is nice and shows what this lens is capable of .
j4nu wrote:
Sorry to bother you again with this question, but I'm thinking about 16G as a really compact and fast option (I already have the Sigma 14-24/2.8 so I'm not really interested in another bulbous front element ).
Do you notice any issues with AF in low light with 16G (I don't really use AF at night without lights on non-contrasty objects, so I guess my expectations aren't high) ?
BTW, I think the photo is nice and shows what this lens is capable of .
Hard to say other than anecdotally. I haven't really noticed much difference compared to what I'm used to in an AF ultrawide, which is the Tamron 17-28/2.8. I tried the 16G out in my basement with just a desk lamp on at f1.8 where the auto ISO was cranking up to 12800 or so and it would still AF fine. Trying to continuously track things was fine except on especially dark non-contrasty things it would lose tracking every now and then and need another half-push on the shutter to reacquire. I wouldn't expect most lenses to be able to do really well here though, especially if you're comparing to f2.8 in the same light. When I was out shooting stars, I tried AF and it could acquire focus on stars, but it would hunt too. Not sure f1.8 lenses are usually able to do that, but I have never used AF for shooting stars, and I think most people would set MF in this situation.
At one point I was really interested in this lens for astro work. Looking at the reviews on lenstip.com in the "coma" section dumped a lot of cold water on my interests. The coma wide open in pretty bad in corners, and even stopped down to f2.5 looks worse than the 16-35mm GM II at f2.8. My interest was hoping it would be faster and have better coma, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
There seems to be a lot of conflicting opinions out there with some claiming it's the best astro lens ever and others thinking the 20G might be better.
Anyone done a critical evaluation of the 16 G vs the 20 G or 16-35 GM II?
Here's a single exposure, edited to taste and slightly cropped for framing purposes (about 5%). I did apply the lens profile and touched up the vignette in places, so don't judge this as what comes out of camera at all. I'll post the full size for people to see coma. This again is on an A1, f1.8 ISO 800 for 15 seconds.
I don't own the 16mm /1.8, my main astro is the 20mm/1.8. I am planning on picking up the 16mm at some point, the below review pretty much sealed my thoughts in this. From what I could tell based on the review it looked decent for my expectations. It compared the 14GM, 16/1.8, and 20/1.8, for me the 14GM is too large, so that is out for me.
First time really got to use it for what I bought it for....This is the Whitefish Point Lighthouse in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Pretty chilly night out but one of the rare clear nights since its been so snowy this winter...
First time really got to use it for what I bought it for....This is the Whitefish Point Lighthouse in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Pretty chilly night out but one of the rare clear nights since its been so snowy this winter...
).
