p.1 #1 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
What is the finest 35mm lens, in your opinion?
For travel, lens choice is always entangled with time, location, and uncertainty. Do you secure the photograph, or does the light collapse before you can gather enough photons through the optical system? sieving photons like a gold digger in the wilds of humanities photography
ZEISS Otus ML 35mm f/1.4
Sigma 35mm f/1.2 DG II
Sony FE 35mm f/1.4 GM
Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art Gen III
Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.2 LAB
Voigtländer APO-LANTHAR 35mm f/2 Aspherical
Venus Optics Laowa Argus 35mm f/0.95
Thypoch Simera 35mm f/1.4
Would you choose one of these, or something else for the Sony FE mount?
Do you genuinely enjoy working with the 35mm focal length?
For me, 35mm often feels marginally too short. Yet indoors, where space is constrained and the next photographic position cannot be anticipated or controlled, a 50mm lens can become too narrow and compositionally restrictive.
Considering total optical performance, easy to use, fun to use, and the more elusive question of photographic pleasure of the big other, which 35mm lens would you choose?
p.1 #2 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
35-40mm range offer the easiest field of view for making OK photographs for an average person. Wider/longer focal lengths require more effort to compose well, but they reward the skilled with a higher ceiling.
I own two lenses on your list.
1. The APO Lanthar for optical excellence and small size. I use it for still subjects due to manual focus.
2. The f/1.4 GM. Because it's the best AF lens for my needs: speed-to-weight ratio, aperture ring, and optical excellence.
p.1 #4 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
old-gregg wrote:
35-40mm range offer the easiest field of view for making OK photographs for an average person. Wider/longer focal lengths require more effort to compose well, but they reward the skilled with a higher ceiling.
I own two lenses on your list.
1. The APO Lanthar for optical excellence and small size. I use it for still subjects due to manual focus.
2. The f/1.4 GM. Because it's the best AF lens for my needs: speed-to-weight ratio, aperture ring, and optical excellence.
The APO-Lanthar is the only 35mm FL lens I've ever owned. There are excellent choices on your list, certainly each of which has considerations that would make you happy. After so much time defining what my long-term needs were, and deciding that I wanted one of the best landscape lenses available (some on this list which weren't available at the time) I chose the Voigtlander APO 35mm.
Personally I like the 35mm FL and if my use needs change I would look at one of the higher level auto focus 35s. Right now though the APO 35 is my 'cold, dead hands' lens.
What might be useful is reviewing the multitude of images taken by each of these lenses and posted on Flickr.
p.1 #5 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
We are going to need to know the subjects and locations your photons are going to fall on. And your style preferences, what matters to you in terms of the actual images? Everyone will just tell you what they do.
p.1 #8 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
There are at least 30 more native options, before considering adapted options.
There's also the variation in actual focal length of many of these choices, some much closer to 30mm, some much closer to 40mm.
I don't think there are any other focal lengths with more options than 35 for Sony.
I have GM 35 1.4, Sigma I 35, and Samyang 35 2.8.
I would not mind also having original Sigma 35 1.2, Voigt APO 35 and Voigt 35 1.4.
p.1 #9 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
I own in 35mm for Sony:
~Sony Sonnar T* FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA (The Longest 8 years, dream travel lens if 2.8 is OK)
~Sony FE 35mm f/1.4 GM ( "Technically the best", but also the heaviest and most $$$)
~Sigma 35mm f/2 DG DN Contemporary (The middle ground- more travel friendly than the GM and faster than the Sonnar.)
But I WANT the Voigtlander APO-LANTHAR 35mm f/2 Aspherical and am deciding what other(s) 35mm to sell before buying
p.1 #10 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
I still haven’t found a 35 I enjoy more than the 35/1.4 GM. When I shoot my A9, the 35mm GM is almost always mounted. It’s one of only two Sony lenses I kept, along with the 70-200 GM II.
p.1 #13 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
After many trips I've come down on the Voigtlander 35mm APO Lanthar as my choice. I have the 50mm and 65mm APOs as well, but the latter is too big for travel and I need a longer lens to pair with the 35mm. On my recent trip to Japan, the 35mm served me well.
p.1 #15 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
photoncollector wrote:
What is the finest 35mm lens, in your opinion?
For travel, lens choice is always entangled with time, location, and uncertainty. Do you secure the photograph, or does the light collapse before you can gather enough photons through the optical system? sieving photons like a gold digger in the wilds of humanities photography
ZEISS Otus ML 35mm f/1.4
Sigma 35mm f/1.2 DG II
Sony FE 35mm f/1.4 GM
Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art Gen III
Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.2 LAB
Voigtländer APO-LANTHAR 35mm f/2 Aspherical
Venus Optics Laowa Argus 35mm f/0.95
Thypoch Simera 35mm f/1.4
Would you choose one of these, or something else for the Sony FE mount?
Do you genuinely enjoy working with the 35mm focal length?
For me, 35mm often feels marginally too short. Yet indoors, where space is constrained and the next photographic position cannot be anticipated or controlled, a 50mm lens can become too narrow and compositionally restrictive.
Considering total optical performance, easy to use, fun to use, and the more elusive question of photographic pleasure of the big other, which 35mm lens would you choose?
Thank you for your recommendations. ...Show more →
If 35mm feels too short, but you want to cover indoor use, I would skip the 35mm and go for the 24mm f/1.4 GM. 24mm works for a variety of subjects and it is relatively small.
BTW.. A given focal length never seems right, until you leave every other lens at home and shoot exclusively with the new focal length for a good period of time.
p.1 #16 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
old-gregg wrote:
35-40mm range offer the easiest field of view for making OK photographs for an average person. Wider/longer focal lengths require more effort to compose well, but they reward the skilled with a higher ceiling.
Whilst I agree with your comment about wider angle lenses requiring care you're overlooking something crucial, perspective.
Wider lenses give you a totally different perspective to 35/40mm although to be fair you can stand at 35/40mm distance and crop later but generally if you want 35/40mm perspective the best thing to use is a 35/40mm lens.
p.1 #17 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
I have shot all the lenses on your list with the exception of the Otus.
i have found the best all-around lens to be the GM 35mm f1.4. I have been shooting it since it was first released in 2021 and it still holds-up to newer lenses.
If you shoot portraits, the Viltrox 35mm f1.2 is stunning in terms of IQ. It is a bit heavy for all around use - at least for me.
p.1 #18 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
photoncollector wrote:
What is the finest 35mm lens, in your opinion?
For travel, lens choice is always entangled with time, location, and uncertainty. Do you secure the photograph, or does the light collapse before you can gather enough photons through the optical system? sieving photons like a gold digger in the wilds of humanities photography
Do you genuinely enjoy working with the 35mm focal length?
I used to mainly used a 50mm but changed to 35mm and more recently changed to the Sony 40mm f2.5 although I could be persuaded to return to 35mm if Sony made a mini G 35mm.
If you can live without a wide aperture the Sony 35mm f2.8 does IMO make a nice unobtrusive lens but in my case it's been replaced by the 40mm f2.5 for the aperture ring and IMO overall better image quality.
Another lens which I think is worth adding to the list of possibilities is the Voigtlander 35mm f1.4. It can produce a funky look with a complex scene at its widest apertures but stopped down a bit it's a different lens (maybe use it from f2 and onwards and treat anything wider than f2 as for emergence use) although the corners are never great. I've probably taken more pictures with this lens than any other and if you can live with or stop down a bit to try and avoid the poor corners and wider than f2 look it might be worth adding to your list especially if you want a smaller and more unobtrusive camera and lens set up.
p.1 #19 · Best 35mm lens on Sony E you would recommend?
If you are looking for a 35mm lens primarily for portraits, Julia Trotti below is my 35mm lens for portraits inspo. This video is a bit old but if you go through her youtube videos you will see her reviews with some of the lenses you mentioned.
...love this answer!!