Chuck Coyne
Offline
Upload & Sell: On
|
 Re: New Fe 24-105 f4. How good? | |
Fred Miranda wrote:
Chuck Coyne wrote:
mjm6 wrote:
Neurad1 wrote:
@mjm6@@@@: I have both lenses and agree with you completely. I bought the 24-105 solely as a travel lens. If the 24-70 2.8 was lighter I wouldn't have even considered the 24-105. I plan to travel with the 12-24, 24-105, and Loxia 21. I'm not absolutely sure that I really need to take the Loxia, but I want to have a fast prime for indoor shots of cathedrals, etc. I am wondering if an even lighter fast prime like my Batis 18 would be better. I have no wider or faster primes than the Batis 18. I've considered purchasing the Laowa 15, but I believe that lens is pretty heavy...).
I wanted it for a lighter, smaller travel lens, but I'm not sure I want to accept the reduced performance to achieve that.
My problem is that I tend to lenses in the 24mm range a lot, and the GM is really excellent there, and my copy of the 24-105 is clearly inferior. I'm, going to try and determine whether that is characteristic of the lens design or if this particular example is a bit poor. I had bad luck getting a good 12-24, so I'm hopeful that I don't have that again...
My thinking is that I can accommodate a little loss in performance in a zoom for the sake of size/weight, but I'm not sure whether I want to accommodate this much loss, and especially at the wide end, where I seem to do the majority of my shooting. I was thinking that I could lose the speed compared to the GM and then rely on faster fixed lenses when needed, but I'm finding that I just don't pull them out, so I feel like I should hold onto the better performing zoom. The performance of the as-yet mythical 24/25mm Loxia could easily change things, as this was my most preferred focal length when I was shooting non-zoom lenses.
I need to compare this lens at 24mm against the 12-24 and the GM to ultimately decide I think. If this one is worse than my 12-24, then that may be a good indication that it is a not-good copy and I'll get a replacement to compare. If it is equal to or slightly better, then that will make me think it is representative of the lens design, and then I'll probably return it and stick with the GM.
Gaining the extra reach on the long end is a very nice benefit. Sony isn't making this easy for me to decide.
I'm heading to Big Sur for the weekend, so I'll be shooting some, but I don't think I'll be able to do any rigorous lens comparison tests for a few days. If I can, I'll shoot the same scene with the three lenses at 24mm and maybe I can do a decent comparison.
I had a very sharp copy of the 24-70mm GM that I tested against the 24-105 G and at f/5.6 - f/16 the two are almost identical in terms of sharpness across the frame. I tested this same 24-70 GM against a very good Batis 25mm and 16-35 f/2.8 GM and it had no problem competing with those lenses at all apertures. I even printed the same scene taken with both 24-70 GM and 24-105 G at 24mm on my Epson 4900 and looking at the 16x24 prints you can't see any noticable difference. Maybe at much larger prints you could but I tend to print no larger than 16 x 24 or panoramas at 16 x 40 to 50.
I think you may have a problem with your copy if it is clearly inferior to the 24-70 GM at 24mm and apertures of f/5.6 - f/16.
After all my testing I decided to order the 16-35 f/2.8 GM and I will be using for landscape shooting the 12-24 G at 12mm-15mm focal lengths, the 16-35mm f/2.8 GM at 16-23mm focal lengths, and the 24-105 at 24 - 105mm focal lengths. I'll either throw in my Batis 135mm or the FE 100-400 GM in the bag depending on the subjects I anticipate. I've pretty much decided to sell my MF lenses and go all AF with A7RIII.
There is nothing wrong with overlapping...To me it means less lens changing. 
Fred my thoughts exactly. Also, I realized that I'm shooting at 16mm and above way more than at 16mm and wider. While I love the 12-24 G I just don't seem to find compositions that need that wide a focal length very often. So I'll use the 16-35 GM as my primary wide angle lens along with the 24-105 G, I can cover 90% + of the compositions I enjoy shooting. The added benefit being that if I use these two lenses I can use one of my smaller filter sets either the Lee 100mm set or the Breakthrough Photography screw-in filter set (3 ND's, a reverse grad ND and CPL). Each provides an easier filter solution than the huge NISI Filter set I have for the 12-24 G.
The other outcome from going through the exhaustive lens testing with all 3 of these lenses is that while I used the best of 3 manual focusing shos to compare in the infinity tests I also shot one AF shot with each lens and each aperture and focal length. When I compared the AF shots with the best of the Manual focus shots I couldn't find one AF shot that didn't nail the focus as good or better than my manual focused shots. So I'm going all AF with the incredible results that I've seen with the A7R3 and these new native lenses. I will miss the MF at times but even the newer AF lenses on the A7R3 are working much better in MF than earlier models.
|
