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Lenses

First Impressions: Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE (Sony E Mount, Full Mount)

Chris Gampat
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05/17/2017
4 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master product images 4

Today, Sony is announcing the last addition to their f2.8 trinity: the Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens. The new Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens is designed to be every bit as professional as the 70-200mm f2.8 and 24-70mm f2.8 lens offerings. In regards to the design, Sony talks a lot about how much engineering went into it in regards to corner to corner sharpness in addition to distortion. When it launches later this year, it’s going to be $2,199 in stores at the end of August.

Tech Specs

From the press release:

The new FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM wide-angle zoom joins the acclaimed FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM and FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS to round out Sony’s lineup of F2.8 large aperture zoom lenses. Equipped with a variety of Sony’s most advanced lens technologies, it is the first wide-angle G Master model, making it ideal for an extensive variety of shooting situations – landscapes, architecture, close up portraits, sports, action and much more. It is also exceptionally lightweight and compact, maximizing portability and usability.

The new lens features exceptional corner-to-corner sharpness, with an optical design that includes five aspherical elements, two of which are Sony’s original XA (extreme aspherical) elements that reduce aberration and delivers the ultimate resolution throughout the entire zoom and aperture range.   The front XA element on the FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM is the largest XA element ever produced, ensuring optimum quality. Additionally, two ED (Extra-low-Dispersion) glass elements keep chromatic aberration to a minimum while maximizing resolution, and Sony’s original Nano AR coating suppresses internal reflections to ensure excellent image contrast and clarity.

The lens features a near circular aperture shape at all settings, and the combination of the aforementioned XA element with its 11 blade aperture design produces images with sharply focused subjects and beautifully defocused backgrounds or “bokeh”. It also has two DDSSMs (Direct Drive SSM) that compose a floating focusing system and ensure that AF acquisition is speedy and quiet, making it an ideal choice for shooting still images as well as movies.

The FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM is also dust and moisture resistant1, has a fluorine coating on the front lens that helps to both prevent dust or grease marks and remove them easily if they do become a trouble. There is also a customizable focus hold button and a hood release button.

Ergonomics

If you look at the Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens, you can see that it looks a whole lot like many other Sony lenses. The Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens has an 82mm front filter thread and doesn’t really need a filter to complete the weather sealing.

Look at the top of the lens and what you’ll spot is some of the branding. The design of the lens is characterized mostly by the two rings: one is for focusing and the other is obviously for zooming in and out. The lens externally zooms but not a crazy amount.

Head over to the side of the lens and you’ll see the single switch on the lens for AF/MF. Then there is the AF hold button.

Build Quality

The Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens is designed to incorporate dust and moisture resistance–and so Sony is very specifically saying that it isn’t weather sealed. But in the hands, the lens feels very nice. It’s incredibly a lot like the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 III lens. During the time we spent with it, we only really tested it in the dust and the lens kept working.

Ease of Use

I got a chance to use the lens with the Sony a7r II and the Sony a9. During my time, I felt that no one should really have a problem with this lens. Afterall, it’s an autofocus lens and all you’re doing is simply mounting the lens onto the camera, pointing, autofocusing and shooting. But otherwise if you’re thinking about landscape photography, then the zone focusing on the lens isn’t effective.

Autofocus

Speaking of autofocus, on both the Sony a7r II and the Sony a9, I felt that the Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens focuses incredibly fast. We tested the lens with skaters in addition to a number of other things. It continued to focus pretty much without fail most of the time. Even with heavy backlighting the lens was accurate. But to be fair, this is a wide angle lens and it’s very tough to miss anything.

With both cameras, the focusing is always fast but it’s more straightforward with the Sony a9 due to the direct focusing abilities via the joystick.

Image Quality

Here are our first sample images. Technically speaking, I love the quality. However, I honestly want more lens flare from the Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens.

The engineers asked me about my thoughts on the quality and honestly when it comes to the technicalities there’s really nothing to worry about or complain about at this point unless you’re really trying to look at your images at 100%. And honestly, that’s completely worthless these days.

First Impressions

So far, I’m really liking the Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens. Though if I really have to be honest, I’m not sure why Sony didn’t try to make a 14-24mm f2.8 considering how good they are at lens making. But at the moment of publishing this post, I’ve only had a few hours of time to play with the Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE lens.

autofocus build quality distortion ease of use ergonomics image quality sample images Sony 16-35mm f2.8 G Master FE
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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