fbpx
Features

The Best Lenses with Character You Want for Sony E Mount

Chris Gampat
No Comments
04/28/2022
3 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Zeiss 50mm f2 Loxia review product photos (6 of 6)ISO 2001-125 sec at f - 4.0

Last Updated on 08/18/2022 by Chris Gampat

If you want lenses with character and you’re sick of the same clinically clean image quality, you’ve come to the right place. Why shoot a photo only to have to do tons of post-production? Why not be happy with what you get out of the camera? Well, that’s what we’re rounding up in this post on the best lenses with character for the Sony E Mount. Take a look!

We hate banner ads too. Download our app for iOS, iPad, and Android and get no banner ads for $24.99/year.

Here’s How We Chose the Best Lenses with Character for Sony E Mount

If you want lenses with character for the Sony E mount system, then use this guide. And here are some more pointers:

  • The Phoblographer’s staff only recommends products we’ve fully reviewed. So, know that we’ve tested and used each of these lenses. You can check out each section to see more in our full reviews.
  • Sony’s lenses tend to be clinically clean. But photographers these days don’t want that; they want lenses with character. There are lots of great ones out there, but these are a handpicked selection that we like.
  • These shouldn’t be your only lenses. In fact, you should use these in addition to the others you have.
  • None of these lenses have autofocus. Keep that in mind when you use them.
  • The Zeiss Loxia lens has weather resistance. The rest don’t.

Meyer Optik 58mm f1.9 II

Pros

  • Beautiful bokeh
  • The sharpest Meyer Optik lens I’ve used
  • Just a bit too sharp for portraits, but that’s fine in many cases
  • Smooth focusing
  • Large focusing range
  • I love manual focus lenses because they slow you down.
  • Beautiful colors on the Sony a7r III

Cons

  • Lacks weather sealing
  • Lacks contacts for AF/AE communication
  • Really only sharp around the four points of the rule of thirds intersection

How’s the Image Quality?

In our review, we state:

“I didn’t run into many issues regarding color fringing or distortion. You might want to consider the swirly bokeh here to be the Meyer Optik 58mm f1.9’s lens character. It’s beautiful, and I wish more modern lenses had bokeh like this.”

Buy Now

Zeiss 50mm f2 Loxia

Pros

  • The colors of a Zeiss DSLR lens and a bit of the micro-contrast we’ve known
  • Great ergonomics
  • Nice feeling
  • Good enough to make a 35mm lens lover think twice

Cons

How’s the Image Quality?

In our review, we state:

“For the most part, you’ll have nothing to complain about with the Zeiss 50mm f2 Loxia. Take everything you know about the DSLR lens offerings, make it smaller, put an E mount on it, and you’ve got the 50mm f2 Loxia. When it comes to image quality, you’re going to sing praises and become smitten with just how good it is.”

Buy Now

Lensbaby 35mm f3.5 Edge

Pros

  • Small
  • Very lightweight
  • Sharp in the center
  • Well built despite no weather sealing

Cons

  • I wish it were sharp all over and not only in the center. When you tilt the optic, you start to see how it only puts sharpness at the center and justifies actual tilt shift lenses.

How’s the Image Quality?

In our review, we state:

“The bokeh is the best thing about the design of the Lensbaby 35mm f3.5 Edge. With eight aperture blades, it isn’t like the 11 the Sony G Master lenses offer, but it’s still nice and creamy. Portrait photographers will make the most of this as will anyone who really likes focusing up close and personal on stuff. Tilting the focusing just makes things more and more bokehlicious if you’re into a specific look. Some of the work involved with the Lensbaby 35mm f3.5 Edge is just about messing around and experimenting to see what works. Most photographers can think in terms of straight and linear focusing planes; thinking in terms of shifted planes is rough.”

Buy Now

The Phoblographer’s various product round-up features are done in-house. Our philosophy is simple: you wouldn’t get a Wagyu beef steak review from a lifelong vegetarian. And you wouldn’t get photography advice from someone who doesn’t touch the product. We only recommend gear that we’ve fully reviewed. If you’re wondering why your favorite product didn’t make the cut, there’s a chance it’s on another list. If we haven’t reviewed it, we won’t recommend it. This method keeps our lists packed with industry-leading knowledge. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Bokeh image quality lensbaby lensbaby 35mm f3.5 lenses lenses with character Meyer Optik Meyer Optik 58mm f1.9 II review sony sony e mount zeiss Zeiss 50mm f2 Loxia
Shares
Written by

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.
You might also like
Screen Shot 2017-08-28 at 12.07.13 PM
Features

Opinion: Please Stop Wearing a Photo Vest if You Don’t Need to Be Wearing a Photo Vest

4 Mins read
07/09/2018

When I got into this industry years ago, one thing really confused me almost as much as how much certain older photographers tend to treat the younger generation of us: photo vests. I’m completely positive that you’ve all seen them: a photographer of a certain distinguishment (or trying to show off without having said distinguishment) wearing their vests that look a lot like safari vests. You know, almost as if they’re going to go out on an African safari at all times without being anywhere near something like a safari. Walking down the streets doing street photography? You’ll see a photo vest. In the studio? Photo vest! Hiking? Yup, A Photo vest!

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Canon RF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM review product images Canon EOS R
Features

Did Canon Miss the Memo That Says Mirrorless Lenses Are Meant to Be Smaller?

3 Mins read
12/26/2018

When Canon introduced their new Mirrorless cameras earlier on this year (The EOS R) one of the stand out features was that the lens mount was so huge. While other manufacturers like Sony have made all things Mirrorless smaller, the late comer to the Mirrorless party seems to have decided that bigger is better. In a recently released interview, Canon engineers seem to be having a sly dig at Sony by saying that lenses with smaller mounts are far less capable than those with larger mounts. Read on after the break to find out more about what the Canon engineers are wafting on about.