Buying a new first-party lens means saving up for a very long time. After all, a first-party lens can cost anywhere between $1200 and $12,000, something most beginners or semi-professionals can’t afford. If you are new to Sony cameras and have been waiting to buy a new lens that is not hard on your pockets, then we have a few options that can be helpful to you. They may not be much, but this is a small start for many.
Sony 28-70mm f3.5-5.6 OSS
The Sony 28-70mm is a full-frame lens compatible with APS-C sensors. It is designed with 9 elements in 8 groups, a minimum focusing distance of 11.81 inches, and 7 aperture blades. The lens also has image stabilization, a 55mm filter thread, and a 0.19x maximum magnification. In our test, we found the lens to focus fast, and it performed amazingly overall. As we said in our review, “Using the Vivid color profile with Sony cameras, you’ll be able to get a beautiful image with wonderful colors. In fact, pretty much all of the colors here are super bright, punchy, and vivid with deep saturation.” In fact, the bokeh is quite great and visible, and the sharpness is also great.
Sony 28mm f2
The Sony 28mm is a prime lens with 9 elements in 8 groups. It has 9 rounded blades, 0.13x magnification, and a minimum focusing distance of 29 cm. The lens is lightweight at 200g and has a front filter thread of 49mm. Some of the things the lens is good at are sharpness at a wide open aperture, bokeh, and a small, compact size. However, the only drawback is the speed of its focus. As we said in our review, “Sony’s 28mm f2 is a fantastic lens. It offers great image quality in a small package, but we can’t get over the focusing performance. It isn’t terrible, but it could be better. We expected this lens to be the fastest focusing full frame E mount lens out there due to the wider focal length and light weight. However, it is a bit behind the rest–even the 35mm f1.4 Zeiss.”
Sony 50mm F1.8
Last but not least in the lineup is the Sony 50mm. An ideal focal range for a variety of genres, the lens features a magnification of 0.15x, a minimum focusing distance of 45 cm, and 7 rounded aperture blades. The lens is designed with 6 elements in 5 groups, has a 49mm filter thread, and weighs 186g. Some of the things it is good at include image quality, affordability, and fast focus in good light. As we said in our review, “Generally speaking, in terms of nifty 50 lenses, you can’t really get much better here. Sony’s 50mm f1.8 is right up there with the Canon 50mm f1.8 in terms of image quality. It’s got great color output, is very sharp, very little chromatic aberration (and even then you’ve really got to look for it), and bokeh that isn’t bad overall.”
If you raise your budget, you can get more focal ranges. But for now, these three lenses are quite perfect for portrait, wedding, event, street, and architecture photographers. If you need more suggestions, do check out more on our website.