Contents
Image Quality
Sharpness
The name Carl Zeiss has become synonymous with impressive lens sharpness for some time, and the 16-35mm continues that trend. I found the 16-35mm to be a very impressive ultra-wide zoom, with high image sharpness at the vast majority of settings. Central sharpness is very high straight from f/4 at the wide and middle of the zoom range, and this continues into the borders for the most part.
At all focal lengths, stopping the lens down to f/8 or so yields extremely good edge to edge sharpness and even good corner sharpness, which is quite difficult to achieve in an ultra-wide zoom. Click on the image to the right, then click on the green arrow at the bottom to view the image at full size. While falling short of the very best wide-angle prime lenses, the 16-35mm is among the sharpest ultra-wide zoom lenses I’ve had the chance to use. The only place the lens falters is wide open towards the end of the zoom range, especially at closer focus distances, where the lens produces only average resolution. Stopping down at 35mm is advisable for maximum sharpness.
Bokeh
Bokeh isn’t often discussed much in the realm of ultra-wide angle lenses, but being a full-frame lens at f/4, the 16-35mm is capable of blurring the background throughout the range when shot wide open, especially towards the long end of the zoom.
Bokeh on the 16-35mm is surprisingly nice, with a generally smooth rendering of out of focus areas with evenly lit specular highlights. I have to say that the lens produced far nicer bokeh than I was expecting, which was a very pleasant surprise. One thing to note is that the aperture stops down slightly at the wide end, even if wide open, in order to keep the lens at a constant f/4 aperture. As such, a hint of the 7-sided aperture can be seen in the specular highlights when shooting at f/4 and 16mm.
Color, Contrast and Chromatic Aberration
The Zeiss 16-35mm f/4 produces images with that rich Zeiss color and contrast that the brand has become known for. Images have pop and clarity throughout the range, with only a minor falloff in contrast towards 35mm. Overall, the rendering is beautiful for landscape and architecture shooting, which will make up a large portion of many shooters uses for the lens.
In Chromatic Aberration control, the lens does fairly well, producing unobjectionable CA at the wide end and only moderate CA at the long end of the range, which is exacerbated when stopping down. Still, the CA can be corrected with modern postprocessing tools with relative ease.
Distortion, Vignetting and Flare
The 16-35mm f/4 OSS has fairly typical lens distortion for an ultra-wide zoom, with pronounced barrel distortion at the wide end and moderate pincushion distortion at the long end. Fortunately, distortion profiles are automatically applied to JPEG images and Lightroom has a built-in profile for the lens to correct the distortions for RAW files as well. The lens is sharp enough that the distortion correction doesn’t seem to affect edge resolution in any major way.
The 16-35mm also performs quite well against bright light, with minimal loss in contrast and minimal ghosting as well when the sun is included in the frame. Vignetting is fairly low at wide apertures and essentially gone by f/5.6.
Overall image quality is excellent, with only some distortion and a bit of CA to keep it from being flawless. I can’t really ask much more for an ultra-wide zoom lens.
Well the same Nikon is 680g and this one 518g.
There are certainly heavier lenses, but this is roughly the same size as a DSLR UWA. The Canon 17-40 f/4L is 475g and the 16-35 f/4L IS is 615g, putting the Sony in the middle of those. The point is, this is not a ‘small and light’ combo. It’s an awesome combo, but you should be buying for the capabilities not for some magical size reduction from your SLR. Still an awesome lens. If I pick up an A7II for myself (which I very well may do here soon), it’ll be mainly used as a digital FD body for me…I have a lot of FD glass that works fantastic on that sensor, and the lenses are small and very good (and cheap!). But the 16-35mm would very likely be the first FE lens I would buy for the kit.
My D810 weighs 980g so with the Nikon lens 1660g … the Sony A7II weighs 600g and so 1118g with the lens… that’s a nearly 1.2 pounds less than the Nikon combo …. Seems like a heck of a weight savings to me… I could also carry the Sony 55mm F1.8 (281g) and the Sony HVL-F32M flash (235g) and still be under the weight of the Nikon with just the one lens…
Heck If I chose to carry my A7r I could add the Sony 35 F2,8 (120g) and be even more under the weight of the Nikon and its lens. (1619g vs 1660g)
So it seems to me that weight is a perfectly good reason to go with the Sony FE system.
I bought the 16-35 for the 16mm end, having missed the 15mm Heliar from my (film) Leica days and finding the old analogue Olympus 21mm too wide on my A7. I have the Zeiss 35mm 2,8 but I now only use it because it is small and handy. The picture quality of the zoom at 35mm is on par with the 35mm fixed. One has a one-stop larger aperture and is smaller, lighter and is less expensive; the other has optical stabilisation and zoom. Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. If only one of them, the the zoom. At least for me.
Obviously, I agree with all of your conclusions. (The most recent pics on my flickr page are with the zoom.)
Chris
How would this lens do on a A6000? How would it compare to the 16-70?
Your comment would be greatly appreciated…..
jerry
It’s a lens that I think is a bit wasted on APS-C. First of all, its rather large, and you don’t really gain anything except probably a bit better corner performance at the wide end. The 16-35mm is great at the wide end and very good at the long end, but the long end sits where the 16-70 is also very good, and so I think the optical improvements are going to be pretty marginal. Factor in the much larger size and the extra cost and reduced range and I’d lean to the 16-70 every time. That said, if you shoot with both FF and APS-C e-mount lenses, the 16-35 could be sort of a ‘double duty’ lens in that case.
Hey Jordan…I just read this review and really appreciate your opinion on this lens. When Sony announced the A7r II recently I decided to sell my Fuji gear and switch to Sony. I felt the A7r II is a camera that Sony is making a statement with and it shows how serious they are about the evolution of the A7 line and how well they are listening to customers. I’m not getting the new A7r yet, but I bought a used older version at a good price and plan to now start buying a couple of lenses. The first is the 55mm f/1.8, which I recently bought used and is on the way, and the second lens that appealed to me was this 16-35mm f/4…a focal range that could cover 80-90% of what I like to shoot. Your positive review has helped push me over the edge (in a good way) and I plan to buy this lens before leaving for a week in northern Nova Scotia next week.
It was hard parting with my Fuji gear, it never did me wrong, and it did so much right…but I missed the FF look that I had with my D800e a couple of years ago and this Sony (I expect) will provide similar benefits from the Fuji while giving me all the beautiful detail found in the FF files. Thanks again.
Regards,
Jon
Hello Jordan. Any plan testing the same lens with the f:2,8 aperture? I am reading here and there that this version is of even higher quality overall than the f:4 one (that I am happily using almost exclusively)
Thanks