{"id":7190,"date":"2017-09-02T10:34:40","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T15:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=7190"},"modified":"2024-09-05T16:29:06","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T21:29:06","slug":"review-sony-fe-70-200mm-f2-8-gm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/review-sony-fe-70-200mm-f2-8-gm\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s been a long, long break between articles, as I’ve been absolutely swamped at my day job, finding little time to shoot and even less time to write.  I have a backlog of thoughts and images to go through, and today I’m taking a look at Sony’s professional grade telezoom, the Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM. A constant f\/2.8 short telephoto zoom is a staple lens for many professional photographers, and the versions from Nikon and Canon are also among the best zoom lenses made.  Sony’s entry looks to add a similarly impressive piece of glass to the full-frame E-mount lineup.  The 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM is roughly the same size as its DSLR counterparts: let’s see if it matches up with regards to performance as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
The Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM on the Sony A9<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you haven\u2019t read my reviews before, I do not generally perform resolution tests or make charts to track quality measures.  I take a real world approach to my reviews and evaluate how a lens or camera handles and works in regular use.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Construction and Handling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM is a fairly hefty lens, and is effectively the same size and weight as any other 70-200mm f\/2.8 lens on the market today.  With telephoto lenses, there’s really no size advantage with a mirrorless camera, so things are as expected here.  The lens is very solidly constructed of metals and high-grade plastics, with smooth, well damped focus and zoom rings.  Unlike most lenses in the E-mount, at least the front focusing group is controlled via direct gearing with the focus ring, a nice surprise.  As the Sony FE bodies are rather small, the lens can be a bit large on most E-Mount cameras, but the lens leaves plenty of room for your fingers.  I shot the lens predominantly on the new Sony A9, and the slightly larger grip on that camera helped with overall handling.  It’s a hefty lens, so you’ll definitely feel the weight in your bag, but professionals and serious shooters who need an f\/2.8 zoom already know the drill there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
The side controls are plentiful on the FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The FE 70-200mm GM comes with an array of switches along the left side of the lens barrel.  There’s an AF\/MF switch, a focus limiter, and two controls for the optical image stabilizer, to turn it of and on and set the panning mode.  There are also multiple AF lock buttons around the barrel between the focus and zoom rings.  This button is programmable, and I used it to engage Eye Detection AF.  With the Sony A9’s excellent facial recognition and autofocus, this proved to be a very handy control indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
The 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM with lens hood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM comes with a deep plastic petal lens hood that provides good shading and protection for the front element.  The hood has a cutout at the base with a sliding door to provide easy access to polarizing filters while the hood is mounted.  In all, the lens feels much like the pro-grade telephoto zooms from Canon and Nikon – a solid, well constructed lens with good handling considering the size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autofocus and Image Stabilization<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Like you’d expect from a lens in this category, the FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 focuses quickly and surely.  AF is extremely quick and, in my experience, exceedingly accurate.  While the vast majority of my shooting time with the lens involved shooting golf, which isn’t particularly taxing on an AF system, I also tested the continuous autofocus ability of this lens with the A9, and it performed extremely well.  Shooting at the top burst rate of 20 frames per second on the A9, with a person running towards me, and Eye AF activated, yielded approximately 90% of images that were simply dead-on in focus, a very impressive result given the extreme frame rate and the type of shooting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Running!<\/a>
Running! – Sony A9 with Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM @ 181mm, f\/2.8, 1\/1600s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The optical stabilizer included in the 70-200mm GM is also excellent, and the best I’ve used for the Sony E-Mount system.  I was able to regularly achieve around 4 to 5 stops of extra handholdability, which is a great result, allowing for shots at around 1\/10s at 200mm, provided your subject isn’t moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n


The FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM is a professional grade telezoom, and thankfully it performs like one optically.  Let’s take a look at the specifics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharpness<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM is a very sharp lens.  Right from wide open, the lens maintains very high sharpness in the central 2\/3 of the image, and still very good (but slightly lower) sharpness at the edges. This is true both at the wide end and the telephoto end, which is great.  Stopping down a touch brings the edges to excellent territory, with even quite sharp corners.  It’s definitely a lens that you can simply choose the aperture based on depth of field, and not worry about sharpness, as the lens will provide plenty of resolution at any setting. Here is a 100% crop<\/a> from the image below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
The Memorial Tournament – Sony A9 with Sony 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM @ 200mm, f\/2.8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bokeh<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Like the other GM lenses I’ve had the pleasure to test, the 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM has very nice bokeh. Out of focus areas are rendered very smoothly, with lovely falloff.  Specular highlights are quite neutral, with no bright ring outlines and very even illumination. The smooth character is most pronounced up close, but while backgrounds maintain high contrast, things still look fairly smooth even at further focus distances throughout the focal range.  I was quite impressed by the rendering of backgrounds with this lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fly<\/a>
Fly – Sony A7 II with Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM @ 200mm, f\/2.8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Color, Contrast and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The 70-200 GM produces images with excellent color and contrast at every setting. Color is rich and vibrant and contrast is excellent, even at wide apertures.  There’s really not a lot to discuss in this department, as I was extremely pleased with the contrast profile of the lens right out of camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GM also controls chromatic aberration very well. Lateral CA is extremely well controlled and isn’t field relevant in any way.  Even longitudinal CA \/ bokeh fringing is very well controlled, with only the very slightest touch of a magenta or green fringe in rare circumstances, and even then only visible if really scouring the image for it.  Overall, I’d view CA control as exceptional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Distortion, Flare and Vignetting<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t have any issues with flare using the FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM, though to be honest, I didn’t directly test it for flare performance.  Still, in shooting outdoors in sunshine, I didn’t have any problems, which isn’t surprising given the narrow angle of view and the deep lens hood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lens isn’t free from distortion, with some moderate barrel distortion at the wide end of the zoom range, which flattens out and turns to moderate pincushion distortion at the telephoto end.  Both types of distortion are corrected in the JPEG images and easily applied to RAW files with a Lightroom profile, but there will be a very minor impact to edge sharpness when applying correction.  Given the high-resolution that the lens produces, applying the profile is worthwhile, as the sharpness impact really won’t be visible. The middle focal lengths between around 100-135mm have very minimal distortion.  If you are shooting architecture, you’ll definitely want to correct the distortion at the edges of the zoom range.  The pincushion distortion at 200mm is especially noticeable when shooting flat subjects with straight lines, as can be seen below.  The top image is uncorrected, and the bottom is the same image with Lightroom’s distortion and vignetting profile applied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Buildings<\/a>
Buildings – Sony A7 II with Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM @ 200mm, f\/8 – Distortion and Vignetting Uncorrected<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Buildings<\/a>
Buildings – Sony A7 II with Sony FE 70-200mm f\/2.8 GM @ 200mm, f\/8 – Distortion and Vignetting Corrected with LR Profile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As you can also see from the above images, there is some vignetting with this lens as well.  It’s moderate at f\/2.8 and becomes less visible as you stop down, but never fully disappears.  However, the falloff is generally pleasing and doesn’t cause any major issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the optical quality of the 70-200 GM is on a very high level, with excellent sharpness, contrast, bokeh and CA control, and while there are some minor compromises with image distortion, they are certainly forgivable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Pros<\/h4>\n\n\n\n