{"id":9245,"date":"2019-02-09T12:47:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T17:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=9245"},"modified":"2024-09-05T09:37:03","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T14:37:03","slug":"review-sony-fe-12-24mm-f-4-g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/review-sony-fe-12-24mm-f-4-g\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Sony FE 12-24mm f\/4 G"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today I’m looking at Sony’s extreme wide-angle zoom, the 12-24mm f\/4 G. As photography has progressed, more and more exotic lens designs have become possible.  Decades ago, a 24mm lens was considered extremely wide and 20mm was an almost unheard of ultra-wide angle.  Now, the standard ultra wide zoom starts at 16mm, and more exotic designs that go wider have become more mainstream. The first ultra-wide zoom to go all the way to 12mm was released only 16 years ago, in 2003, when Sigma produced their 12-24mm f\/4-5.6 zoom.  Since then, Nikon has made a 14-24 part of their standard kit, Canon has developed an 11-24.  These extreme wide-angle zooms have become more common, but the design of such lenses is anything but simple.  Most of these extreme wide zooms are absolutely huge, which is what makes Sony’s 12-24mm f\/4 so appealing.  It’s a constant f\/4 aperture lens with that supreme width, but it is quite reasonable in size and weight, making it a very attractive option to become the everyday wide zoom for many shooters.  Let’s see how it performs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sony FE 12-24mm f\/4 on the Sony A7 III<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

The Sony 12-24mm f\/4 G is a part of Sony’s high-end G series of lenses, and as such is well-constructed and feels solid in the hand.  As I mentioned in the introduction, the 12-24mm is a small lens for an extreme wide-angle, with a size just a bit larger than Sony’s own 16-35mm f\/4, and a bit smaller than the 16-35mm f\/2.8 GM.  The weight falls in that range as well, being a bit heavier than the 16-35mm f\/4 and a fair bit less than the 16-35mm f\/2.8. The 12-24mm weighs a relatively svelte 565g.  But where this becomes even more impressive is when comparing to the DSLR competition.  Canon’s 11-24mm f\/4L is a whopping 1160g, more than double the weight of the Sony 12-24mm, while also being over 2cm larger in diameter and nearly 2cm longer. The small size makes this a great option for everyday use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Sony FE 16-35mm f\/4 on the left, the FE 12-24mm f\/4 on the right<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The lens is constructed of high-grade plastics over a solid, presumably metal frame.  There is no flex anywhere in the lens body, and it feels reassuringly solid.  The lens features weather sealing, but lacks a gasket for the lens mount, so I wouldn’t trust it to extremely wet conditions, due to potential damage to the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lens features two broad rubberized rings for zoom and focus control. The zoom ring is well damped and feels excellent in use.  The focus ring turns smoothly, but is a bit too lightly damped for my personal taste.  Like most Sony E-mount lenses, the 12-24mm is focus by wire in a free spinning manner, so there’s no focus scale on the lens itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 12-24mm f\/4 G has a built-in petal shaped lens hood that cannot be removed, which provides some minimal shading from stray light, but more importantly protects the extremely bulbous front element from taking physical damage.  That bulging element and the extremely wide field of view also prevent the lens from utilizing standard screw-in type filters, and the lens does not have a filter thread up front.  There are square filter adapters for use of 150mm square filter systems, but I’d imagine most people won’t want to deal with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The lens has an AF\/MF toggle switch and Sony’s very handy programmable AF-On button<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One nice stop-gap that can potentially be employed, however, is the use of a 77mm filter in certain ranges.  The lens hood is just a big larger than the exterior diameter of a 77mm filter.  Some ingenious photographers discovered that placing gaffer tape or felt flocking around the edge of a filter to build up that diameter a bit will allow a 77mm filter to nestle into the hood.  It works well, but only from about 14-24mm.  Wider than 14mm, the angle of view becomes too extreme to work with a filter of that size. Also the lens group is zoomed forward at the widest focal lengths and the front element will make contact with the filter.  If you use this trick, you will obviously have to be careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autofocus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Sony 12-24mm f\/4 G features a fast and quiet autofocus motor, and I found it to work very well in my daily shooting. Focus was extremely quick, and very accurate.  I didn’t notice any focus issues during my time with the lens. I also couldn’t hear the focus motor at all…focusing was dead silent, making the lens quite appropriate for use in quiet environments or for shooting movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the FE 16-35mm f\/4, the 12-24mm does not feature an optical stabilizer, so you’ll have to rely on the newer Sony cameras’ in-body image stabilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Image Quality<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ambitious lens designs such as extreme ultra-wide zooms generally have some sort of compromises with regards to image quality, and the Sony FE 12-24mm is no exception to that rule.  However, Sony did a fairly good job overall with this lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The FE 12-24mm f\/4 puts in a surprisingly good performance with regards to image sharpness.  It’s only a 2x zoom range, but when that range includes extreme wide-angle focal lengths, sharpness can often suffer, but the 12-24mm avoids these issues for the most part. At the wide end of the zoom range at wide apertures, center quality is already quite excellent, though the edges of the frame definitely are fairly soft.  The longer end fares a bit better at f\/4, but still shows some edge softness. Stopped down, the lens is extremely sharp over 90% of the frame at all focal lengths.  wider than around 20mm, the edges show a touch softer resolution, but are still good, while the extreme corners show some residual softness even stopped down.  However, even with those softer corners, the image quality there is still quite usable.  In all, it’s an impressive performance given the width of the lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Main Street Bridge – Sony A7 III with Sony FE 12-24mm f\/4 @ 12mm, f\/8, 1\/25s, ISO 100 – Click Here<\/a> for a full size version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

The 12-24mm f\/4 is a modern lens with a modern lens rendering.  The lens produces images with nice even contrast and good color response throughout the focal range.  On the whole, I found the lens to render somewhat similarly to the FE 16-35mm, with perhaps just a touch more contrast to the images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chromatic Aberration is well controlled, which is rather surprising for such a wide-angle lens. Lateral chromatic aberration is extremely low, and can only be seen on extremely close inspection when it is visible at all.  Longitudinal CA is also a complete non-factor.  I was quite surprised at how well the lens performed in this area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Columbus Towers – Sony A7 III with Sony FE 12-24mm f\/4 G @ 12mm, f\/8, 1\/320s, ISO 100<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

Being an ultra-wide angle zoom with a modest f\/4 aperture, the 12-24mm isn’t exactly a creamy blur-making machine.  That said, it still can blur the background when focused close up, even at 12mm.  The bokeh is nothing special on this lens, which is somewhat to be expected.  There’s a bit of nervousness, and specular highlights are a bit muddy and have a slight bright ring outline.  However, it isn’t especially offensive either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Columbus Deer – Sony A7 III with Sony FE 12-24mm f\/4 G @ 12mm, f\/4, 1\/50s, ISO 100<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

When lenses get this extreme with regards to focal length, something has to give, and of course there are some compromises when it comes to certain characteristics like distortion and vignetting.  The wide end of the zoom range certainly has quite visible barrel distortion. The barrel distortion switches to pincushion distortion as you zoom towards the longer focal lengths, and this is actually a little more offensive than the barrel distortion.  Thankfully, there is a built-in profile for JPEG shots as well as a RAW profile in Lightroom that can automatically correct for any distortion in the situations where it becomes visible, though I found at the wide end it doesn’t fully correct it, leaving some residual correction to do manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vignetting is also fairly substantial, with quite visible vignetting at all focal lengths, and it doesn’t improve much upon stopping down.  I like some vignetting in my photos, but this lens produces it beyond what I find aesthetically pleasing.  The built-in profiles also correct for this, and do so fairly accurately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peace – Sony A7 III with Sony FE 12-24mm f\/4 G @ 17mm, f\/11 (3 shot HDR)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 12-24mm is also only average with regards to flare.  Veiling flare is present, but not overpowering, and while most ghosting is fairly small in size, there are a lot of ghosts that can appear in the frame when the sun is in the right position, as can be seen in the shot above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sony 12-24mm f\/4 G is a lens that provides very good sharpness, excellent color and contrast and a wonderful ultra-wide focal range, and while an ambitious lens such as this also requires some compromises with lens aberrations, the overall image quality is on a very high level for such a lens.<\/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