Sony Lens line up in general?

Aloha,

Interested in the new Sony A7RII, but I'm not really interested in the lens adapters, so I'm wondering how do the native Sony lenses perform? For a decent lineup, I'd be looking for 16-35, 24-70, and 70-200. How are these Sony lenses in comparison to Canon? Sorry guys, I'm totally ignorant to Sony lenses!

Canon_Shoe wrote in post #17686000
Aloha,

Interested in the new Sony A7RII, but I'm not really interested in the lens adapters, so I'm wondering how do the native Sony lenses perform? For a decent lineup, I'd be looking for 16-35, 24-70, and 70-200. How are these Sony lenses in comparison to Canon? Sorry guys, I'm totally ignorant to Sony lenses!

I can't speak for the zooms, but the primes are phenomenal.

The zooms don't measure as well as their canon counter-parts in tests and reviews, but plenty of people here posting very nice photos with them.

mystik610 wrote in post #17686369
I can't speak for the zooms, but the primes are phenomenal.

The zooms don't measure as well as their canon counter-parts in tests and reviews, but plenty of people here posting very nice photos with them.

Pretty much this.

The primes are all stellar, most beat out not only Canon's primes, but most manufacturers. The zooms are also fairly highly rated, though so are the Canon's.

IMO all the commonly used zoom lenses (the one's you listed) are all as near as makes no difference across all the major manufacturers.

I jumped to Sony earlier this year and had the same question. On the wide and mid range, I skipped the zooms and went to primes which are superb, as mentioned here before. I did get the FE 70-200 f/4 though, mostly because there aren't much native FE primes in that range. Some reviews claim that this lens is a bit soft at the long end, but that has not been my experience at all. I found it at least as good as the EF 70-200 f/4 IS (which I love and still have), and it is very sharp from 70 to 200mm.

Some examples from the FE 70-200:

70mm:

I'm a big far of Sony's since I started with mirrorless and the NEX-6 and 7. But I'm also a big critic of them. They do a lot right and still seem to do a lot of throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. They've all but abandoned not only the A-Mount but APS-C development. If you asked me a year ego shout the lens lineup, it was fairly weak. Even up to 6 months post FE launch there wa only 5 lenses, of which there were two primes and 3 zooms. But they've been steadily rolling out some quality lenses.

The big thing with Sony is price and QC. I've been lucky up till now and gotten some good versions of lenses but there's reports of lens variations all over the place. And now to combat high prices you have grey market and used. Price wise, they'll always be losing the battle against Canon or Nikon simply because of their youth compared to the 30 years of EF lenses and the even longer history of the Nikon F mount. You have infinitely more Canon/Nikoj shooters out there. So while they can't win on price, they're trying to win on quality.

The 55 is a great lens. The Batis lenses (I haven't tried them myself) are highly regarded and I've yet to read a bad review of them. The 35 1.4 and the 90 Macro are both larger but highly regarded. The 28 f/2 is a solid lens that's the cheapest native AF lens and takes two wider angle converters. The 16-35 is a well respected lens that's better on the wide side. The 70-200 is a nice lens as well. The 24-70 is the elephant in the room. I myself love mine, but it's widely criticized for being overpriced, soft, and a poor value. I agree with the poor value. The 24-70 is typically the workhorse lens in the FF world. The 24-70 is probably the most used lens in he majority of most pros bags. So expectations are high for this, as is the price. It doesn't match it. But I think unfairly it's criticized.

Yes it's expensive and it's supposed to be the flagship lens. But it's also an f/4, it's unfair to compare it to the 2.8 bad boys. Compared to other f/4 it's a good performer. The Nikon 24-120 is softer, especially past 85 or so. It has the extra reach going for it, but you'll have to stop down to f/8 or so to improve sharpness. The Canon 24-105 is another so-so lens. I never cared for mine, but it's a slightly older lens. I never tried the Sigma 24-105 (too big) and never tried the Canon 24-70 f/4 either. But against the other 2 I mentioned before, the Sony i would say is better than those two. If it were priced at say, $799 new, the I don't think it would be thought of as negatively as it is. I got mine for $700 and I'm very happy with it.

They could still use a ultra wide angle prime without needing adapters (18-21), I would like a 35 that's between the larger expensive 1.4 and the slower, smaller 2.8. A AF version of the Loxia, a 35 f/2 would be nice. They could use a 135, they could use a 200+ prime. Also you'll undoubtedly hear a few people that knock the lineup for not having a T/S lens, which is silly since what.. 1% of shooters probably own a T/S lens, but of course it'll get criticized because there is none.

Overall right now I'd give the lineup a 7/10 if I had to judge it. Still some holes, but quickly filling up.