It’s a bit surprising for me to see that Sony has no plan to release compact pancakes like the current [shoplink 2998]16mm f/2.8 for NEX[/shoplink]. Do you think this is a mistake? I mean, what’s the meaning of having an ultra compact NEX-C3 if all the lenses (except the 16mm) are huge?
[poll id=”52″]
P.S.: There is still hope that Sigma and other third party lens makers can bring us some nice pancake!
77 Responses
I am not happy with the lens roadmap.
But that’s because the High quality standard zoom and the wide angle zoom will probably come 2012 (too late!!)
Lars
seems the lenses you labeled as 30/3.5 and 50/1.8 on the image should be swapped, therefore 50/1.8 may be a pancake lens
A 50mm f1.8 pancake…now that would be interesting…
I have to agree with this. A 50/1.8 pancake would be very cool. I’d also love to see a 35mm pancake, or a collapsible zoom, like Olympus has.
Still see no point in making an APS-C 50mm. Make it 57, 58mm and then it would be in 85mm equivalent territory.
I agree with Richard. Most people use 50mm lenses as portrait primes simply because that’s all we have. However 75mm eqv is not the best focal length for portrait work. NEX is a new system from the ground up, there’s no reason to stick to standard full frame focal lengths. A 55mm or 60mm f/1.8 would be a much better portrait lens for APS-C.
That said, all these lenses look huge. Sony may have mastered making tiny camera bodies, but that’s pointless if the lens mounted on the front is 4″ long or more. It’s looking more and more like m4/3’s is really going to be the sweet spot for balancing size and IQ.
FF NEX camera is still a possibility.
If m4/3 decide to get serious and make more $400 camera bodies, then that might be a nice tradeoff of IQ and size for the price. This is my main beef with 4/3 in general, their IQ is about 3/4 that of APS-C, yet the cameras cost about the same if not more.
Currently Panasonic GH sensors performs about equal to APS-C sensors. Other 4/3 camera have a worse sensor performance than dslr cameras from 6-7 years ago. And some of these cameras cost near $1000.
Small sensor interchangable lens compacts are coming soon (i.e. Pentax Pen Digital). Between this, compacts like Canon’s S and G Powershots, and more affordable APS-C compacts, 4/3’s future is not very bright.
But you’re right, they do have pancake lenses.
My experience is that the sensors in the GH’s aren’t even close to the Sony 16MP that’ll be in the NEX-3C. And the cameras are too big, too.
Some of the m43 lenses are just fantastic, but there just isn’t a really nice body to go with them.
Whereas with Sony we get nice cameras and poor lenses, so we’re damned either way.
I’d laugh if it ends up with Canon being the only company that executes their mirrorless cameras properly, despite being the last to market.
From what I’ve seen of the new Panasonic G3 it looks like m4/3’s is well on their way to fixing their IQ issues. It may still not be as good as Sony’s best APS-C sensors, but IMO it has crossed over into the “good enough” realm. At this point I’m going to start looking more into systems then individual cameras. I’ve owned CSC’s by Sony, Panasonic, and Olympus now. I’m tired of buying/selling; the next one I get will be for the long haul. While I really liked my NEX-3 (for what it is), Sony’s lenses really let me down with it. I just used old manual adapted lenses the entire time I had it.
I’m sure the NEX-7 + 17mm Zeiss prime is going to be a fantastic set up, but outside of that I’m just not seeing much to get excited about here. The high quality standard zoom will be a good lens I’m sure, but it’s also huge; which rules it out for me. The wide angle zoom looks compact for an ultrawide, so that could be interesting. However, it needs to have far better IQ then either the 16mm or the 18-55mm.
I just really think Sony needs a small standard set of primes to go with the NEX-7 since E-Mount zooms are so large. The 16mm/2.8 struggles resolving the 14.6mp sensor, no way will it be able to handle the 24mp NEX-7 sensor. The 17mm should be fine of course. So for me it looks like if I go back to the NEX system I’ll only have one or two lenses to use for the foreseeable future until they release a 16mm f/2.8 II, a 30mm f/1.4, and a 60mm f/1.8; that could be a long wait…
When I use a 50mm on my A700 I’d want one on the NEX too for the same FoV.
IMO the 30mm leak is fake. not that there’s no 30mm macro, but the pictures of the lens is probably made up. looking at the size of the front element and the size, it doesn’t make sense for a f3.5 lens to be so huge. it kinda makes sense for the 50mm to be that big since the flange distance is much lens than dslrs.
However, if another leak is right and it is a 7 element lens grouping, I could definitely see it being the size listed… I’d believe it could be that large for a Macro lens for the ability to get such a close focusing distance.
I’m not happy about the lack of pancakes in the future, but I’d rather Sony made good, larger lenses, than going the µ43 way of using software correction to correct major distortion and color fringing.
a fast pancake sounds unlikely
I agree with you, why having the smallest CSC if you have to carry a full bag of glass around…
I will keep using legacy lenses, they are more portable and much cheaper
Small body is nice only with small lenses.
yeah, I though that was the whole point of the NEX series.
I might as well stick to my a900 if I have to lug around this giant lens.
Come on now, carrying an NEX with 18-55 lens is definitey lighter and more compact than an A700/18-70. I have owned both, so I can proved it. I won’t bother mentioning the weight of the 24-70mm. The NEX line isn’t as bad as all you whinos make it sound. Cheers.
Well I also own all three of those cameras and I know that it’s not really the point that one weighs less than the other… My concern is more of the size. The difference between putting one in my pocket as opposed to having to carry a camera bag. The NEX with the pancake fit fine in my pocket but it was a shit lens. The NEX with any other NEX lens right now pretty much needs a bag.
So, I’m still sticking to my original point which was: unless there’s a good quality pancake so I can carry it in my pocket I might as well use my A900/A700 because I’ll be forced to bring my camera bag.
Can someone tell why is Sony making us so slow zoom? Is there any chance to see, I don’t know when, a 24-70mm f/2.8 ?? That would be more professionnal! Up to f/2.8 I won’t buy any of this zoom.
For now I’m waiting for the 50mm 1.8..
I guess we all have our priorities, but I’m surprised that Sony is so slow to release a wide-angle zoom. I think the WA is slated for 2012.
the industry is moves too slow.
The lens labeled as the 30/3.5 macro is quite different from the recent product shots. The real lens looks longer and has a smaller focus ring.
So either that’s another lens, or it’s a prototype.
Samsung already has 20/2.8 and 30/2 pancakes out and is coming out with a 16/2.4 pancake later this year.
I thought Sony would follow their lead, as a fast “normal” pancake is pretty much on everybody’s list for these cameras. It’s obviously possible!
the question is which is the real lens 😉 the recent product shot was looking quite artificial, like a 3d rendering.
Can’t believe the high quality standard zoom “G” is so long. i wouldn’t put anything longer than the kit zoom, which leave me only 2 options, the 30mm macro and the zeiss, whihc is barely shorter.
the high quality standard zoom must have a bigger range than 17-55, right?
if its 24-105 equavalent, then it make sens for the length
The 16-105 with a longer barrel to account for the longer flange distance? Would be pretty cheeky labeling it a G lens if so, though.
well i guess those nice small legacy lenses would be large too if they had to pack OS and autofocus in the housing.. to make it worse, fast CDAF needs more electronics in the lens then PDAF, as the cam needs to now more about the lens status then for PDAF.
obviously there are some modern pancakes on the market(m4/3) but i doubt they are cheap or easy to construct.
i my opinion the NEX still goes best with some nice small manual legacy lenses.. there is plenty of choice and manual focussing becomes so easy after a while
you cant have it all 😉
but looking at the lens lineup i cant help but noticing that most lenses have the same height as their alpha counterparts plus adapter..(mount to front glass) so i feel sony went the shortcut of using the same optics in a new package. this surely would cut development short and prices down, opposed to completelly new, more compact glasses..
I’m not going to jump to conclusion and so far these are just mockups, but that is what I’m a bit afraid of as well. It would be colossally stupid of Sony seeing how size is one of the selling points of the NEX system. Surely they’ve got engineers in-house that can come up with new designs on their own…right?
P.S. the 30mm leak is real.
I’ve got the 18-55mm and the 16mm. I don’t think that other pancakes would improve usability, as I would use a small bag anyway. I’m waiting for high quality lenses, not for lenses that trade quality for compactness. There are a lot of cameras out there to choose from, if someone wants to carry them in a pocket.
Not with an APS-C sensor.
Pancake lenses most certainly be high quality lenses, especially short flange distance designs with modest speed. Just look at some of the lenses for Leica’s M system, a number of the lenses have thirty-something millimetre filter diametres.
There are also some near-pancake zooms for micro four thirds like the collapsable Olympus one, so there’s no rule they have to be primes.
so thwy are the standard size beer can and the extra large beer can? LOL
I don’t need a pancake, but a small prime lens with AF for point and shoot would be nice.
A 35mm/f1.4 could be very small, if you take a look on the Voigtländer Nokton or the preaspherical Leica Summilux 35 you understand what i mean.
The idea about a NEX setup is that you can fit a few good, small and light lenses and one or two bodies into a small slingbag and ready for action. I would rather see another two Zeiss lenses (something like 60/2 macro and 90/2.8 portrait lens) than any pancake. Maybe add anther ultra wide zoom (I hope it is as good as the 10-22 canon).
The same story all over, again: give us decent prime lenses: 20mm f2.8, a 30mm f2.8 and a, let’s say a 60mm f2.0 portrait lens and I’d be happy to go. In case the designs are not super compact pancakes please have the super steady shot of the 18-200 lens included and Sony would pretty much set the rules for compact APC photography.
Yes, I can accept a small body with poor interface as long as there are small lenses available.
I use legacy lenses with much pleasure. M mount, m42 MD and AF.
So far I’m good with the zeiss 24 1.7 fitting nicely into the kit. who know i might blow cash on the M mount 24 1.4…
M mount lenses work really well. It just short of focus peaking and evf.
I’m a fan of Sony system. Now, I am waiting for the FF EVF DSLR
The 50mm’s length is probably very close to the A-mount 50mm + adapter.
I don’t understand why Sony is not releasing a faster non-macro 30mm?
The size is acceptable.
Boggles the mind that Sony is investing more on long barreled zooms than compact normal primes, for a compact platform.
Do you think that Canon, Nikon, Sony, Zeiss, and all of the others make the lenses big on purpose?
And don’t you think that if it was easy or even possible to make well-made 24-70 f2.8 with fast, sharp optics smaller, or as small as some here would like them to be
So far, no matter who makes them the best lenses are bigger and heavier than the not as good and believe me with the high MP cameras that everyone on this rumor site apparently want camera manufactures to make you need very good optics to make use of all of those MP.
And yes, They cost a boat-load of money!
The Zeiss ZM lenses are actually very small.
Well, Pentax seems to be managing it somehow. Certainly not the best quality out there, but still very good and ridiculously small.
Will the lens still be as good on a 24MP cammera or a 50MP cammera three years from now?
Are any of the current NEX lenses good enough for a 50MP camera? I would have thought not. But maybe the Zeiss will be different.
Sony appears to continue to be clueless on direction. The quality of the Sony lens line continues to lag behind Nikon and Canon. The E mount lenses are cheap and low quality. 30mm f/3.5…really? Why? Why continue to make lenses that are slow and inaccurate?
whats the point of a tiny nex with huge lenses.. o0
Sony teases and tortures us by giving us excellent, tiny camera with terrible lens selection. Samsung has 3-4 excellent and usable primes, similar case for panasonic. What primes Sony gives us? A too-wide for normal use 16mm, and a 30mm F3.5. F3.5??? Are you kidding me? And it’s not even a pancake- it is going to be long like a dong! I bet it will be the same for the Carl Zeiss 24mm “prime” – also long like a dong.
Actually every Samsung NX lens except that new kit for NX100 is very very good. Bit underestimated system.
Sony need to take apart the Samsung NX pancakes, and copy the optical design….
Pancakes? Ehm no, but good wide-angle APS-C yes. 24mm isnt exactly wide (35mm FF equiv.). Though you can get Voigtlaender 12mm, which is wide.. just native lens mount and AF would be better.
I agree completely!! I would love to have a 12mm with AF for this camera, even if it was a bit bigger than the 16mm and if it was good quality i would pretty much pay anything for it. The first compact camera with a APS-C sensor and a good quality wide angle and i will be switching!
I like Nex bodies, but I steer clear of them for lack of compact primes. Pentax pancakes and primes are very compact and well constructed. I was blown away by the quality. With such lenses Sony’s nex would make a lot of sense. So far, thanks, but no thanks:(
Good, cheap, fast – Pick two.
Good and cheap lens will not be fast
Cheap and fast lens will not be good
Fast and good lens will not be cheap
I’m tired of people whining about F3.5 being slow, especially for a macro. You people out there are all about bragging rights, with poor image quality.
+1
And is 3.5 SO much slower than 2.8 (which the majority of macro lenses are?).
+1
Exactly!
I want a Ferrari at the size and cost of yaris too, why isn’t anyone making one? I’m sure it sells like hot cakes too!!
I’d personally be willing to trade off “cheap” and “fast” for “good” and “small”.
Hey monkey, well I guess both Samsung and Panasonic have already made several Ferraris at the size and cost of Yaris!!
This was in reply to Monkey.
Geez… yesterday having bad dream, dreaming I bought a old nex3. luckily it just a dream, not real 🙂
advanced one day, I older a day, 43 days to go! a77
lol you’re like a kid waiting for christmas 😛
oh good grief! Listen to all the whining on here. First up the the pretax lenses are small, but if you consider the extra flange distance they aren’t as small as you make out (lens to sensor). If you put on an adapter and a pentax lens there isn’t going to be that much in it. Plus the smallest pentax is the 40mm which is f3.2. Add that to the adapter and we are looking at a similar size. The extra flange distance is simply built into the body on a pentax, so get over it.
The Panasonics use distortion correction to get around the small size and thus poor quality of their lenses (yes they produce good results but check out their 20mm prime on a non m4/3 camera like the nex.
No idea what samsung do and yes agree that their system is underrated especial considering the price. But in overall volume the samsung is pretty large.
Lastly none of these are even announced yet! You are sooking about products that aren’t even real yet! The supposed macro lens shown last week isn’t even in that picture! I would say that the new primes will be a similar size to the current apsc oonly primes for alpha mount, only without the adapter and a little thinner, still reasonably small. Considering the two together in terms of volume.
Some pancake lenses would be nice, but not at the loss of image quality. If i could get a g series fast zoom for mine that is about the size of the one pictured i would be very very happy. Also gives you something to hold, like the old f515 only a million times better IQ. I would also have that macro over both the 18-55 and 16mm kit lenses. Not much slower than either, really useable focal length and macro. That would be a much better single lens kit. And macros tend to be very very sharp if not particularly fast. And at about 1/2 the size of the kit zoom.
One last thing, the e-mount system isn’t only the nex 3/5 there are the vg10 and fs100 to consider too. It is the beginning of a whole new system, there will be something for everyone!
Barrel distortion or not, the Panasonic 20mm is a very sharp lens.
Clearly Sony does not have any significant optical design expertise. What else explains their P&S minded lens selections?
So far Sony has failed to design lenses specifically for the shorter flange distance of the NEX cameras. Instead they have taken A-Mount lens designs from Minolta and bastardized them to produce slower speed, mediocre image quality and large/long barrel sized monstrosities. And to make matters worse, almost all these giant lenses also lack image stabilization.
That is why Sony opened up (partially) their NEX mount information: They know they are clueless about lenses and hope that more serious minded companies can release higher quality lenses for their own platform.
Had Sony being serious about NEX cameras and photographers, they would have designed the sensors with support for offset microlenses (like Leica did) and really designed lenses that take advantage of the shorter flange distance to produce much smaller and quite sharper lenses. They would also have signaled the release of a full frame NEX9 which would have probably sold more fullframe Sony sensors than the A900 and A850 combined.
Nice point, but then you also explained the fact about Leica’s poor sensor and menu…
“What else explains their P&S minded lens selections?”
Perhaps it is due to the fact that Sony are targeting P&S shooters with the current NEX camera bodies? Perhaps they are trying to make P&S shooters feel comfortable in moving up with their gear and expanding a potential DSLR market share.
The NEX range is in it’s infancy, you throw around the Leica name, and wanting a full frame NEX, yet it’s simply your failure for realising who the NEX is aimed at.
You also complain about the size of the lens available being large and “monstrosities” yet, but having a full frame NEX will yield even larger glass. Whether you know it or not, the sensor size has an impact on how large the optics will be as well.
You just seem like an uninformed whiner.
The annoying part of it is that Tamron, Zeiss and Minolta all have experience making compact lenses, and Sony could have outsourced the design of the NEX lenses to any of them.
so go buy yourself a leica then!
Cash in your life insurance, get an M9.
Come on. When Leica first started did they have 5 lenses to behind with? The NEX system is not even 1 year yet!
Uhm, what about Samsung. There NX lens lineup is much superior to that of Sony. Sony is not a small niche company like Leica anyways. Why waste time to release new camera if you don’t intend to provide a good lens line up to those who purchased it?
So many people complain about the complainers. Well I’m a complainer and I have good reasons to do complain!
Some say in above posts that Panasonic 20mm f1.7 uses a trick, in camera distortion correction. Well, what is the point of Nex? The point of nex is good (NOT PRO) image quality IN A SMALL PACKAGE. So, in camera distortion correction is fine in this case. If you have problem with in camera distortion correction, go buy a big dslr and big lenses.
Some say above posts that Samsung is high-volume company so they can make many pancake lenses. Helllooooo? What about Sony?
Bottom line is that Sony is completely dropping its balls in this situation. WHAT A WASTED OPPORTUNITY! If Nex had the same primes that Samsung did, it could completely win like 80% of the the mirrorless market. But sony dropped its balls!
BecAuse samsung only needs to deal with their NX10 n p&s whiners whereas Sony needs to deal with cybershot/alpha/NEX whiners. Go figure.
NEX is not only developed for compact-design. E-Mount is the future, because it´s mirrorless and so there will be bigger NEX cameras in future.
NEX-7 will be bigger. Wait and see…
DSLR and SLT is only a temporary solution to mirrorless.
But yes, at the moment Samsung´s NX lens lineup looks better.
I agree, the future is mirrorless + evf or external monitor.
Going beyond that, i want a direct path from the sensor to my cerebral cortex.
The NX system has about 10mm bigger flange distance hence Samsung lenses will be about 10mm shorter when taken off the camera.
30mm Samsung can look like pancake.
Sony nex will be pancake plus 10mm
Simple maths
What is the latest rumor on the specs for the high quality standard zoom G lens?
The lenses don’t HAVE to be pancakes. They just need to be significantly smaller than consumer DSLR lenses, otherwise, what’s the point in giving up the VF and buying a NEX?
Someone said the smallest Pentax was the 40mm which is a 3.2. Not true, it’s an f/2.8. And it is tiny. The DA15/DA21/DA35/DA70 are not pancakes, and the fastest is the 70mm which is an f/2.4 but they are all still tiny and superbly built too. The FA 43mm is a pancake, it’s f/1.9 and it covers full frame too. No reason why Sony can’t come up with something similar.
Sony can make small lenses, but for some misguided reason, they don’t seem interested in doing that. The point of a mirrorless system is not just to reduce the distance between the mount and the sensor- it should allow for smaller lens designs as well.