Image courtesy: Meng Keat.
SAR reader Meng Keat was able to test the Sony 10-18mm f/4.0 OSS E-mount lens on the A7r. And surprise…it works fine in Full Frame mode. There is some Vignetting in the corner but absolutely acceptable and easy to mitigate in pos production. The important thing is that the resolution is there! The image on top has been shot at 13mm 1/60 | f/4 | ISO 800 | FL 13. It means current lens owners can happily upgrade to the FF mode and future A7-A7r camera owners can easily buy that lens if they need a wide angle zoom!
You can grab the lens at [shopcountry 22165].
One more test: Popescu tested the Zeiss Touit and the Sony 35mm G lens on the A7 (dpreview forum). These lenses work well in crop mode only.
89 Responses
I’d love to see test results for other APS-C lenses, in FF and crop mode. Since I don’t have tons of money, I’m planning to use the A7 with my current range of APS-C E-mount lenses.
WHy is it a surprise? I’ve been talking about it from day one. Nikon has the same thing, many DX lenses can be used on FX cameras in FX mode in certain conditions, such as 35 1.8DX, and 10-24 from around 16mm with little or no vignetting. It almost always works on wide angle lenses. However, someone needs to take all the Sony NEX lenses and All the Sigma lenses and test them on A7 to see which lenses would work and which would not.
Conjecture and proof are two different things, mon frere.
Also, Sony has proven to be a little bit dodgy with things like backward compatibility across a number of platforms, so I certainly count it as a pleasant surprise.
I agree with you. someone needs to do this test right away. I think I will email the guy from the camera store and see if he can do it. This is very good news. I just sold my rokinon 8mm I wonder if that would work.
actually, there is a thread on dpreview in the nex forum where a user posted shots with almost all the emount lenses.
People should check that dpreview thread out. Heavy vignetting…
Was there and indication of how it performed at the 10mm?
If acceptable would this make it the widest FF reticular lens ever?
if it is like any other UWA used at Full Frame (like Nikon 10-24, Tamron 10-24, on Nikons FX, or Canon 10-22 on Canon Full Frame, it starts working with little vignetting at around 15/16. However all lenses need to be checked. For example Sigma 10-20 UWA for DX does not work on FX – vignetting is too large of area even at 20. All case by case basis.
SOmeone needs to try Sony 35mm 1.8 and 50 1.8 for NEX> I bet the 35 1.8 in particular might work fine. And certainly cheaper than the Zeiss 35/2.8.
The 3 lenses you list are all crop mount lenses. Can you post any links to examples shot on FF?
they should be all over the net… People tried every Nikon DX lens on FX cameras.
For example here is how Nikon 35 1.8 DX crop lens works on FX (full frame) camera – see here http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/nikon_35_1p8g_n15/3 scroll down and there are examples of what vignetting you expect to see depending on distance. I successfully used 35 1.8 DX lens on Nikon D600 full frame, for example http://brodsky.smugmug.com/Photography/Nikon-D600/i-z8GrKDJ/0/X3/DSC_0042-X3.jpg
Yes. Terribly: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52374812
In fact, it appears 13mm is the ONLY focal length that’s fairly good. And that makes sense. If you used the lens you know as you zoom the inner cam moves in both directions through the focal range. 13 is likely the point where it’s closest to the sensor.
There are other possible factors, such as the focus distance that contribute too. Still, I think if it’s only good at 13mm that’s still one more option until a real wide angle zoom comes out next year. It’s especially good for someone who already has this lens.
Thanks for the reply. This is what I was looking for. Admins “just works fine” is a bit of a stretch.
so how do you think the rokinon 14mm e-mount would perform?
It will work just fine as it is a FF lens. But it would be huge and has a difficult to correct distortion. Given the price, it is an amazing bang for the buck, though.
I have the 10-18/4 OSS and actually thought it would be usable around 16 mm, but I’ll take 13 mm. Rokinon/samyang 14/2.8 works propable fine, but that is a big/heavy SLR lens yet very very sharp for the price. The E mount version that is coming up is the SLR lens with buit-in adapter. I had the 14/2.8 for a while and tested it in the Nex-7 with speedbooster, but since that lens has quite huge (~5.5%) moustache distortion when combined with the Speedbooster (small amplification of distortion) I was unable to correct the distortion to reasonable level. For A7(R) things should be better since any RAW converter with a correction profile should do better work as there is no Speedbooster messing things up. A few profiles are available for FF Canikon on for Lightroom at least and for distortion they should work fine, though I think Rokinon will still not be great architecture lens.
ok thanks for the info. I will be getting a olympus 24mm 2.8 instead of the sony 24mm 1.8. I guess this lens should be pretty good on the A7 and from what I see on line it works awesome on a nex while I wait and save for the A7.
The shots on that dpreview thread showed it ok at 18, not so great at 10 at all.
10-18 is the only lens DESERVE it’s high price tag.
U should check this … if I remeber correctly, at some focal lens it can not work properly. I’ve seen some shots somwhere in the web … cannot remember where.
Has anyone tested the Sony Zeiss 24mm 1.8 on the A7(r)?
What is to test? Its just another ff a-mount. It will work. What do you want know beyond how it behaves on the a99.
SEL24F18Z is (supposedly) a crop lens
No, it is an APC e-mount.
He said F1.8…So he is talking about the E-mount version meant to be used on APS-C cameras. You should know by now that the A-mount lens is F2.0.
dpreview themselves did in their preview. It doesn’t come close to full coverage.
Additional info, lens hood is not use.
Wait, wait… Does anyone actually know about the 35mm 1.8? I have that lens, and have the 35mm 2.8 on preorder. If the APS-C version 35/1.8 works, I’m canceling the FF 35mmZ and going for the FF 50mm/1.8.
Sorry, I mean I’ll switch my preorder to the 55/1.8Z. I was thinking I’d keep the 35/1.8 and have a “crop mode 52.5 and FF 35” but if the 35 works in FF, I’ll order the 55 and have “a FF 35 and a FF 35”
*”FF 35 and FF 55″ I give up… I can’t type.
Yes, it’s tested (and mentioned in the post here) and it’s no good on FF.
that’s exactly what I’m gonna do! I have the SEL35F18 on my Nex 5r, I love this lens, and if I can keep it, I just need to buy a 50 or 55
Love that lens! It’s my 3rd favourite emount lens.
sorry, i just checked and i spoke too soon. Sony owners are not as lucky as Nikon owners. Here someone tried the 35.1.8 sony lens on A7 and it does not work – vignetting too big. Sorry! http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3562406?page=4
Ahh shucks! Okay, I’m going to keep my pre-order as is.
From what I just read the nikon 35mm 1.8 works and I know you would have to use a adapter and it would be manual but that lens has very good reviews and goes used for about 160.00 used on ebay. Maybe you or someone else can try it.
10-18mm lens owners everywhere are doing their ‘happy dance’ 🙂
But only if they like 13mm as that’s the only focal length that works well enough. See some others here http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52374812
Actually, no 🙂 I don’t like such half-baked solutions much.
I don’t understand what the big problem is, why can’t someone with street-cred or power(andrea)simply just ask someone for a sample, or simply get yes or no answers to some Sony customer concerns? The thing is that when people are not getting answers then they plan on buying this camera to use it for 30 days because all of there questions weren’t addressed then returning it if it doesn’t work right. (this could be avoided)
What about the awesome sigma primes. 30mm f/2.8 and 19mm f/2.8
Is the vinvetting better handled on the A7R with that new offsetness thing thy did with the pixles ?
Great news. I wonder how the SEL5018 fairs.
The dpreview link in this post has the 50 1.8 sample…along with a whole bunch of other ones
Look on page 4 of the dpreview link above. They show an example. It vignettes bad. Not like, terrible, but the sides are gone. Could probably get a square crop out of it!
It might look fine if the camera can do a “APS-H” crop on the 50mm. At least better than nothing. Hopefully future firmware will allow the camera to auto choose the widest possible crop mode (anything between 1 – 1.5) for supposedly crop lenses to get the best out of these crop lens.
You could do that yourself in Lightroom, under lens correction.
Many, many potential consumers would be put at ease if Sony would simply be upfront about the FF compatibility of existing e mount lenses.
It seems like they could have made an in camera correction profile for this lens and counted it as another FE lens during the product announcement.
Surely it wouldn’t hurt them to tell us which “legacy” e lenses will work without having to crop, especially since their FE strategy centers around Zeiss branding and a perception of premium quality.
Why not get out ahead of the problem and take the opportunity to push product that’s already on shelves?
Of course, the reason may be that none of them work very well… maybe calling this the FE 13mm F4 isn’t such a great idea.
Honestly, I think any non FE lens that works without crop mode is just a bonus. All other lenses were designed and sold as crop sensor lenses. I don’t think other manufacturers publishes lists of which crop lenses have full frame coverage. The Full Frame NEX is basically a new system with the expectation of people buying FE lenses. But like every other new system, it’ll take time to roll out. If that’s unacceptable, that’s why they have a selection of crop sensor cameras.
+1
Well, looks like a pretty wide range of E mount lenses were tested in that DPreview link. I didn’t see any which would be nice in FF mode. Both of the Touit lenses vignetted. I don’t remember seeing a 24 f/1.8, but I would be surprised if it faired any better. Didn’t test any of the Sigmas.
Admin
We have been hearing about nothing but a7 a7r news for a while now.
What else is sony planning?
Oh, my…
I see Sony’s problem. If they say that the lenses cover FF, the pixel peepers are going to come in and start screaming at Sony for the “crap performance at the corners” and “dreadful light fall off” and all that stuff, when those lenses were never designed to perform at the corners of the FF.
I think it is probably best for Sony to let the amateurs “figure it out” and then we all know it’s just a bonus.
Hopefully sigma starts rolling out affordable full e mount glass.
Sigma make great lens, well priced and great performance
Anyone know how well the zeiss 24mm f1.8 will go on the A7? It is shown along with the other 2 zeiss FF 35mm 2.8 and 55m 1.8 so I was hoping Sony had a surprise there
Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Completely unusable without crop mode. 🙁
I tried it yesterday with SEL1018 and the usable focal length is from 13mm to 15mm and optimal at 14mm at any aperture
I can’t wait for the minolta lens test with the version 4 adapter.
This report is definitely and completely wrong!
See http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52374812 (someone already posted the link, but it can’t hurt to repeat it).
By the way, at 10 mm, the lens is awful even on APS-C, when it comes to edge sharpness. No better than the ridiculously bad 16/2.8, which is one of the worst lenses I ever owned (good thing is the 16/2.8 does become kind of sharp over the complete field of view when stopped down to f/8; at f/11 diffraction already sets in visibly).
The SEL1018 is a very good performer and certainly way better than the SEL1628, even at 10mm. Weak edges at 10mm, lol.
Nothing new. There was a post on xitek.com something like over half a year ago. The lens was usable on the VG 900 between 12-17, with acceptable corners. BTW, those considering the voigtlander 21 1.8 should think twice. I tried it with both cameras yesterday and experienced with extreme field curvative at minimum distance. Had to stop down to f8 for acceptable results. A7r wasn’t any better than the 7
To be fair, for portrait shooters, the center sharpness of the voigtlander 21 1.8 was amazing right from 21 1.8.
You know, in this day and age of extreme pixel peeping, DXOmark, and all these other analytical tests, I wonder if some times we forget the whole point of a camera.. to take nice pictures.
I remember an article about a classic lens (probably some Leica or something expensive), and the author focused on the ‘look’ of the images, and how the astigmatism and curved focal plane in the lens gave the edges a soft, swirling bokeh that people loved for portraits. It was sharp in the center, but had optical ‘flaws’ in the design towards the edges and corners that really drew people to that lens.
So just because the lens isn’t sharp edge to edge, that may not be a bad thing at all. It’s next to impossible to make a perfect lens, so some things have to give. That’s probably what defines the ‘look’ of lenses from certain manufacturers.. how their lenses are designed so the trade-offs chosen lead to imperfections that add a certain character to images taken with them.
+1
with all he pixelpeeping we have “forced” the lens manufacturers to make lenses that are very close to technical perfection. the downsize is they have no charter (they all look the same, the designer has no freedom, the corners must be sharp when open, otherwise the lens will perform badly in tests and therefor it won’t sell), they are huge (look at the new ff e-mount lenses, even the 35/2.8, just compare it to the 35/2.8 on a oly XA or mjuII) and they are ridiculously expensive.
I’m not saying lenses that are “perfect” in the corners at f/1.4 are to be banned, but for some types of photogaphy a lens like the old 50/1.4 planar that isn’t crazy sharp at f/1.4 but gets much better when stopped down, will be the better (more versatile) lens than the new otus.
You know, a lot of pictures of the a7 show the corners of the sensor under the mount ring. It may just be perspective, but regardless, the corners have to be pretty close. I’ve not seen one first hand yet, but does anyone else think maybe trying to shoehorn the FF sensor under a NEX ring was maybe a bit of a compromise? Would a shorter flange distance alpha sized ring made more sense? I know once they started down the path of the E mount, this compromise would eventually come (a FE was better than a third entirely new mount), but I’m curious what others think.
Ironically, the E-mount opening of 46.1mm is wider than Leica M at 44mm.
I read about this yesterday in another forum (cant remember which). The answer was that what we see is not the sensor but a cover-glass that is a tiny bit larger than the sensor. If You look closely on some of these photos You can see a faint rim just inside of the mount diameter. This is the sensor edge seen through the cover glass. So the E-mount was cleverly designed to be just big enough luckily: Hope this is right!
Since Sony opened up the App Store and other control functions, maybe some enterprising programmer will come out with a “proper crop” app that gives you the largest possible crop for each lens.
It seems like that would be relatively easy to do. Even easier would be a “pick your crop” app, but it would be a pain to have to do it yourself for each lens.
Until that happen, the best solution is to capture picture in full res, then crop it in post process.
Agreed. I crop almost all my pictures. Most of them not much, just to refine the framing a little, but probably half are cropped about as much as an APS-C crop would get rid of. A lot of it is to frame the content properly.. remove distractions, to focus the viewer’s eyes in certain areas, or to give it some curiosity.
So, to me, it’s not terribly useful to have the camera choose the crop. More useful would be to have a way to custom crop in the camera body (Sony app anyone?). But even still, I usually have my computer along to process it with. Even if I want to share it fast, I can send the image to my phone and do the basic editing on it there.
Maybe you should look at making this app because people on here are always wanting a square crop in camera.
This entire post is misleading. That shot is taken at 13mm. At 10mm it is not usable. SAR can be such a fanboy sometimes.
I haven’t tried this with the A7 but I use my SAL 35mm f1.8 SAM on my Minolta Maxximum 7 all the time and the light circle does a good job of covering the 35mm film frame. There is a little vignette in the corners but still workable. Same with the SAL 50mm f1.8 SAM. So I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with an LAEA 3 adapter (with AF) on the A7 at FF. I’ve also tried the SAL 18-50mm f2.8 SSM but the vignetting is pretty bad. The Rokinon 8mm HD produces a heavy but really nice vignette in FF but you have to detach the lens hood so it’s a circular shape, something you can’t do with the older model.
Another question though; when you shoot in crop mode on the A7, do you get a raw file of is it an in-camera cropped JPG?
Lol. The hard vignetting seen on most of the dpreview images isnt even due to the optics of the lens. It’s due to the built in flare cutter which is removable. It’d be interesting to see tests with the cutter removed. It will probably alleviate the vignetting problem even though I doubt it will do anything magical to the corner resolution.
Does this mean the 10-18 could have been much smaller if really designed only for APS-C in stead of “near FF”?
You have misread the article. The lens ‘works’ in a very limited range of 13-15mm or so. Its not designed to work on FF but works by ‘accident’. Its certainly wasn’t designed for FF performance at all since there was no legacy lenses that Sony could have adapted when designing NEX lenses.
Guys, no one seemed to bother with the question: “Are the FF lenses usable in the NEX cameras?”, unless it is obvious they are not, because they are for full frame only..(?)
FE lens will work on NEX – with crop factor, as usual – and should have excellent peripheral frame performance. However, you would be wasting most of the capabilities of the lens on a much smaller sensor area.
Does the OSS Optical Steady Shot works as well ?
I mainly use my 20mm and 50mm on my Nex. Would be interested to see the performance as well
Unfortunately the 50mm doesn’t work at all and needs a crop while the 20mm is unknown but very possibly doesn’t work either.
I was thinking of getting an FE lens for my nex VG30. I believe it will work ok on video
Surprise indeed. The one I tried had soft corners even on my NEX6.
The vignetting is off the charts, and if you “correct it in post-processing”, your noise in the corners will be off the charts too. I am sure wider than 13mm it is even worse, seeing how bad he vignetting there was even on APS-C. I am sure other parameters are bad too (corners are unsharp at longer FLs even on APS-C). But even 15-18 mm is OK to have at least in some quality, vs no lens at all. But I wouldn’t BUY it for A7.
Would be EPIC if Sony could provide In-Camera lens correction for this if possible.
haha, 30% of the picture is pitch black.. “works just fine”
Yes.. in crop mode.. its fine.. full frame mode? no..
I’d love to see someone fix that vignetting in lightroom…
wishful thinking admin, stop trying to sell stuff
he says it works fine with A7/A7r
http://briansmith.com/sony-a7r-10-18-e-mount-lens/#comment-10606