Three Swiss stores (Topd, Buchmann and Internet.ch) do now list the price of the 70-200mm G E-mount zoom. The lens will ship in April 2014 (says SonyCenter Luxemburg) and cost around 1450 CHF. That’s 1200 Euro or $1600. But I bet Dollar price will be much lower and around $1300 (just like the Canon 70-200mm f/4.0 for example).
The full lens specs and MTF graph can be seen here at Sony.net.
—
Specs and Preorders in US and Canada:
Dedicated Sony announcement page at Amazon US (Click here).
Sony A7r body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony A7 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony A7 with 28-70mm kit lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony RX10 at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 24-70mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 35mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 55mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
70-200mm A-mount at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Sony A-Mount to E-Mount Lens Adapter at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto.
Sony A to E adapter with mirror at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto.
A7/A7r leather case at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
A7/A7r vertical grip at Amazon, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Sony W Series Battery Charger at Amazon, BHphoto.
Sony FA-CS1M Off-Camera Shoe at BHphoto.
Semi-Hard LCD Screen Protector for A7-A7r at Amazon, BHphoto.
Specs and Preorders in Europe:
Sony A7r body at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE.
Sony A7 body at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR.
Sony A7 with 28-70mm kit Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR.
Sony RX10 at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE.
Zeiss 35mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT,
Zeiss 55mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT
Zeiss 24-70mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, SE, PT
Asia:
A7r at Digitalrev.
A7 at Digitalrev, Amazon Cina.
A7 with 28-70mm lens at Digitalrev.
48 Responses
Price is OK!
+1
Too expensive, especially considering the paint job required!
It’d be an excellent price… for a 2.8 lens 😉
as Canon 2.8 L IS price
Do you know how much the 70-200 2.8L IS was at launch? 😉
Well, you seem to forget the f2,8 is priced much higher both for Canon and Nikon mounts as well as for A-mount. But this is an f4 so bet this is priced in line with a new 70-200G f4 Canon lens which sells at 1350 USD at BH photo.
Bet the US price should be about USD1250-1350. Such diff due to VAT vs sales tax.
@agorabasta +1 correctomundo. but i think probably at around 1300-1400???
where is the A-mount version of this?
Where is amount support full stop. I am very happy with my A77 but feel I bought the end of line. Yes Sony have said they will be new A mount stuff but I suspect that will be FF for traditional conservative pros. The type who used to stick with medium format in film days. but many of us serious amateur/semi pro photographers that do sport wildlife etc actually find high end APSC better for our needs.
Rather than replace the stuff I spent my life savings for with an e mount system I am looking to see what Canon will be doing for me in the future. Its a long time since my Minolta 9000 but before that I was always happy with Canon.
There are people saying the exact same thing on Canon and Nikon sites right now. Enjoy.
Well if you’re into wildlife and sport, you could consider the OMD EM-1, the 300mm lens size is soooo much smaller and lighter then Canon offering.
What 300 do you mean? I don’t see any 300F2.0.
good question. they could even follow the optical formula of the legendary Minolta 70-210 Beercan.
A modern beercan definitely gets my vote…
Good job Sony. This is on my list.
Be carefull with simple estimation based on exchange rates…
Usually the prices in switzerland are much lower than the rest of Europe. TVA is 8%
If you want to have a better estimation…
Check ratios of other products for comparaison…
Typically:
A7: 1600 CHF
A7 kit: 1900 CHF
A7r: 2200 CHF
Badly needed for A Mount, but with Sony’s lens pricing we can just buy beercan’s and save a fortune. This is a dumb lens for E mount, shows us how stupid Sony are ignoring A mount and making a lens few will buy for a CSC
I understand your frustration regarding the a-mount lack of support, but to call this a dumb lens for e-mount ?
I think this is fantastic for E-mount. Will work great on both APSC and FF, with OSS. Many have been dreaming of this lens for a long time.
the info comes from Luxembourg, not Lugano (Switzerland).
Now all we need is am camera body with fast AF…
Every full frame has to have a Holy Trinity like Nikon has with the 12-24 f2.8; 24-70 f2.8; 70-200 f2.8 VR. However I don’t see the reason that Sony chooses a Zeiss design for the E mount 24-70 f4 and a Minolta G design for the 70-200 f4?!? A Zeiss only or a Minolta only would make much more sense even from an aesthetic point of view.
A lot of guys are complaining about those zooms that have only an f4 maximum aperture and no 2.8…F4 is great for 80% of ff users considered they’re coupled with stabilisation. After all those lenses are general-purpose. If they want swallower dof they have to buy the 55mm f1.8.
The Minolta lens formulas that they start with when designing 70-200mm zoom lenses are far better than what Zeiss would have in its “library” – from that standpoint, it does make more sense for them to go down that path.
We all know that Sony basically bought the Zeiss name and not all of their “know-how” but it would really be suspicious if, all-of-a-sudden the Zeiss name appeared on a 70-200mm that looks suspiciously like a Minolta-heritage lens design.
As far as the f/4… I’m on board with that. We seem to forget that the compromises that have to be made to accomodate a 2x increase in light gathering in terms of correcting aberrations are not always desirable. An f/4 lens (or a 35mm f/2.8 for that matter) allows for really high image quality with fewer compromises.
Andrei,
People don’t just want f2.8 zooms for shallower DOF; they want them for indoor activities (plays, etc), or sports at dusk or at night (football, etc.). IS doesn’t help with low light when the subjects are moving, especially if they are moving fast in the case of sports.
I think Sony is doing f4 (and f1.8 on the primes) at launch, and maybe for the foreseeable future, is to keep the size of the lens down. Remember the difference between f4 and f2.8 is twice as much light gathering which makes for a much bigger lens design. Why buy the e-mount full frame camera if you just mount a humongous lens on there? It defeats the main advantage of the e-mount full frame – namely size.
By the time you get an f2.8 prime on your camera you might as well have a full size DSLR as the camera is now just serving to balance the weight and feel of the large lens.
Bottom line: if you are a customer that needs to shoot with f2.8 zooms, or 1.4 primes, then size and weight aren’t your primary concerns and therefore there are many competent cameras and manufacturers to choose from. With the a7 and a7r Sony is trying to create a new segment and target customers for whom size and weight are primary concerns. To do so and then launch with large, heavy lenses would be foolish.
2.8 zooms would be awesome especially for those APSC bodies to capture as much… or as little shallow depth of field as possible in a zoom lens since f4 doesn’t give all that much. FF, sure, I’m totally cool with the compromise of sticking to f4 zooms! I agree that Sony is making the right choice in limiting their zooms to f4 constants and their primes at f1.8. If you need shallower depth of field than your f4 zoom gives you, slap that 1.8 prime on and you’re good! At least to me, the bokeh advantage of an f1.4 lens over a 1.8 is so minor, it’s totally worth the compensation to maintain a small enough size. Also not to mention, that the primes released so far appear incredibly sharp wide open means you don’t have to stop down for great results, kudos to Sony!
Emount is for video too. How many times does this have to mentioned? That is one reason, out of the many others, that we need fast long lenses.
I know the typical lens of this class tends to be white, but I wish they also offered a black version for those of us that don’t want to announce to the world they’re carrying around a small fortune in their hands. Sure the lens is large, but at least a black version would make it just a tad more inconspicuous when shooting on the street.
Also, speaking of size, since this lens easily dwarfs any e mount camera body attached for the time being, I wonder if this opens the door for Sony to introduce other larger lenses for those of us that wouldn’t mind the size trade off for speed. I’ve mentioned it many times before on this site but I am anxiously waiting for some telephoto primes like around 105/135mm range. These lenses would complement the f4 zooms nicely too for people looking for speed.
Keeping my fingers crossed to see if some telephotos are in the road map pipeline!
+1 for a black version
+1 for black version
According to the Reuter’s ‘The Best Photographs of 2012’ and the analysis of the EXIF shown at PetaPixel, these are the most common lenses and apertures used by photojournalists. Just FYI (and not to imply that PJ’s will be using this camera… rather to say if you’re looking to get PJ type results):
LENSES
Zoom Lenses: 1) 16-35mm 2)70-200mm (these 2 represent the *vast* majority of zoom lenses used)
Prime Lenses: 1)24mm 2)16mm 3)50mm (these 3 lenses accounted for about half of the shots taken with primes)
It doesn’t show how often Zooms are used vs. primes, but my guess is that Zoom are used the majority of the time
F-STOP
1) F2.8 (28.6% of the time) 2) F4 (10% of the time) 3) F1.4 4)F3.2
Based on my experience (I’ve talked to a number of photojournalists) and this data, this is my take (fwiw) on what gear/technique is normally used for photojournalistic type work:
A) a full frame camera
B) a 70-200 f2.8 and a 16-35 f2.8
C) many shots with the long zooms are taken wide open at F2.8 (can’t comment on the F-stop used for the wide-angle zoom)
Why are so many shots taken at F2.8 with a long zoom? One big reason (for F2.8) is subject isolation (ie. narror DoF). The other (for the lens) is the versatility of the zoom range.
Will f4 be sufficient? I guess it depends on the type of shooting you do, how keen you are to lug around a big lens, and the results you’re happy with. Is it better to buy the A-mount 70-200 f2.8 and LA-EA2? For some it could be… though it would mean the loss of OSS.
Correction, I meant LA-EA4 adapter.
To say that PJ photographers prefer 2.8 because of the shallow DOF is not entirely true. They capture fleeting moments either by run and gun or by intuition. Hence, high shutter is needed since good stabilization (either from a more deliberate shooting technique or a tripod) is a luxury. Zoom is much more versatile and preferable for this type of work.
I think there are a few consideration for using f2.8, but I believe DoF is probably top of the list – one PJ told me personally he’d love to use/carry smaller lenses but that he simply couldn’t primarily because he often needed the large Av to eliminate messy backgrounds.
But I bet shutter speed is right up there too – the #2 reason for using f2.8… or the number 1 reason maybe for those that shoot indoors maybe?
Interesting – I’d have expected a 35mm on the list of primes (given that it’s supposed to be a pj/reportage classic fl).
Very interesting! 35mm was long considered the FoV for PJ work… but it seems like that’s a myth, at least in today’s world. 35mm ranked 7th amoung primes 🙂
Ahh… I’ve written about this…
http://genotypewritings.blogspot.com/2013/05/analysing-old-photos-when-deciding-on-new-gear.html
🙂
Does it come in Black???
I really dislike the white coloured lenses. They look totally out of sync with the camera bodies.
they need to make it silver!!
Fire Engine Red
I wonder if they will make E to A mount adapters now that E-mount has full frame.
What’s wrong with the Sony LA-EA 3 and 4?
I think Wayne means an adapter to mount your e-mount lenses on a-mount cameras. Wayne, I really doubt it will happen. It would require a lot of glass because the e-mount has such a shorter registration distance and probably rob resolution like a teleconverter.
I’m not sure it’s even possible. I’ve never seen an adaptor which takes a lens for a short registration distance and melds it to one with a larger one. Can’t be done in any practical way. You’d literally have to put a sensor in the ‘adaptor’ and then project that image onto the camera sensor somehow.
” I’ve never seen an adaptor which takes a lens for a short registration distance and melds it to one with a larger one. Can’t be done in any practical way.”
You haven’t looked enough then. Heard about the Canon FD to EF adapters? Basically you need an adapter with glass. But yes… it’s not ideal.
“You’d literally have to put a sensor in the ‘adaptor’ and then project that image onto the camera sensor somehow.”
Wouldn’t it have been easier to google it first? 😀
where IS it ?
less IS definitely more these days…..
[im a fuji/sony user, but i thought this is quite funny]
Canon 70-200 f4.0 non IS costs between 550 and 700 euros depending on the moment/store(I bought it at 550 3/4 years ago), f4.0 IS and 2.8 non IS cost between 950 and 1200 euro, the old 2.8 IS could be found from 1500/1600, the new one started 1k above.
So, a 70-200 f4 not internally stabilized is not a cheap lens at 1200 euros.
Canon f4s and the new 2.8 IS are tack sharp.