Photo Jottings

Here’s a brief look at the Sony 28mm F/2.8 lens.  Scroll down for the review.

Requisite product shots.

Front with hood retracted

Box and lens

Front with hood extended

Backside

Side shot

Sony X-ray view and MTF chart

All testing done with the Sony A 700 and A900.  For full frame results, go to the bottom of the page.  For a better understanding of my review methods and terminology, go here.

The Sony 28mm F/2.8 is a compact lens, about as small as you’re going to get with Sony.  Build quality is very good.  It has a satin black finish with rubber inserts around most of the circumference.  It has a focus distance window with ft and m in different colors along with DOF hash marks. The lens says “Japan” so I’m assuming it’s made in Japan.  This lens has a short focus throw, As you can imagine it focuses very quickly and very accurately using the A700.  There’s a tiny bit of slop on the focus ring if you wiggle it by hand when engaged, and none in actual MF use.  Manually, the ring is easy to manipulate with a finger and thumb.  Less than a quarter turn gets you from close focus to infinity.  The focus ring turns in auto-focus mode.

This lens looks optically identical to the old AF Minolta 28mm F/2.8 from 1985.  The Sony version doesn’t quite match up with the Minolta as far as area captured, the Sony seems like it has a 1mm longer focal length.  This updated Sony version still doesn’t incorporate distance encoding.

The lens is multi-coated and resists flare and ghosting with average results, and similar to other wide angle lenses.  It has a cute little built-in lens hood that you slide out from around the front element, but it doesn’t do anything.  Use your hand to block stray light from the shot if possible.  When the sun is close to, but not in the image, you may have a small blob or a pale cone show up depending on your angle and aperture.  See examples below.

Filter size is 49mm.  The only full frame lens to use this size.  APS-C (‘DT’) lenses using this size of filter are the DT 30/2.8 macro, and DT 50mm F/1.8.  The NEX system uses this size extensively.

Filter use.  There’s a very small amount of additional vignetting at F/2.8 using a regular filter on a full frame camera, and none on APS-C.

Coma is evident at F/2.8, but mild and cone shaped, not flying bird type.  It’s completely gone at F/4.  Full frame results are different, see those at the bottom of the page.

Color looks the same as other Sony lenses.

Bokeh is neutral to just so-so at F/2.8.  At F/4, much smoother and more pleasing in my opinion.  See crops below.

Lateral color fringing is present, but not very apparent unless you shoot bright white subjects flanked by dark areas.  I mostly came upon red and cyan, though red seems more noticeable.  Stopping down won’t help with this type of CA.  This lens is average in this department.

Notice the red along the house outlines and cyan to a lesser degree present in lower left and A/C unit sides.  If you just glance at the image, you don’t notice any color fringing, it’s only when you’re looking for it that it’s noticeable.

 

The top left shot shows how the lens handles the sun when it’s smack dab in the middle of the image, and it does a good job, no rings or color blobs.  The right shot shows the sun at an angle, and it controls ghosts about average for a wide angle lens.  Sun blow out can be an issue, but solve this by using your hand to block light.  The lens has a built in hood, (marketing gimmick) that won’t help when the sun is just out of the frame.

 

The middle  crops are bokeh at F/2.8, and F/4.  I like the look of F/4, which is pretty smooth, the wide open F/2.8 crop is too busy and harsh for me.

 

The last row are the results of coma, which don’t look too bad.  It’s better than the Minolta 24mm F/2.8 shots.  The (corner cropped) points of light at F/2.8 are supposed to look like they do at F/4 in this example.  This wouldn’t really show up in a normal picture, so don’t worry about it.

 

Distortion below.

 

Barrel distortion.

 

Distortion is very light, and corrects easily with standard lens correction tools in your photo imaging software.

 

Light fall-off.

 

Light fall-off or corner darkening is mild at F/2.8.  It blends well into the center of the image so it doesn’t show in real life.  By F/4 it’s gone

 

Shot at F/2.8, no adjustments.  Light fall-off in real images is not noticeable on a cropped sensor camera.

 

I wonder how sharp the corners are?

 

 

These crops are from the extreme bottom left corner.  Things look ok here at F/2.8, but the corners definitely respond to stopping down.  F/4 is a little better, and I think the sharpest comes at F/5.6 or possibly F/8.  It’s obviously not going to matter after F/5.6.

 

How sharp are the centers if the image is enlarged to a staggering size?

 

Center sample results.

The center sample crops above show F/2.8 and F/4 to be very similar is sharpness, though it appears the lens is at its sharpest at F/4.0-5.6.  There isn’t a whole lot of change as you can ascertain, and it’s only noticeable cropped and displayed side-by-side.  I think the Sony 28mm F/2.8 is very similar to the Minolta version, but maybe a hair sharper at F/4.  I’d say that’s probably caused by sample variations as one might expect.  I’ve heard people chatter about this lens being very soft at F/2.8, but I don’t see an issue.  I wouldn’t be afraid to shoot at F/2.8 with this lens for a paying job, but see my final thoughts below.

Below, check out the close focus shot, a 100% cropped portion of the full image.  The sample shot was taken with the Sony A 700 12.2mp camera.  The subject is a standard US stamp, 1″x 3/4″ or 25.4mm x 19mm.  Also, note the macro shot was taken as close to the subject as focusing allowed; In this case, 8″ or 203mm, measured from the front of the lens barrel to the subject.

Click for larger image F/8

This maximum magnification shot is sharp, but it’s small.  If you’re using this lens properly, you won’t care about macro type shots.  If you want to add a little “zing” to a close up, add a +4 close up lens, like I did in this review.

The Sony 28mm F/2.8 lens turned in a good performance.  It’s small and light, and focuses very quickly.  Light fall-off is very low, and the centers are pretty sharp at F/2.8, but hit max sharpness at F/4-5.6.  The corners look real good at F/5.6.  Color fringing can be a little strong, but that’s about the only real negative.  Overall, I really like this compact lens.  While it makes perfect sense with a full frame body, I can’t help but think it isn’t the best choice for an APS-C camera, where it’s equivalent to 42mm.  A wider lens would be a better choice, of course that’s just my opinion since I like wide.

For full frame users; The Sony 28mm F/2.8 makes a great entry level wide angle lens.  It’s sharp in the centers wide open as stated above, though the corners will need an extra stop to sharpen up as compared to the APS-C camera, however, that’s only when viewing your images at large sizes.  Light fall-off is noticeable wide open, but is nearly gone at F/4.  Coma is normal to light at F/2.8, and looks fine at F/4—typical results for a wide angle lens.  This lens has been discontinued by Sony, but is readily available on eBay.