USA: Sony 50mm will ship in 4-7 weeks only.
The high request of the lens (or the low production capability of Sony) are making the 50mm almost impossible to find in US stores. According to Amazon (Click here) this lens will ship within 4-7 weeks only. As long as I see this kind of problems I remain worried that Sony may has to push forward some other new NEX lens announcement. I hope I am wrong…
Check more 50mm pre order options at Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
UPDATE: The NEX-7 body and the kit version is back in Stock and sold by Amazon itself (Click here).
Bill
2 years ago |The proper phrasing should be “may have to push back some other new NEX..” push forward would imply speeding up the process not slowing it down.
No real point in announcing lenses they cannot deliver in a reasonable period of time.
Vivek
2 years ago |Where are the 3 new NEX bodies? I keep looking forward to those!
Futile
2 years ago |Surprises me that its still out of stock.
Sony really need to get past this Supply problem. I know it wasn’t their fault, but they need to get everything up and running again, its killing their impact on the market.
I can’t help but feel the NEX7 would have sold much better if the stock was readily available. I know of 3 pro photographers who gave up waiting and bought the XPRO instead.
crazydoctor
2 years ago |i don’t know if i was lucky or not but i ordered mine last week on amazon, it should arrive in few days now.
i paid 320 euro so maybe it’s a little more expansive but i can’t wait to receive it.
AG
2 years ago |Sony had some interesting ideas with NEX, but it seems half-baked. No inbody IS and some bad design decisions. Body and lenses that can be delivered on time make for a lame system. It may be better to just focus on Aplha SLTs and A-mount lenses.
Robert Peak
2 years ago |I pre-ordered mine from B&H and it arrived last week. Awesome lens!
doug
2 years ago |I pre-ordered mine from Amazon and it also arrived last week. Still trying to decide if it’s awesome or just decent, however.
repo
2 years ago |How effective is the oss in reducing camera shake while shooting video?
Tom Jenkins
2 years ago |I bought the NEX3 when it first came out and waited and waited and waited and waited over a year then another year for some lenses and got tired of having to use lens adapters which defeated the purpose of having a light compact(ish) camera. So I gave up and sold it for pennies. I am just sticking to my a580 for now and waiting to see if Sony gets their act together in the future.
RHaass
2 years ago |Just got an email from Amazon USA stating that my 50mm has come in early and will be delivered on April 16th!
gambaphoto
2 years ago |Lightning Photo in Vermont still has the NEX 7 kits and 5N kits and C3 black kits in stock as well as the 50mm 1.8 and the 24mm Zeiss in stock.
Keith
2 years ago |I’ve managed to buy a Nex 7 kit, 24/1.8 and 50/1.8 in the last week in the UK.
However I had to import the 50/1.8 from Germany at a £40 premium, and buy a 24/1.8 on ebay second hand for the price of a new one!!!
Still, I now have the best mirrorless set up possible (along with a 19mm sigma)…
chickenhenne
2 years ago |according to amazon.de it is in stock at a subsidiary shop of them
AD
2 years ago |I bit the bullet and placed an order with amazon yesterday.. hopefully it will show up a little sooner than the estimate!
Steve
2 years ago |It looks as if stuff is available if you know how and where to look for it.
I’ve noticed before that Sony online would be out of things and B&H would have it in stock.
I really question if Sony is capable to do what needed to upgrade and/or develop and ship the lenses needed to support the wonderful camera bodies being marketed by them.
We have seen over and over Sony having problems like this with other lenses.
Now, before someone starts flaming me about the terrible things that happen last year I need to point-out that Sony had the same problems before the earthquake.
Look at the lenses catolog and then look at how long it took to get the Zeiss 24/f2.0 to ship in quantity after it was first anounced.
NEXfive
2 years ago |Sony’s simply delivering their produced lenses to as much retailers as possible without any preference and in difficult supply situations like now they’ve got to be fair to all of their retailers. Most of those, who’d ordered early have got their SEL-50F18 already and those familiar with their local stores having ordered early there should also have their lens. I don’t see any mishandling of this situation by Sony.
Anyway they should have better started the NEX-7 with a smaller resolution sensor, since this camera does not make that much sense without lenses like SEL-24F18Z and SEL-50F18 or probably the new Sigma, but they didn’t really know about the flood in advance.
Personally I do think they’re doing it right, only offering a standard lens range, because usually only consumers are brand addicted, while leaving the highly professional lenses to third party. Why trying to compete against CP.2 lenses for example? There’s absolutely no need for that. A 35mm up to 40mm Standard Pancake plus a few fast prime lenses would be nice, I guess, while simply following the announced roadmap…
Steve
2 years ago |The third-party lens manufactures Tamron and Sigma have never been generally considered the better quality choice, but more like the lower cost alternative to the Nikon, Canon and yes to Sony.
Third-party lens also have a history of not working on later cameras, unlike the manufactures own product.
NEXfive
2 years ago |Yeah, the awesome quality producing new Sigma 30mm is known already for it’s Autofocus making some noises, so it dumps the video shooters and that’s why I’m hesitating, because I’m doing both. So for picture quality I’d to go for the Sigma and prefer video with the SEL-30M35 while none of them has got Image Stabilisation anyway (only Sony’s SEL-1855 has it at 30mm). But why should I buy a Sony SEL-30M35 still having got an old Canon FD 100mm Macro plus a Leica Summicron 35mm both with really awesome quality?
You’re right about the third party lenses’ history known for low prices & quality, but there have also been these famous good quality exceptions. Additionally these days you’re having so many comparisons and reviews on the net, so you’ve got to choose the lens suitable to your special desires carefully anyway – e.g. personally I do love the SEL-16F28 with the VCL-ECU1 & ECF1 Converters, since stopped down to f/5.6 or f/8 the quality is acceptable for pictures and good for video anyway and I never had so few stuff to carry around for Wide Angle + Super Wide Angle + Fish Eye. But for those into pixel peeping this is pure horror and they’re much better off with Third Party lenses (especially with a NEX-7).
Therefore the SEL-50F18 might become the only E-Mount lens I’ll gonna buy from Sony beside future probably improved kit lenses, just to have one of my favourite focal length with really good quality plus silent Autofocus and Image Stabilisation – which I would also choose if it wasn’t Sony branded…
hugo
2 years ago |I live in Tokyo and I can tell you that this lens is impossible to find there too. The Zeiss too is sold out everywhere but at least it is possible to find it second-hand.
Now maybe Sony looks at this and eventually realize people are looking for fast prime lenses and there is a real market outside zooms.
Clifton
2 years ago |a little off topic, but are lenses manufactured in China any different to ones manufactured in Japan or Thailand. The 50mm is easy to find here in China, but they are all stamped as produced here, as are the cameras.
Sassan
2 years ago |I walked into the sony store and they had a couple in-stock so instantly i pulled out the old credit card and picked it up. It is an awesome lens but the focal length is a bit too long for a general purpose prime for the NEX. One major reason for this lens for me is low light indoor shooting (No Flash/stock NEX flash sucks) and i never usually have enough room to step back to fit everything in. That being said the pictures are amazing and repo the OSS is pretty good. For low light/prime i was using a canon 50mm 1.4 it is way better than that because of the stabilization. and also I think people forget when you dont use a viewfinder you lose the ability to use your head to steady the shot..But it helps tremendously.
chris
2 years ago |Keep an eye on Sony’s ebay store, they put a bunch of these up about 3 weeks ago at retail and I snapped one up. Three days later it was in my hands – its a great lens BTW. Nex stuff appears in Sony auctions from time to time.
dk
2 years ago |Maybe this article about Nikon shortages applies to Sony as well:
http://www.bythom.com/2012%20Nikon%20News.htm
KaKtusSs
2 years ago |I pre-ordered mine in november at amazon.fr. Received it on 22 march. It’s a great potrait lens, the OSS works great, even in video mode, but it has autofocus issues with my NEX-5. The AF sometimes hunts a lot and fails. It doesn’t occur all the time, but it can be very annoying. I don’t have this problem with my 2 kit lenses. Maybe it’s because the lens always goes wide open when focusing and the NEX-5 auto-focus wasn’t designed to give good results with such narrow dof. I sometimes have to try 3 times before getting my subject in focus.
FMJ
2 years ago |i actually have the same problem as KaKtusSs, so that you all potential buyer are aware.
i am using a 5N with the updated firmware, it may improve a bit, but AF speed is still noticeably slower than the kit lens and the 16mm F2.8.
my understanding is that a larger aperture lens can always focus faster since it let more light in? but in this case, it does hunts, kind of like measuring the far point and a close point, and find contrast? maybe contrast dectaction fault?
but i play around with the panny 20mm F1.7 on a old GF1, it AF quick!!!
Photohead
2 years ago |I have the Sony NEX-7 and I am experiencing the same issue as KaKtusSs. Mostly with subjects that have multiple possible focusing points. What I found helped is setting the camera on center focus and pointing at what I wanted to focus on and using the Manual Focus Override to “refine” the focus. I know that the NEX-7 is supposed to have faster focus then the NEX-5 and the NEX-5n but I still feel your pain. Read about this in my review: http://photoheadonline.com/2012/04/12/sony-nex-7-w-sony-50mm-f1-8-oss-close-up-review/ Hope this helps.
Olga Celle
2 years ago |I am waiting and waiting for Sony to come up with good quality bright lenses for its NEX series, particularly Nex 7. I’m not buying the camera until I see a decent supply of good lenses. What wrong with a 12-24mm 2.4? Now, that’s a true walk around lens.