Tamron 18-200mm
As you know Tamron released the first lens for the NEX system and Mike Kobal (Click here) tested the 18-200mm lens. Not that such a lens was really neede as we already have the Sony 18-200mm lens :(
Anyway, Mike also had that Sony lens but the Tamron is “a little smaller, lighter and has two additional lens elements. The built quality of both lenses is excellent“. Soem more image samples have been posted here on Flickr (Click here).

30mm macro
And the 30mm macro lens for NEX has been reviewed at SLRgear (Click here): “With good results for sharpness, corner shading and distortion, the only hesitation might be higher-than-desired results for chromatic aberration, but even that is treatable with post-processing.“.
SonyAlphaLab (Click here) tested the lens on the NEX-7:”The contrast and color are also decent from what I’ve taken so far. The lens Bokeh is not the prettiest I’ve seen, but it is nice and smooth which is still very pleasing to the eye. Based on these initial test shots only, I would have to highly recommend this lens.”
Click those links to check if the lens is in Stock: [shopcountry 10041].

REVIEW: Sony A77 from Caleb Pike on Vimeo.

As I told you a week ago Sony delayed the A99 fullframe camera release to September in order to have enough time to evaluate the A77 customer reaction. On the video on top Caleb Pike is highlighting some of the “limits” of the A77 the A99 should try to solve. I hope Sony will take notice of these because I really want my A99 to be as close to perfection as possible :)

What do you think about Caleb’s review?

The A77 is in Stock:
in USA/Canada at Sonystore US (within 2 weeks), Expansys USA (within 8 days), Expansys Canada (within 8 days),
in Europe at Jessops (within 10 days), Amazon Germany (Click here), Expansys UK (within 6 days), Amazon Italy (Click here),
in Asia at Amazon Japan (Click here), Amazon Cina (Click here),

Vienna coffee houses-Working with the Sony NEX5n for broadcast from Johnnie Behiri on Vimeo.

Johnnie Behiri sent me an email to share his first “video-experience” with the [shoplink 8452]Sony NEX-5N[/shoplink]. He realized that video for the BBC: “A minute before the new Canon C300 and Nikon D4 are here to lift the picture quality bar, here is our attempt to work with the Sony NEX5n in a “normal short feature for broadcast environment”. It is part of our ongoing effort to test different modern working tools.
The little Sony is a lot of fun to work with. Its low light capability is very nice and working in even 1600 ISO is a absolutely “worry free”. Moiré and aliasing are surly there but after working with the Canon 7d how can I complain…:)
Camera DID NOT warm up and shut off probably due to the fact that I was working with EVF connected and my sequences (even the interviews) did not stress the camera to the limit.”

It’s interesting to notice that the NEX5n was never approved by the BBC as a “certified broadcast camera“:  “Nevertheless, in the on going changes in our media world where budget and personal must be taken into consideration, there is always a need for an alternative tool(s) to support and do the job. Luckily the BBC is not ignoring the technical changes and as such there is some freedom to “explore, report from the field and share the experience” with other colleagues.”

For the price you really get a lot with the NEX-5n! And it’s good enough even for ral broadcasting productions :)

P.S.: The black NEX-5n is back in Stock at Amazon US (Click here). And here are all the links to the NEX-5n search pages at [shopcountry 8452].

La Parroquia from The Luminous Landscape on Vimeo.

There is a new NEX-7 versus A900 comparison at Luminous Landscape (Click here). As usual with LL this is a very honest and interesting review (Bravo!). I am not surprised to see the NEX-7 image quality to be on par with the A900. And it also makes me even increase the expectations on the image quality of the upcoming new A99 with 24 Megapixel full frame sensor. P.S.: Here are the links to the still amazing A900 camera: [shopcountry 3032].

Meanwhile 3Dkraft (Click here) made a sort of crazy test. He attached the [shoplink 11180 ebay]12mm f/1.6 Hypeprime m43 lens (Here on eBay)[/shoplink] on the NEX-7 via m43 to E-mount adapter: “As expected, the image circle of this m4/3 lens does not cover the whole APS-C sensor format. But the shadowing effect is less than expected as you can see in the following example taken at F2.0”

NEX-7 availability status:
I am in contact with stores in Europe and USA. They all told me that the new NEX-7 body only stocks will arrive in February. The kit version is due for March. So here is the full link list:
[shoplist 8454]

Image from Photozone. Also the famous lens review website noticed the lens-cast issue on the [shoplink 10350 ebay]Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 ZM[/shoplink].

A week ago I got my NEX-7 and I am going to use third party lenses on it (by using appropriate adapters). But is it really so easy and flawless to use whatever lens you want on your NEX?

There are is one fundamental thing you have to watch out before to chose your lens. The “lens-cast” issue which creates color shift (mostly cyan shift) in the corners of your image. That problem appears or is stronger under following conditions:
1) Lenses with symmetrical design are not optimized for digital sensors, while lenses with tele-centric design do work well.
2) Wide angle lenses do accentuate the problem.
3) Problem gets worse on bigger sensor. Leica M9 shows more color shifting than the NEX-5n.
4) Problem gets more visible on cameras with smaller pixels. The NEX-5n has less problem with lens cast than the NEX-7.

Example: The Voigtländer 15mm f/4.5 M-mount lens ([shoplink 11043 ebay]Click here to see it on ebay[/shoplink]) does a wonderful job on film cameras but isn’t that good on the NEX-5n and completely sucks on the NEX-7. This because it has a symmetrical design and extreme wide angle. Does it mean you cannot use it on your NEX? There is a solution: The problem can be fixed with the use of the CornerFix software (there are both Windows and Mac OS X versions). It can correct Sony RAW files and transforms them in DNG files.

But if you like me don’t have time to convert every single file than you have to really watch out for the design of the lens you want.An alternative for the Voigtländer is the Zeiss 18mm f/4.0 lens ([shoplink 11044 ebay]Click here to see it on ebay[/shoplink]). Unlike the Voigtländer it has a tele-centric optical design. Those lenses are usually bigger than symmetrical lenses. That’s why the Zeiss is still bigger even if it has more or less the same aperture of the Voigländer.

In general wide angle Voigtländer lenses, Zeiss ZM Biogon lenses, Older Leica lenses come with symmetrical design. All new Leica lenses, most medium and tele lenses and soem Zeiss ZM lenses will work fine. With the help of our readers I will now collect info about a huge variety of lenses you could use on your NEX. It should become a sort of general guide to see how good a lens works on NEX cameras. I will post 1-2 guides per week starting from the next week.

To read more about the problem read that short text at LL (Click here), the guide at Digitalhapeman (Click here) and an M-mount index at Ken Rockwell (Click here).

We didn’t talk a lot about the new A-mount 16-50mm f/2.8 lens. So let’s take a deep look at the lens by reading the latest review from our friend Kurt Munger (Click here). He tested the lens on the probably last ever made Sony DSRL with optical viewfinder…the A580. He posted many interesting detailed test about the lens. I am not going to disclose here all his findings but in short he writes: “Probably the best quality of this lens is the nice contrast and resolution at F/2.8-4.  In fact, there isn’t a reason to stop it down further if sharpness is your main concern, depth of field of course is another matter.  Low-light hand-held shooters will love this lens.  Other nice optical qualities include low light fall-off, no coma, and manageable distortion at longer focal lengths“.

Good work Sony….we now need more of these kind of new high quality lenses!

While Sony has hard times to ship the A77+16-50mm lens kit it’s a bit easier to find the A77 body and lens in Stock as separate items. The lens is in Stock almost everywhere:
In USA-Canada at Amazon, Sonystore, Adorama, BHphoto, and Sony CA (Click on shop names to visit the lens search page)
In Europe at Amazon DE, Sony DE, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Sony FR, Sony NL and Sony IT.
In Asia at Digitalrev and Amazon JP.

Of course this is a limited list of stores I check almost daily. Can’t really check every little store of the world :) Feel free to complete the list by adding your links to the comment section!