Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM review by Fred Miranda: “Sony hit a home run”
Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM lens at Bhphoto. Adorama. Amazon. Calumet Germany. WexUK.
Fred Miranda (Click here) published his full Sony 24mm GM review. This is his conclusion:
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Sony hit a home run with their FE 24/1.4 GM lens. Uniting all the attributes within this all rounder – It’s superb for nightscapes, travel, environment portraits and as a walk-around general lens. Once again Sony created a top resolution lens, without neglecting out of focus rendering. At infinity distance, it’s sharp from center to extreme corners at f/1.4 and has superb resolution starting at f/2.8. At f/4, it even competes with landscape specialists like the Loxia 25/2.4. All this with a flat-field performance.
However, I’d say flare resistance is only slightly above average for a lens in this class, and contrast never disappoints. Like I wrote in my first impressions, it’s the perfect companion to the FE 85/1.4 GM sharing a similar rendering signature.
Sony constructed all this while keeping it compact and light and offering great ergonomics that include features like custom button, aperture ring with de-clicking, AF/MF button and Linear MF by wire. The latter almost tricks you into thinking it’s a helicoid manual focus lens. It’s not better than the Loxias for landscapes but you might need a second take to see the differences. All I can say is that I hope Sony continues producing GM primes and that one day we’ll be treated to a 15/2 GM, 40/1.4 GM and 135/1.8 GM in the future!
Pros:
- Great resolution from wide open across the field. The best extreme corners I’ve seen at 24mm and f/1.4.
- Minimal Field Curvature. The lens is practically flat-field.
- Superb rendering with smooth bokeh at any distance.
- Round bokeh balls with clean inner structure. (No onion ring pattern)
- Superb coma performance. (The best in the business)
- Great MFD performance. Works great with close-up achromats for even greater magnification.
- Great build quality with low tolerance construction
- Weather sealed. This is a big advance to landscape specialists like the Loxia line.
- Super light and compact for a 24mm f/1.4 lens.
- Fast and quiet AF with great Eye AF performance.
- Great ergonomics with custom button, aperture ring with de-clicking, AF/MF button.
- Linear manual focus by wire implementation. It really feels like the real thing. :-)
- Low Distortion.
Cons:
- Flare resistance is slightly above average for a lens in its class.
- Some astigmatism visible towards the corners.
- Moderate lateral CA (LaCA).
- Moderate longitudinal CA (LoCA).
- Strong vignetting at wide apertures.
- Sunstar definition (Needs f/13 or smaller for well-defined sunstars). Although this is a “cons” for landscape photography, lenses with round aperture blades are preferred for all other applications since bokeh balls remain “round” when stepping the lens down.
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Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM lens at Bhphoto. Adorama. Amazon. Calumet Germany. WexUK.