The fact that I bought the FE 50mm f/2.5 G is kind of surprising even to me, because I originally contemplated the 40mm; in fact, Sony made the set of 24mm, 40mm and 50mm with almost the same look and dimensions, and out of the three, I chose Sigma 24mm f/3.5 DG DN rather than the 24mm f/2.8 G, and 50mm G rather than the 40mm. So, what’s with that?

Well, it’s not like I’m collecting the Pokemon so that I’d want to have a matching set or something. I watched the reviews and the Sigma 24mm appealed to me more because it has better corner sharpness wide open, in fact it’s great from wide open onwards. Both lenses are great, but for my needs the Sigma felt better, it’s much better uncorrected than the Sony, and I don’t care about aperture at 24mm.

Sigma 24mm f/3.5 DG DN

As for the 40mm, I initially liked the idea but then I figured out I like it mostly because I’ve had my brain flooded with all sorts of reviews that are hyping it to an incredible degree, almost as if Sony was paying them to do it… Oh wait. 🙂 Also, I was narrowing my choice of a light walkaround prime between the Sigma 65mm f/2 DG DN, and the Sony 50mm f/2.5 G, because both were at bargain prices used. The 40mm G, however, was kind of overpriced used, likely because of the hype, and the fact that I was looking at the longer focal length alternative meant that a 40mm would be a step in the wrong direction. After all, if I want a wider walkaround lens, the FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 zoom is actually preferable, and when I actually want everything sharp and wide, the Sigma 24mm is much more to my liking.

FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6

The 40mm is hyped as the best of both 35mm and 50mm, but I already see the 35mm as the middle ground between a 24mm and a 50mm, so I kind of don’t see the point. I use the 24mm for things people would use a 35mm for, and 35mm for what people would use a 50mm for, and I’m actually trying to learn 50mm properly since it’s been neglected in my arsenal for… well, since I started doing photography. I would always go either wider or narrower. So, going with the 40mm doesn’t actually fit the nature of the exercise. Likewise for the 65mm Sigma; it tries to be a 85mm while pretending to still be a 50mm. The closeup shots made with it look much smoother than the 40mm and 50mm Sony, but guess what – so do the shots with all the other lenses that I already own, so it would be merely fitting into a focal length gap between the 50mm f/1.2 GM and the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art, and that’s a gap that I don’t actually need to be filled, since the 85mm is already something that fills a gap between the 135mm and 50mm. If I wanted every transitional focal length filled, I would have bought a 70-200mm zoom. What I want are distinct perspectives from “primary” focal lengths – ultrawide, wide, mid-range, light telephoto and telephoto.

Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art

So, I basically wanted a replacement for the 50mm f/1.8 “nifty fifty” that annoys me with its hazy closeup performance when I want crispness, and with a deluge of CA whenever I point it toward anything contrasty. Also, I wanted something with the aperture ring and AF/MF switch on the lens. Also, I wanted something that is very small and light, so that I can put the camera with it in the beach backpack with the towels and it would fit. I scratched the Sigma 45mm from the list because it had unsharp closeup performance even worse than the lens I was trying to replace, and I scratched the Sony 40mm G off the list because I don’t like riding hype trains. It’s probably a great lens, but the 50mm was optically very similar and I got it used for a pittance, because all the hype followers went for the 40mm.

FE 50mm f/2.5 G

What do I think about it, now that I went out with it three times? I like when something does exactly what I expected and bought it for. There are zero surprises; the reviews were accurate. It’s crisp, the colours are clean and great, there are no optical defects worth talking about, and it creates pictures that very much resemble the “Four Thirds” look – you can blur out the background, but not completely, so there’s a structure and texture to it, rather than the sea of toffee that I get with the wide aperture glass.

FE 50mm f/2.5 G

Minolta MD 35-70mm f/3.5

It also reminds me of the old Minolta glass, because those lenses had similar bokeh; somewhat textured and gritty, but guess what: sometimes texture is what actually works for a picture, and sometimes smoothness fails. For me, a walkaround lens must be able to blur out the background well enough, and this one does; most shots I see when walking to the beach or similar places where I would take this lens are details that caught the ray of light, or a piece of dry wood in the tall grass, or something of that sort. This is what I tested the lens on, and I’m very happy with the results.

FE 50mm f/2.5 G

Does it have any drawbacks? Not really. Ergonomically, it’s tiny so everything is kind of crowded together, so I have to get used to it; the Sigma 24mm has better ergonomics, such as manual focus ring not competing for space with the aperture ring, but the complaint is minor. Also, the de-click switch is a waste of space and I could do without it; sure, the video people would want that. The lens shade is ugly and I took it off, to no ill effect because the lens is very flare resistant as it is.

I like it when things just work.

I took a few more pictures with FE 50mm f/2.5 G and A7CR;

Betting on poor odds.

Lightsails

As I already said, the background blur is harsh compared to the wide aperture lenses, but is in fact quite similar to what I used to get on the Four Thirds format, or with Minolta MD 35-70mm f/3.5 on film; somewhere between harsh and smooth. It has a particular aesthetics that I like for such shots, where the contrast is high and the shadows are harsh. But when you’re trying to catch the feeling of the long August heat wave, I think it’s just right. It would also be great for depicting the crispness of fresh snow, but I’m kinda out of that at the moment. 🙂

I took A7CR with the new lens to the beach today just to see what I can get, and initially I wasn’t very pleased since the pictures looked like summery postcards. But then I thought: well it’s summer in Dalmatia, what else are they supposed to look like?

Also, it’s quite obvious why we had so many fires.

Everything is dried up like gunpowder from the prolonged heat wave and no rain whatsoever. In fact it’s a miracle we had so few fires. Hopefully we get a rainy period soon because the vegetation is on its last legs. The dried-up ikebana stuff does lend itself well to photography, though. 🙂

Edit: BTW this is a good example of what I was saying about needing small but high quality 50mm lens for shots that don’t require extreme depth of field, or night vision. If I’m going to shoot a detail that needs to be sharp, or separation of the planes needs to be slight and subtle, the small lens will do fine. But what’s the big lens for, then?

FE 50mm f/1.2 GM

It’s for making magic out of chaos.

The FE 50mm f/2.5 G lens arrived this morning:

My set of small lenses is now complete; the Sigma 24mm f/3.5 DG DN, Sony FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 collapsible kit zoom, and Sony FE 50mm f/2.5 G.

You may ask what’s the point. Well, I do already have bigger and optically stellar lenses, but the thing with those is that they are occasionally too big for me to just carry around when I’m out for a walk without any particular photographic aim in mind, but I still want to have a good camera in order to catch something that caught my eye unexpectedly.

FE 50mm f/1.8

The thing is, despite the fact that I love the effect they produce, I don’t always need the extreme optics. When I’m using the FE 50mm f/1.2 GM at f/8, and I do, there’s not much difference between that and a much lighter lens; they would both do excellently. Sometimes, I don’t need anything more extreme than my old Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 did for me, and that’s a Four Thirds sensor at f/3.5. It did many things brilliantly. It would be silly to get a whole different camera system just so that I could have a light walkaround setup, but it’s quite possible to have such a setup on 35mm Sony; you just have to sacrifice aperture. So, essentially, I have the smaller A7CR camera, three small lenses with brilliant but “slow” optics, and the whole system is not really pocketable, but the lenses are. The camera itself with one lens on it would probably fit in my winter jacket, but I haven’t tried it. 🙂

So, what can this new 50mm do in closeup photography? I did a quick test:

That’s wide open at minimum focusing distance. Bokeh is good in non-backlit conditions, and actually better than I feared it would be in harsh, backlit conditions. There is some spherochromatism but barely noticeable, and although the lens doesn’t render the background out of toffee the way GM lenses do, I am quite pleased with what it does, if I consider it from a Four Thirds perspective. Also, it can get quite close for a 50mm, which helps to blur out the background. The colours are modern, which means excellent and neutral. Contrast is great, sharpness is excellent, I haven’t had the opportunity to test it against flare yet, and CA seem to be minimal. We’ll see how it does when I actually take it for a spin. But so far, so good.

Edit: I did the first shoot.

The images are extremely detailed corner to corner. It outresolves the 61MP sensor and is probably designed for a 100MP sensor. The colours are excellent, as I expected. GM level of image quality.

Flare with sun in the frame. There isn’t any.

The ability to blur out the background for such shots is excellent. Also, notice spherochromatism on the blurred-out grass. It’s slight, but it’s there.

Extreme sharpness and nice separation of the planes wide open.

All in all, the image quality is stellar, from wide open to diffraction limit. I highly recommend the lens.