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.