Sony 16mm f/2.8 Pro Reviews

Sony E 16mm f/2.8 (Sony NEX) ReviewThe Sony E 16mm f/2.8 may be a controversial lens on lower resolution NEX cameras. However, it seems rather pointless to use it on the NEX 7 - 24 megapixel are way beyond the capabilities of this tiny lens. The center quality is certainly fine but the outer image region is extremely soft at max. aperture and just barely acceptable around f/8. The native vignetting characteristic of the lens is dismal and you should always activate the auto-correction in the camera to reduce the effect. The same applies to lateral CAs which are way too high for a prime lens. The idea of using front-mounted converters is surely attractive but it just doesn't make must sense on this basis. The VCL-ECU1 (0.75x converter) manages to keep the "performance" of the base lens (roughly) but the quality remains unusable except for very casual photography.

The size of the lens make a NEX camera system almost pocketable. If you like the idea of a wide prime for your NEX camera, right now there's simply nothing else available. It's an interesting little lens, but its price point and its performance are perhaps limiting it to strictly consumer application.