In summary
Sony’s FE 12-24mm f/4 G is an impressive performer for its category, and is quite a bit smaller and lighter than similar DSLR lenses. Nonetheless, it’s built to professional standards and comes with excellent weather sealing. The fit-over lens cap does a fine job of protecting the potentially vulnerable bulbous front element and the built-in lens hood and optical coatings provide good insurance against flare and ghosting.
Practically and from a value-for-money viewpoint, this lens is best used on one of Sony’s ‘full frame’ α7 or α9 cameras, where users will gain maximum benefit from its extreme wide-angle coverage. Owners of cropped sensor cameras will find it has a relatively modest wide-angle coverage.
On one of Sony’s ‘full frame’ cameras, this lens comes into its own as an extreme wide-angle lens. While such lenses are ideal for shooting landscapes, cityscapes, architecture and other expansive subjects, they can be difficult to use at their shortest focal lengths because of their expansive angle of view.
Full review
Announced in May 2017, the Sony FE 12-24mm f/4 G lens is designed for the company’s full-frame mirrorless cameras, although it is compact enough to be usable on cameras with APS-C sensors, such as the α6100 camera we used for our tests, where it spans an 18mm to 36mm zoom range. The relatively small size and low, 565 gram weight make this lens ideal for location work, wherever portability and mobility are required.
Angled view of the Sony FE 12-24mm f/4 G lens. (Source: Sony.)
The optical design is relatively complex, comprising 17 elements in 13 groups. Four aspherical elements, three ED glass elements and one Super ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass element combine to minimise chromatic aberration and provide sharpness and clarity throughout the image area. Sony’s proprietary Nano AR Coating suppresses spurious reflections that can cause flare and ghosting in challenging lighting situations.
This diagram shows the positions of the exotic elements in the lens design. (Source: Sony.)
Autofocusing is driven by a Direct Drive SSM (DDSSM) linear piezo-electric system that is fast, quiet and accurate and ideal for recording movie clips. This lens features an advanced inner-focus mechanism that maintains a consistent barrel length and angle plus a constant f/4 maximum aperture that is retained throughout the zoom range.
The lens comes with a fixed, petal-shaped lens hood and a slip-over lens cap with latching buttons on either side. It also has a customisable focus hold button that can be programmed to control other functions and an AF/MF switch to engage manual focusing. The overall design of this lens is dust and moisture resistant, enabling it to be used on location in light rain or windy conditions, although it’s not guaranteed to be 100% dust and moisture proof.
Who’s it For?
Practically and from a value-for-money viewpoint, this lens is best used on one of Sony’s ‘full frame’ α7 or α9 cameras, where users will gain maximum benefit from its extreme wide-angle coverage. Owners of cropped sensor cameras will find it has a relatively modest wide-angle coverage.
On one of Sony’s ‘full frame’ cameras, this lens comes into its own as an extreme wide-angle lens. While such lenses are ideal for shooting landscapes, cityscapes, architecture and other expansive subjects, they can be difficult to use at their shortest focal lengths because of their expansive angle of view. Keeping the sun out of the frame can be tricky!
However, if you want really wide coverage and have a Sony ‘full frame’ camera, this lens has few competitors – aside from the much larger and heavier Sigma 12-24mm f/4 HSM ART lens. There are also a couple of manual focus prime lenses from Voigtlander with focal lengths of 10mm and 12mm and f/5.6 maximum apertures and two Laowa lenses, a 12mm f/2.8 prime and a 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom. But that’s about it!
Build and Ergonomics
As you’d expect from a lens with such a high price tag, this lens is very well constructed. High quality polycarbonate plastics are used for the main barrel to minimise overall weight but they’re based upon a solid metal mount. Dust and moisture resistance are a feature of the overall design and the fixed, petal-shaped lens hood ensures the length of the lens remains constant, even though the inner barrel moves as focal length is adjusted.
The front element bulges outwards, which means you can’t attach filters by the conventional screw-in method. If you want to use filters, look for systems that use external holders. As a consequence of the fixed hood and bulging front element, the lens cap is large and fits over the hood. It’s held in place by spring-loaded clips on opposite sides of the cap.
The focusing ring is located immediately behind the lens hood. It’s roughly 18 mm wide and almost entirely clad with fine rubber-like ridging. This ring turns smoothly through 360 degrees when no power is supplied and is driven from the camera in both auto and manual modes. Focusing is generally very fast and precise.
The zoom ring lies immediately behind the focusing ring. It’s approximately 28 mm wide, with a 22 mm wide band of rubberised ridging around its leading edge. Stamped on the un-ridged trailing edge are markings for the 12mm, 14mm, 16mm, 18mm, 21mm and 24mm focal lengths, which line up against a white index mark on the fixed section of the barrel behind the ring.
The barrel slopes in for about 3 mm and then runs straight for roughly 20 mm before sloping and stepping in towards the lens mount. A customisable focus hold button is located in this section of the barrel, positioned above the AF/MF slider switch.
Performance
Although this lens is designed for Sony’s ‘full frame’ cameras, we found it performed well on the α6100 body we used for our tests. Not surprisingly, the cropped-sensor body imposed some restrictions on what we could do with the lens, the most serious being the obstruction of the light path of the camera’s built-in flash, which meant the flash could not be used.
Our Imatest tests using the α6100 body, showed the resolution of JPEG files came close to meeting expectations for the review camera’s 24-megapixel sensor and slightly above expectations for ARW.RAW files, which were converted into 16-bit TIFF format with Adobe Camera Raw. As you would expect with a cropped sensor camera, no measurements could be made close to the periphery of the frame so it was no surprise to find near-centre and edge measurements were close across the aperture range.
Interestingly, the highest resolution in our tests occurred at the widest aperture with the shortest focal length. Diffraction didn’t really take effect until around f/11, after which there was a steep drop down to f/22. Some edge softening was identified at the widest aperture settings for all focal lengths at our standard test distances but it was only detectable with close examination of test shots. The graph below shows the results of our Imatest tests.
Lateral chromatic aberration was negligible at all lens apertures and focal lengths, as shown in the graph of our Imatest results, below. The red line marks the boundary between ‘negligible’ and ‘low’ CA.
Contre-jour lighting presented few problems for the review lens and even shots taken into the sun showed minimal flare. Traces of veiling flare could be seen when an unobstructed bright light source was included in the frame but shots taken in normal backlighting showed no loss of contrast or saturation.
Our assessments of rectilinear distortion and vignetting were carried out on converted raw files to avoid the impacts of the in-camera corrections applied to JPEGs. And, even then, allowance should be made for the frame cropping produced by the cropped sensor we used for our tests. Our results are, therefore, not indicative of how the lens would perform on a ‘full frame’ camera.
Very slight barrel distortion could be seen at 12mm but distortion was effectively negligible for the rest of the zoom range. We found no tangible evidence of vignetting was seen at f/4 across the zoom range.
Although the seven-bladed lens diaphragm closed to create a circular aperture, evaluating bokeh was difficult with such a wide-angle lens as its focal length range makes it less than ideal for shooting close-ups. Bokeh will also be influenced by the focal length, shooting angle and relative brightness of the background.
Autofocusing performance, which is influenced by the algorithms in the camera, was generally excellent. However, we were unable to test Sony’s face- and eye-detection functions thoroughly because this lens isn’t really suitable for portraiture (except with large groups).
Conclusion
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SPECS
Picture angle: 122 to 84 degrees (full-frame), 99 to 61 degrees (APS-C)
Minimum aperture: f/22
Lens construction: 17 elements in 13 groups (including 4 aspherical, 3 ED and 1 Super ED elements)
Lens mounts: Sony FE
Diaphragm Blades: 7 (circular aperture)
Focus drive: Direct Drive SSM with linear motor
Stabilisation: No
Minimum focus: 28 cm
Maximum magnification: 0.14x
Filter size: n.a.
Dimensions (Diameter x L): 87 x 117.4 mm
Weight: 565 grams
Standard Accessories: Fit-over front cap, ALC-R1EM end cap
Distributor: Sony Australia; 1300 720 071
TESTS
Based upon JPEG files captured with the Sony α6100 (ILCE-6100) camera.
SAMPLES
Vignetting at 12mm, f/4.
Vignetting at 16mm f/4.
Vignetting at 24mm f/4.
Rectilinear distortion at 12mm.
Rectilinear distortion at 16mm.
Rectilinear distortion at 24mm.
12mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/200 second at f/11.
24mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/160 second at f/11.
Close-up at 12mm, ISO 100, 1/1250 second at f/4.
Close-up at 24mm, ISO 100, 1/1600 second at f/4.
Contre-jour lighting, 24mm focal length, ISO 640, 1/200 second at f/11.
Strong backlighting; 12mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/160 second at f/11.
Strong backlighting; 24mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/200 second at f/11.
20mm focal length, ISO 400, 1/200 second at f/7.1.
Crop from the centre of the above image enlarged to 100%.
Crop from the corner of the above image enlarged to 100%.
24mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/100 second at f/9.
Crop from the above image enlarged to 100%.
24mm focal length, ISO 1000, 1/200 second at f/11.
12mm focal length, ISO 1000, 1/320 second at f/11.
24mm focal length, ISO 800, 1/160 second at f/10.
24mm focal length, ISO 400, 1/200 second at f/9.
24mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/100 second at f/8.
Additional image samples can be found with our review of the Sony α6100 (ILCE-6100) camera.
Rating
RRP: AU$2699; US$1675
- Build: 9.0
- Handling: 9.0
- Image quality: 8.9
- Versatility: 8.5
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