Sony FE 50mm f/2.8 Macro Reviews
Does the job
By Howard
Rated 4 out of 5
Date: 2023-06-07
Got this lens for 1:1 transfers of film negative and slides. Works as expected but two things to be aware of:
1. To prevent long focus hunting, use the focus limit switch on the lens and make sure your subject is within that range.
2. If shooting RAW, use lens correction to get rid of pincushion distortion at close distances. Sony cameras usually auto-correct JPEGs so you might see the difference if shooting RAW/JPEG combinations.
Beautiful little lens
By Anthony
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2022-12-16
Bright, tack sharp and lite,not much you can ask for a lens in this price range, especially that's it also a macro lens. A beautiful addition to my a7rii and my Fx30.
sper rn
By Rahim AVCI
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2022-11-22
ff gvdeler iin tasarlanm kalite hissine sahip bir rn.
sadece makro ekimlerde fokus biraz yava kalabiliyor ama normal ekimlerde gayet hzl.
bir anda en sevdigim lens oldu.
90mm harika bir rn bunu tartamayz ama onun fiyatna istinaden bu lens harika
Light and pratical
By Catherine
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2022-09-29
Very light, very versatile. As you might expect for a macro lens, auto focus is slow but as par with other macro lenses. I love it.
Tack-Sharp, Distortion-Free Macro/General Purpose for A7rIV
By Michael
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2022-04-27
This may be a relatively cheap lens, but it is well built and very well
thought out - everything about how this lens is designed and works is perfect for 1:1, 1:1.5, 1:4, everything in-between, etc. macro yet it
works fine for general photography, especially if the camera's autofocus can work with it. Nothing could be better done about this lens except theoretically perfect glass or theoretically faster autofocus, but the autofocus and manual focus behaves exactly as I would hope for it to with a macro lens - lots of travel of the focus ring and mechanism per amount of change in focus for finely tuning the focus, auto or manual.
Since this macro lens behaves in the same nature with focusing for
general purpose photography as well, I like to think of this lens as not slow focusing (compared to other lenses meant for instantly instantly acquiring focus and snapping pictures, which this lens basically can do especially at longer focus distances where/when there is less travel of the mechanism) but precision focusing. The focus could theoretically be faster but then it just wouldn't be the same for finely tuning the focus, especially manually or manually in conjunction with autofocus.
50mm is a very versatile full-frame focal length, as it mimics the
perspective of human vision and enables one to get more in focus at a given aperature, especially with macro where DOF is shallow, because the perspective is 50mm and not, say, 90mm. With the a7rIV(a), the lens is so sharp and able to capitalize on the resolution potential of the sensor that not only can it be cropped APS-C to 75mm equivalent, making this lens essentially a two-in-one option even though its a prime lens.
I see no reason to remove a star or two for its autofocus performance on this camera. Yes, the autofocus isn't the fastest out there, my 28-70mm cheap sony kit lens is even faster, but it is by no means faulty or seemingly weak, even if it is not whisper quiet, as stated above about my opinion on this lens's purpose-built design and operation. With the a7rIVa and especially using the focus limiter for general purpose or macro (.3m, which is a very good cutoff working with this lens) (using full range of focus does seem to slow the autofocus dramatically), the camera scans the scene as the lens focuses, and the lens will slightly and briefly overshoot the focus then immediately snap back. I don't find this a limitation for general purpose or macro photography, if I am shooting even handheld with this in macro continuous autofocus works perfectly with it on the a7riva; continuous autofocus doesn't continuously overshoot and hunt on the a7riva except perhaps in the initial focus acquisition. With sports or bird photography or faster action photography, something lenses of longer focal lengths / zooms are better suited for, I can see this lens missing some or quite a few photos that one would not with a faster autofocus lens.
Now, for the little details that also make this lens seem very well
thought out. When turning the camera off, the lens focus resets to
infinity, fully retracting the lens rather than leaving it extended.
When switching focus modes, unlike with some older Nikon DSLR lenses I had, it's digital/electronically controlled instead of physically
locked, so it's easy to just switch and recompose rather than having to adjust focus within the range before flipping the switch. As well, the focus ring being digitally/electronically controlled, there are numerous advantages to this over it being physically linked, too many to really list here; it's just far far better in practice with everything than being physically locked by gears to the focus mechanism. Also, the a7riv has a very useful mode where you can quickly autofocus, which is very accurate anyways, and then optionally operate the manual focus ring to fine-tune it, and the camera automatically zooms in to where it is focused at - DMF autofocus mode. With the lens's fine-tuning slow adjusting focus through the range but especially towards the macro range, this is painless. Adjust, Oh, I was already in focus or I need to move the other direction instead. Simple, manual focus activates the preview quickly and there is little error caused by activating it with the focus ring, quickly corrected. Also, I did not notice this with the 28-70mm kit lens I have, but with the macro lens there is actually a relatively rough focus distance guide that shows up at the bottom of the screen when manually focusing, displaying from .2m to 144m, then infinity. There's also a button on the side of the lens that I like to
assign to enabling/disabling SteadyShot on the fly as needed. Even with SteadyShot on the a7riv I haven't noticed any fine-detail blurriness that can be attributed to inefficiencies in image stabilization technologies.
As far as distance from the subject, I've had a lot less issues here
than I expected I would. At 1:1 magnification one may be six inches from the subject, which if one is photographing in sunlight it is still
possible to move one's shadow out of the way, but otherwise there's
usually plenty of light around even when overcast, especially with the
a7riv's great low-light performance. I photographed some insects and they weren't scared away even when getting close. Many don't seem to scare away except with sudden movements or stumbles.
So, all and all, I am extremely surprised with just how wonderful of a
50mm prime, macro lens this is. Excellent image detail, very good in the corners but especially towards the center, with little lost to softness or distortion even wide-open. I haven't fully tested this at 2.8, but I suspect by the nature of the slight blur in the corners, what I was seeing seemed to be like and may have been totally from fogging because it was a humid day (I forgot to attach the lens protector filter because I was so excited from testing this lens out LOL). With macro photography, where one may likely be stopping down for more depth of field, that of course increases the edge-to-edge sharpness even further.
Update 4/26/22 from 4/10/22:
After testing the lens more for accuracy of the review I did here, I thought I was delusional or seeing things or making too many assumptions because of sharpness and focus issues. Turns out the original review here, unchanged above, was accurate. The difference was that I was using an apparently high quality and well-reviewed B+W 55mm XS-Pro Clear MRC-Nano 007 Filter. Adding a (this) CLEAR, not even UV-coated, MASSIVELY impacted the sharpness and autofocus performance, for this lens at least. It seems this lens is best used without a lens filter for best sharpness and autofocus performance. Again, tack-sharp corner to corner even wide open at approaching 1:1 magnification.
Tack-Sharp, Distortion-Free Macro/General Purpose for A7rIV
By Michael
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2022-04-11
This may be a relatively cheap lens, but it is well built and very well thought out - everything about how this lens is designed and works is perfect for 1:1, 1:1.5, 1:4, everything in-between, etc. macro yet it works fine for general photography, especially if the camera's autofocus can work with it. Nothing could be better done about this lens except theoretically perfect glass or theoretically faster autofocus, but the autofocus and manual focus behaves exactly as I would hope for it to with a macro lens - lots of travel of the focus ring and mechanism per amount of change in focus for finely tuning the focus, auto or manual. Since this macro lens behaves in the same nature with focusing for general purpose photography as well, I like to think of this lens as not slow focusing (compared to other lenses meant for instantly instantly acquiring focus and snapping pictures, which this lens basically can do especially at longer focus distances where/when there is less travel of the mechanism) but precision focusing. The focus could theoretically be faster but then it just wouldn't be the same for finely tuning the focus, especially manually or manually in conjunction with autofocus.
50mm is a very versatile full-frame focal length, as it mimics the perspective of human vision and enables one to get more in focus at a given aperature, especially with macro where DOF is shallow, because the perspective is 50mm and not, say, 90mm. With the a7rIV(a), the lens is so sharp and able to capitalize on the resolution potential of the sensor that not only can it be cropped APS-C to 75mm equivalent, making this lens essentially a two-in-one option even though its a prime lens.
I see no reason to remove a star or two for its autofocus performance on this camera. Yes, the autofocus isn't the fastest out there, my 28-70mm cheap sony kit lens is even faster, but it is by no means faulty or seemingly weak, even if it is not whisper quiet, as stated above about my opinion on this lens's purpose-built design and operation. With the a7rIVa and especially using the focus limiter for general purpose or macro (.3m, which is a very good cutoff working with this lens) (using full range of focus does seem to slow the autofocus dramatically), the camera scans the scene as the lens focuses, and the lens will slightly and briefly overshoot the focus then immediately snap back. I don't find this a limitation for general purpose or macro photography, if I am shooting even handheld with this in macro continuous autofocus works perfectly with it on the a7riva; continuous autofocus doesn't continuously overshoot and hunt on the a7riva except perhaps in the initial focus acquisition. With sports or bird photography or faster action photography, something lenses of longer focal lengths / zooms are better suited for, I can see this lens missing some or quite a few photos that one would not with a faster autofocus lens.
Now, for the little details that also make this lens seem very well thought out. When turning the camera off, the lens focus resets to infinity, fully retracting the lens rather than leaving it extended. When switching focus modes, unlike with some older Nikon DSLR lenses I had, it's digital/electronically controlled instead of physically locked, so it's easy to just switch and recompose rather than having to adjust focus within the range before flipping the switch. As well, the focus ring being digitally/electronically controlled, there are numerous advantages to this over it being physically linked, too many to really list here; it's just far far better in practice with everything than being physically locked by gears to the focus mechanism. Also, the a7riv has a very useful mode where you can quickly autofocus, which is very accurate anyways, and then optionally operate the manual focus ring to fine-tune it, and the camera automatically zooms in to where it is focused at - DMF autofocus mode. With the lens's fine-tuning slow adjusting focus through the range but especially towards the macro range, this is painless. Adjust, Oh, I was already in focus or I need to move the other direction instead. Simple, manual focus activates the preview quickly and there is little error caused by activating it with the focus ring, quickly corrected. Also, I did not notice this with the 28-70mm kit lens I have, but with the macro lens there is actually a relatively rough focus distance guide that shows up at the bottom of the screen when manually focusing, displaying from .2m to 144m, then infinity. There's also a button on the side of the lens that I like to assign to enabling/disabling SteadyShot on the fly as needed. Even with SteadyShot on the a7riv I haven't noticed any fine-detail blurriness that can be attributed to inefficiencies in image stabilization technologies.
As far as distance from the subject, I've had a lot less issues here than I expected I would. At 1:1 magnification one may be six inches from the subject, which if one is photographing in sunlight it is still possible to move one's shadow out of the way, but otherwise there's usually plenty of light around even when overcast, especially with the a7riv's great low-light performance. I photographed some insects and they weren't scared away even when getting close. Many don't seem to scare away except with sudden movements or stumbles.
So, all and all, I am extremely surprised with just how wonderful of a 50mm prime, macro lens this is. Excellent image detail, very good in the corners but especially towards the center, with little lost to softness or distortion even wide-open. I haven't fully tested this at 2.8, but I suspect by the nature of the slight blur in the corners, what I was seeing seemed to be like and may have been totally from fogging because it was a humid day (I forgot to attach the lens protector filter because I was so excited from testing this lens out LOL). With macro photography, where one may likely be stopping down for more depth of field, that of course increases the edge-to-edge sharpness even further.
Auto Focus only - not great for diving
By Steve
Rated 2 out of 5
Date: 2023-03-06
When I bought this lens, it was because am looking to improve my macro photos while scuba diving.
I was not aware of it only HAVING Auto Focus available - manual is NOT available. Auto Focus is way tooo slow to use on many ocean critters.
good
By Mazen
Rated 4 out of 5
Date: 2022-12-28
hope sony doing new one
