The Sony FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA Lens features three double-sided aspherical lens elements in a seemingly very simple Sonnar design. If you consider the small size the Sony FE 2.8/35 is a remarkable performer, especially wide open. You can use it at f/2.8 without hesitation, it is very sharp across 90% of the frame and bokeh is good as well. Only the very strong vignetting could be a problem for some uses.

Axial CA remains at least somewhat persistent when stopping down with the color misalignment effect increasing with defocusing while In the examples below, look at the fringing colors in the out of focus specular highlights created by the neutrally-colored subjects. While there are a huge number of 35mm prime lenses, as of review time, there are none with a narrower max aperture. There is minor field curvature, at around r=15mm the plane of focus moves closer to the camera but the effect isn’t strong. Close Focus Performance Flare and ghosting are caused by bright light reflecting off of the surfaces of lens elements, resulting in reduced contrast and sometimes-interesting artifacts.

A subject measuring approximately 10.5 x 7" (267 x 178mm) will fill a full frame viewfinder at the minimum focus distance. These effects do not look bad but were not as attractive as the sharply pointed results shown above. Manual focusing is electronic, as this lens is a focus-by-wire design. The large singular focus ring on the lens will therefore rotate indefinitely with no stops at minimum and infinity focus distances. Also a consequence of the focus-by-wire design, there are no focus distance markings or window on this lens. Coma is absent in the center of the frame, gets worse toward the edges/corners, and generally appears as a comet-like or triangular tail of light which can be oriented either away from the center of the frame (external coma), or toward the center of the frame (internal coma). To find out how the Sony FE 35mm f2.8 ZA performs I tested it against the Sony FE 35mm f1.4 ZA and the Zeiss Batis 40mm f2.0 CF on the 42MP A7R II body and also compared it to the Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art. So if you’re looking for a mild wide-angle prime for your Sony mirrorless camera, you’ve come to the right place!

Foreground bokeh is very smooth as well. Sony a7 | Zeiss FE 2,8/35 | f/2.8 |default setting | full resolution Wide aperture lenses tend to have an advantage in this regard and this lens is capable of producing good quality stars. Even the lens hood is largely made of metal. I like the fact that the lens hood can be fitted over a filter. It's a dome type lens hood, so it's very small and it doesn't add much to the length of the lens.If you’re unsure of how big the differences between 35mm, 40mm focal length are, here is the angle of view that the Sony FE 35mm f2.8 ZA covers on a full-frame body compared to the Zeiss Batis 40mm f2.0 CF: A relatively common lens aberration is axial (longitudinal, bokeh) CA, which causes non-coinciding focal planes of the various wavelengths of light, or more simply, different colors of light are focused to different depths.

Above: With the Sony 40 2.5 on the left and the Sigma 45 2.8 on the right, both showing magnified views of their central areas, you’ll see both perform very well at their respective maximum apertures, although obviously the Sigma’s view is a little more magnified due to its slightly longer focal length. The Carl Zeiss 2.8/35 is the smallest native lens you can buy for the a7 series. It is still a bit too large to call it a pancake but it comes close. I prefer a little larger lenses on my a7 but handling is still very good and at only 120g it is an excellent choice when you want to travel light.

Sony FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* SEL35F28Z User Reviews

im comparing two quite different lenses here, but reading a lot of the complaints about the sigma compared to the sony; the sony apparently walks over sigma because of size. nonetheless, the sony lens seems pretty sharp through out but does drop slightly on the corners. Normal is for the scene to change size in the frame (sometimes significantly) as focus is pulled from one extent to the other, referred to as focus breathing, a change in focal length resulting from a change in focus distance. Sony does not publish extension tube specs nor do they manufacture these items, but third-party Sony extension tubes are available. The Sonnar has quite good bokeh, oof highlights are rendered quite smooth. Sony a7 | Zeiss FE 2,8/35 | f/2.8 Sony a7 | Zeiss FE 2,8/35 | f/2.8 | full resolution

With the right lens profile and software, lateral CA is often easily correctable (often in the camera) by radially shifting the colors to coincide though it is always better to not have the problem in the first place. This ring is very smooth, has a nice amount of resistance, and when turned slowly, the 292° of MF rotation adjusts focusing at a comfortable rate, allowing precise manual focusing even at close distances. Lateral CA shows as color fringing along lines of strong contrast running tangential (meridional, right angles to radii) with the mid and especially the periphery of the image circle showing the greatest amount as this is where the greatest difference in the magnification of wavelengths typically exists.Golf Course Ocean View, 10 September 2015. Sony A7R II, Zeiss FE 35mm f/2.8, wide-open at f/2.8 at 1/1,250 at Auto ISO 100. bigger or full-resolution. On a traditional DSLR with an optical viewfinder, IBIS results in an unstabilized view, meaning that stabilization was not helpful for composition or for providing a still subject to the camera's AF system. Like the Sony FE 55mm lens we reviewed earlier, the FE 35mm Zeiss lens is another extraordinarily sharp lens, on both the full-frame A7R as well as on the NEX-7 sub-frame test camera. Wide-open and throughout the aperture range until around f/16, the centers display impressive sharpness. There's some slight corner softness, however, at all apertures when used on a full-frame camera, but overall it's fairly minor. Using this lens on a sub-frame body significantly reduces softer corners, which is to be expected. The images were processed in Capture One using the Natural Clarity method with the sharpening amount set to only "30" on a 0-1000 scale.