SonyFE 16-35mm f/4 Vario-T Zeiss Full-Frame Wide-Angle Zoom Lens – Ideal for Landscape, Architecture, and Travel Photography

I currently collection of FE lenses for my A7R MK2 inlcudes:SEL2870 FE 28-70mm My General Use Lens, lightish and great quality for the priceSEL24240 F3.5-6.3 My travel use lens, very heavy great quality for the priceSony SEL55F18Z.AE 55mm f/1.8 ZA Not just the best portrait lens for Sony FE its also the best portrait lens I've used on any platformSEL1635Z 16-35mm F/4 Read below:Summary:Great lens in most regards, 8/10 only knock 2 for the high price, it would have been nice to have additional custom buttons on body and would like an F2.8.The details if your interested:My primary use for this lens is video work (broadcasting webinars and telepresence video from large rooms) but I also use it for landscape photography near the rivers and coastline where I live.In both cases I tend to you the 16-35 mm lens due to the amazing wide angle capability and brilliant sharp quality this lens has to offer. I had used the wide angle on my SEL24240 for this work in the past but I find this lens offers superior clarity at the widest angles.I expected this lens to suffer from some vignetting given its v wide however I'm glad to report that even at 16mm if performs very well..The F/4 is great for video work in darker indoor locations when streaming video (lecture halls, conference rooms etc).This is a large heavy lens for my camera body ( advertised as 518g) but the build quality is excellent and I'm sure the lens will outlive this camera.Both of the dials for aperture and focus are smooth which makes fine changes easy to control.I would thoroughly recommend this lens especially for landscape photography and video work. I also purchased Lee and Hanna filters for this lens and all work great with this combo.

This lens is ground braking. It's incredible for videos with superb,quiet, quick autofocus. Photos are sharp and the lens at full frame, 16mm is so wide, like, its ridiculous. Obviously this lens comes with a price tag, but, its SO worth it. well built aswell.

Was not happy but looked up the model on a YouTube tutorial and learned how to make my exposures so much better. A fantastic lens and not as expensive as g or gm lenses for Sony cameras full frame and very sharp pictures on an A7mk3 24mp camera whats not to like.

Using this on a Sony A7R and the results are excellent. There is a little softness on edges, but nothing of note. Distortion and vignetting are well controlled, haven't noticed any chromatic aberation.Zoom and focus rings are very well damped, firm with no lens creep. The construction quality is excellent, it really does feel like a nice solid and well built piece of equipment.As this is currently the only choice for a Sony wide angle lens for the full frame A7 series, I was hoping the lens would be up to the task, and it is.I have attached a quick image of inside a local pre-Doomsday Book church, St Huberts at Idsworth, taken at 16mm for you to judge for yourself.Have to knock a star off the review as it is rather pricey. Amazon's delivery was terrific as usual, ordered late afternoon, arrived at 10am following day.

I researched many different wide angle lenses for landscape photography and ended up going for this one. I can say, I'm very very happy I did. What a great lens. Paired with the Sony a7iii it's a killer setup. Not too big or heavy and super sharp.

*** Note - see the 'Second copy update' at the bottom of this review for additional information ***Initial impressions of image quality were good. That classic image 'pop' that we've come to expect from Zeiss lenses is clearly evident. However, on further inspection I noticed that the left-hand side of all images were distinctly softer than the right hand side. If the effect had been limited to the corners I may have learned to live with it, but this wasn't the case.This lens seems to perform best between 20 and 28mm. However, at all focal lengths the left hand side of images - while improved - never caught up with the right hand side as I stopped down.Image stabilisation is welcome and definitely builds on Sony's IBIS (Steadyshot). While landscape photographers may not see the benefit, it will be appreciated by individuals shooting hand held - particularly video.Build quality is excellent overall. I personally love the focus-by-wire feature as it allows me to precisely set the focal distance; something which is impossible with a non-linear manual focus mechanism, as is found on DSLRs.Chromatic aberrations were higher than expected. I found them impossible to correct on the right (sharper) side of images even with in-body correction enabled, along with correction in Lightroom.At 16mm some vignetting was evident with a screw-on ND filter attached. Even with no filter fitted vignetting is rather high - though correctable.I will probably purchase another copy of this lens (although not from Amazon!). After doing some research it seems that some individuals have been through many copies of this lens before finding one that isn't off-axis. Clearly Zeiss has to tighten up its QC. It's also possible that the lens was knocked off axis during transit due to the way it was packaged. I've never received such a poorly-packaged item from Amazon. The lens' box was placed inside a much larger box with no internal padding whatsoever. It had no doubt been bouncing around en-route to my delivery address. I won't factor this into the star rating, but Amazon needs to do better. Sony doesn't do a great job of packaging its lenses either.So in short - this is no doubt a great lens if you can get a good copy. If you do buy then I advise you to take the time to make sure that the optics are correctly centred.*** Second copy update ***I purchased a second copy from another retailer after returning this one to Amazon. The second copy is very slightly weaker on the top left, but it's barely noticeable. Certainly nothing like the decentering that the first copy exhibited. You'll be hard pushed to find a wide angle zoom from any manufacturer that offers even corner-to-corner sharpness under close inspection. This copy is more than acceptably sharp across the frame and is very impressive between 16mm and 24mm.I would rate my new copy as being 4 stars - it still suffers from flare, some astigmatism, significant distortion and isn't particularly sharp at 35mm (although good enough) - these downsides prevent 5 stars. I've come to the conclusion that one reason why this lens polarises opinion is that there is significant copy-to-copy variation. Sony/Zeiss need to address QA issues that are unfortunately affecting many lenses in their lineup.

I absolutely love this lens. This is such a versatile lens that you can use for so many things. I am a content creator on YouTube and Instagram and it is great for vlogging and also taking pictures. No issues with low light. This is a must for any Sony camera bag.

Over rated and over priced. A very mediocre lens.