Sony E 50mm f/1.8 OSS Lens Review
The Sony 50/1.8 was Sony’s version of the “nifty fifty” 50mm lens for their NEX mirrorless system before Sony ever intended to turn mirrorless into a professional level full frame system. As such, it’s an aps-c lens for use on the A5000 and A6000 lineup of cameras. It includes stabilization built into the lens. It currently retails at about $300. Let’s see how it performs by current standards.
Body and Handling:
This is a rather compact lens made for Sony’s E-mount (APS-C) cameras. It is not designed for full frame cameras. It was tested on the Sony A6300. It is shown above next to the Zeiss 55/1.8 lens for full frame. The full frame Zeiss is only slightly bigger but significantly heavier. The 50mm/1.8 is 202 grams and the Zeiss is noticeably heavier at 281 grams. I am posting the comparison to the Zeiss 55/1.8 because it is the top of the class for Sony. The price of the SEL 50/1.8 is $298 while the Zeiss is $998. So the SEL 50/1.8 is $700 cheaper, a bit smaller, and includes Optical SteadyShot (OSS). At $298 is a bit more expensive than similar lenses for Canon and Nikon but overall a reasonable price.
The lens has no buttons or switches. OSS is turned on and off from the camera menus. Manual focus is “by wire.” The body is sleek plastic with decent build quality.
The OSS works reasonably well as shown in some of these handheld examples:
At 1/15th of a second, pretty easy to get handheld sharp images.
At slower shutter speeds, results are more consistent. The image on the left shows considerable blur at 1/5rd of a second but the image on the right still came out sharp at 1/3rd of a second. For fairly consistent results, shoot at around 1/10th of a second. Of course, this lens is primarily a portrait lens, for which you would never want to use such slow shutter speeds.
Autofocus is reliable, quiet and fairly fast.
Image Quality:
Unless otherwise noted, these images have no lens corrections and the minimal default lightroom sharpening of raw files.
At wide aperture, the lens exhibits noticeably vignetting but it is easily corrected with lens profiles. The lens does not show any noticeable extortion. Straight lines remain straight. (Lens corrections are off in the left, and on in the right)
Another example of vignette with and without lens corrections:
The lens isn’t particularly flare resistant even with the included hood. But the bigger issue is purple fringing in high contrast.
Sharpness
Let’s compare sharpness to the Zeiss on the A6300 body:
It’s important to note that no extra sharpening has been added. The 50mm again suffers from worse purple fringing and it is just a hair softer than the 55mm. But they are close. Looking at the corners:
No question that these are very sharp images for extreme corners. Stopping down the 50mm to F2.8, you really get spectacular sharpness even in the far corner.
For the price point, there is absolutely no reason to complain about the lens sharpness. In fact, within the APS-C frame, there is very little difference in sharpness between the Zeiss and the Sony.
Overall:
Every camera maker has an affordable “nifty fifty.” With fast aperture and an equivalent focal length of 75mm on apc-s sensors, these lenses make great portrait lenses. They open up low light capabilities and any time you may want background separation (blurred background).
At $298, the lens is slightly more expensive than Canon and Nikon options that can be had for $100 to $200. Of course, those lenses do not include stabilization.
For a consumer lens, it is a very good performer. For anyone wanting to shoot portraits on the Sony aps-c cameras, this is an easy call. The downside is that if you ever upgrade to a full frame camera, you can’t really use this lens (it would be used in a crop mode). The lens does have some purple fringing, so watch backlit and high contrast situations. You won’t complain about sharpness. The lens is totally useable wide open.
Rating (1-10):
Score: 8
If you are planning on shooting portraits and just sticking to the aps-c format, no reason to spend more than the price of this lens.
(About my scoring: 9-10 is a superb lens which could have a place in the bag of almost every photographer. 6-8: recommended with caveats. 3-5: A compromised lens that may still be suitable for some shooters and situations. 1-2: Just stick to your phone camera)
If you are interested in the Sony 50/1.8, you can support this site by using this Amazon link for your purchase…
