Alright, today, we've got an easygoing,
unscripted lens review of the new
Sony 20-70mm f/4 G.
And as usual, this video's not sponsored by Sony.
They lent me this lens to make this review,
but I don't get to keep it.
No money changed hands,
and they don't get any input on this video's production
or get to preview before it's posted.
It is incredibly compact for a 20-70.
Now, obviously, it's an external zoom
in order to accomplish that,
so you're gonna get a lot of barrel movement.
But the balance, I mean, it does shift forward
when you do that, as you'd expect,
but it's not as terrible as you would expect.
We've got the iris ring, which has the iris lock on it,
which I like, because sometimes,
you try to do it on your camera and you go,
"Why can't I change the aperture,"
and you realize that you're stuck halfway
between A and 22 or something.
So you can lock it so that doesn't change for you,
and they give you the ability to de-click it
if you want a smooth iris change.
Then you've got the zoom ring, which is,
it's good, it feels good, it's well dampened,
it's exactly the amount of force
I would want to have for zoom,
and doesn't seem to come out on its own, which is nice.
And then the focus ring is okay.
Like other Sony lenses that have electronic focus,
it's pretty light to move.
The focus throw is okay,
but it is linear focus when in manual focus,
so you can do repeatable focus pulls,
you just don't have a huge throw
when it's not extremely dampened
like a manual focus lens would be.
AF/MF switch, and then two function buttons on the lens.
And the front filter thread is a 72mm.
It's 488 grams, so just over a pound,
and it's about 3.89 inches, or 99mm.
So it's under four inches, under 100mm,
making it one of the most compact standard zooms,
if you want to class it in that same category, available.
And then as far as reliability, here in my press brief,
it says that it's dust and moisture resistant.
Not guaranteed to be 100% dust and moisture proof,
but all the seams are sealed,
the buttons and switches have silicone rubber gaskets,
and there's a rubber ring seal around the lens mount.
And they also have a fluorine coating
that repels water and oil and other contaminants
on the front lens element.
Now, as usual, let's jump into Lightroom
so I can show you some test images
and discuss the results and quality of this lens.
I don't know what this first image was.
Oh, this is shot at f/22.
I think I was trying to get sunstars.
People like to see sunstars.
The aperture range is f/4 to f/22 on this lens,
but as you can see,
on this day, at this time,
shooting in this angle, there were no sunstars,
but it does have a nice soft roll-off
in the highlights there.
That's got nothing to do with the lens.
Well, I mean, not entirely the lens.
So I don't know why I'm showing you this photo.
Anyway, okay, so here we're talking
about chromatic aberration, which is something
I like to check always.
So, starting at 70mm, I think I focused around here,
and you could see, actually, as we go in.
So we're looking for longitudinal chromatic aberration.
That's gonna put color
on the out-of-focus to the front and the back.
Usually different, like maybe it'll be amber and cyan
or something as it goes in and out of focus.
But as you can see, the fence here is just staying
grey and silver all the way through.
The little bit of blue that you see here
I don't believe is chromatic aberration.
I think that's actually just the sky.
This is a really good result.
And then we have it again at this is 20mm.
Same thing, so I focused around here.
And again, very, very little LoCA,
which is great, because generally,
the only way to resolve that is by stopping down.
And this lens is already at f/4,
so you wouldn't wanna have to stop down to f/7 to remove it.
So, that's good, we're getting great results.
And then this was to check, again,
a more controlled test for LoCA,
but also to see if there was any lateral fringing as well.
And as you can see, there's like no,
hardly any longitudinal chromatic aberration.
And if we go in here and check along the lines, same thing.
I'm not seeing much in the way
of purple fringing, so that's great.
And then I wanted to check for spherical aberration.
And just in general, close focusing is something
really great about this lens, but sometimes
I've noticed when I test lenses,
I like to shoot a lot of little details
at the minimum focus distance, and sometimes you get
just soft, sparkly, soap bubbly effects,
which is probably spherical aberration up close,
but I wasn't noticing much at all.
So this is at 70mm,
and you can also use this to see the reproduction,
which is interesting.
So this is 20mm.
This is the same shot, this is as close as you can get
at 20mm, but then you can zoom to 70 mm,
and you don't have to change distance that much.
I think it says here on the lens
that it's 0.82 feet, or 0.25 meters,
versus 0.99 feet, or 0.3 meters,
but from physically holding it,
it felt like the difference was like this,
like very, very subtle.
But you get to zoom all the way to 70mm,
so your reproduction goes up significantly.
I did a quick little browsing around online,
and I think this might have the best macro reproduction
for a standard zoom lens.
Again, at 70mm, not at 20mm.
At 20mm, you're getting this.
And I think it was 1:2.5 -ish,
is what I was getting, which isn't too bad at all.
But anyway, let's check the details here.
And as you can see, very, very sharp.
Even all these little bits here
on the needles, they look great.
And even at 20mm,
we're gonna have to zoom in even further,
but you can see, extremely sharp.
So good macro reproduction for a standard zoom
if you're using this as walkaround lens,
and very sharp results as well.
No complaints so far.
And then here, I was finally able to get
a little bit of sunstars.
The weather's been kind of dodgy here.
This is at f/22 at 20mm.
Now we're too zoomed in.
Looks like that.
Yeah, nice enough, whatever.
I don't know what people are looking for
when they look for sunstars, to be honest.
I dunno what the aesthetic quality is here that you want,
but here they are at 70mm.
So, once again, 20mm and 70mm.
I shot a lot of silhouettes this day when I went out,
but again, you can really see the sharpness.
Even completely silhouetted, but the bark here looks great.
And also, you can see there's very little issues
of flare in this particular shot,
but we go a little further into flare here.
More sunstars, but also creeping out across the frame.
So here's me creeping around the tree.
And you can see there is some flare.
It shoots across the frame,
but the contrast is maintained pretty well,
and the artifacts aren't completely egregious.
We've gotten to a point with these Sony lenses
from the G class and up where the coatings are pretty good
and we can expect pretty decent flare control,
and I'd say that we're getting that here as well.
And next up, let's talk about distortion,
because this has a lot of it.
So at 70mm, you can see we're getting
some serious pincushion distortion here.
Big curves, bowing inward.
And then this shot was at 50 and change millimeters,
and it's still there a little bit.
Now, these are non-corrected images,
but I often don't like to focus
too much on distortion or vignetting.
We'll talk about both of them, but it's because generally,
people are using these lenses with a Sony body,
and then all the corrections are gonna be done.
The only time that you're not gonna have corrections
is if you get the lens right away
before Lightroom is updated, or whatever program you use,
and so you don't have profiles.
So in this case, I had to go in,
and I had to use the 24 to 70 profiles,
and then you could make it work.
That actually worked pretty well.
But if you shoot JPEGs or video,
then the corrections are done in camera,
and the distortion is minimal.
It's not that you're gonna adapt this lens
to a system that's not gonna have corrections
'cause it's E-mount, you know, so anyway
but there is considerable distortion
at 70mm in the pincushion variety.
And then again, this is the 70mm
a little bit closer though, so shooting a fence
at 70mm and you can see again there's some pincushion
but if we shoot at 20mm
then we're getting major barrel distortion.
And if we get closer to the fence, you can see it.
It's very obvious.
And as you might expect, right in the middle
of the focal range looking that 45mm zone
it's actually the distortion is almost nonexistent.
It's perfect, so just that's your crossover point where
it starts going one way to the other.
But while we're here we can actually look
at the corner sharpness as well.
So this is focused in the center
and I should be far enough back
that curvature won't be too big of an issue.
But if we jump in here
you can see very, very sharp, great results.
I'm at like 250% now in the center.
And if we move out to the sides,
and I would say in like 80, 90,
maybe even more percent of the frame is good,
it doesn't start to fall off until the absolute edges.
Let's look down here, same thing.
You can see like we're good here.
Little bit of softness, a little bit worse,
a little bit worse, but you know,
for perspective that's down around here.
So we're keeping really good sharpness
through the bulk of the frame, which that's excellent.
And then at 70mm, similar result,
let's punch right in.
And yeah, I mean that's really, really sharp, 200%.
And if we move out to the edges
again we're maintaining our sharpness.
Yeah, pretty well almost to the extreme corner.
Like this is great.
And then you can start to see it
right around here that's a little bit soft.
So again, like we're getting like 90%,
95% of the frame is having excellent sharpness.
Vignetting is the same sort of situation here.
So this is 20mm, no corrections,
you can see some serious vignetting.
And then this is 70mm and it's mostly gone.
And then this was at 35mm.
To give you a sense of, you know, 20, 35, 50.
So I would say even by 35 the vignetting
is mostly controlled.
Now let's talk about bokeh.
So this is at 20mm, f/4, obviously
and this is probably one of the things
where you're gonna say, okay
this is maybe the lens' weakness.
If you compare it to the G Masters, it's not as good here.
You can see that we're getting onion ringing.
There's a distinct sort of outer membrane look.
And at 20mm can still see the aperture blades.
I believe it's a nine-bladed aperture.
And you can see them even as wide open as this lens can go.
And if we put those lights in the corner at f/4,
they're getting cut into significantly in the corner.
And you can see it's not until,
I mean, you gotta get pretty deep into the frame
to remove that sort of cutting in effect.
Or you can stop down,
which here we're stopped down to f/6.3,
and you know they start to round out a bit more
now in this area, but still cut in over here
and then still you can see the blade,
and this just doesn't look very pleasing by my eye.
Minimum focus at 70mm
with the fairy lights in the background.
This is as good as you're gonna get
if you like big out of focus orbs.
But as you can see still serious onion ring,
still an outer membrane, so that's not going away.
And there is a little bit of cat's eyeing,
not too terrible, but you can see it.
We got a few little lemons floating around over here,
and if we stop down to f/6.3 on the 70mm
then you get this result, you get rid of the cat's eye
but now you're starting to see the aperture blades,
and there's no real cutting in or anything.
It's not too bad, but yeah,
the nine-bladed aperture showing its face here.
So really you're only gonna get like circles
at 70mm f/4 or 50mm and beyond at f/4.
So it's fine, you know, it's fine.
The bokeh is not great on this.
It's not a G Master but it's okay.
If you're shooting 70mm up close
you're gonna get some decent results.
But anything beyond that, stopping down shoot at 20mm.
It's not gonna be great for bokeh.
But one more time, I wanted to show the minimum focus distance.
'cause that's where I think this lens really shines.
So here is a 20mm shot at f/4 of my watch,
and if I zoom in nice and sharp, good details,
all little line, it looks great.
But to give you an idea, all I did was zoom that.
I didn't change how close I could get
and I can still keep focus
at 70mm, and then this is the result.
So it's significant how much closer you can get.
And then I would say for macro reproduction,
this isn't bad at all.
And again, nice and sharp.
Now these last couple shots show quite a few things.
First of all, we're at 70mm
so again we're seeing the pin cushion
versus 20mm, we're seeing the barrel.
But I also tested the sort of parfocalness of the lens,
which is the lens's ability to keep focus
when you zoom, and I'm not talking about autofocus.
I put the manual focus on
and I went to 70mm, checked focus, had it good, zoomed back
to 20mm, checked it, and in and out like that.
And at 70mm, as you can see, I focused
in this area and it's extremely sharp, looks great
but even when you zoom out to 20mm
you still keep that sharpness.
So my copy of this lens anyway was extremely parfocal.
I was getting great results at both ends of the zoom range.
But also when we go to this is at 35mm
you can see that the distortion situation is much
better controlled again, 70, 20, 35.
And also we can evaluate this image for color
and we're getting really bold, nice colors that are
you know, there's not much shift going on.
Our grays look great, neutral, just really sharp,
really great for this is probably one
of the best expectations versus
you know what I got out of it.
I was like, okay, what a 20-70mm f/4?
Let's put it on and I take a shot, I was like, wow,
sharp, good colors, looks great,
no chromatic aberration, bing bang like this, it's good.
Now the other aspect of focusing
in and out like that is to see
what the focus breathing situation was gonna be like.
And I have a clip here to show you.
The results are great, fantastic.
And again, this was shot on the a1,
so I have no focus breathing compensation in camera.
Why not, I don't know, that's a Sony issue
that they need to fix with firmware, but I don't have it.
So we're only seeing the actual focus breathing
of the lens by itself.
So here at 20mm going from minimum focus to infinity
you can see the frame barely breathes, like it's small.
And then if we go into 70mm and do the same thing again
we're getting very little focus breathing.
And then here I did a test where I brought my hand
in front of the lens so we could see
if you're popping in and out of focus,
what kind of focus breathing to expect.
And again, excellent results.
And as you can see in that clip
the autofocus was smooth and fast.
It's got their XD Linear Motors
like all their other recent lenses.
So you're getting just really fast, smooth,
silent autofocus performance,
which you know looks good in video.
And for photo, I did some near and far
quick AF-C tests, and this is what it looks like.
And as you can see it just zaps
to the background and foreground.
No hesitation, very smooth, very fast,
no complaints at all when it comes to the focus Motors
and the autofocus continuous performance on this lens.
Just great.
Okay, now I've got the lens
on my main camera there, the a7 IV
but I have focus breathing compensation turned off.
So we're gonna see how it looks in its natural state.
And the autofocus, of course.
And this shot will be a little less shallow
than my regular shot because I'm at f/4
instead of the regular f/1.8 or f/2 that I shoot at.
So let's evaluate all this
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Thanks for listening.
Also, consider this as an APS-C option too.
If you were somebody who got a recent FX30
or you shoot a lot of APS-C,
this becomes like a 30-105mm lens,
which is actually pretty good focal length
to have that option to switch to be 20-70mm on full frame
or 30-105mm on your other one.
But that f/4 is gonna cost you.
So really, if you're somebody,
I see this as like a walkaround lens
for somebody outdoors where f/4 isn't the issue
and they want the ability to, you know, shoot
at 20mm to do maybe some architectural stuff,
again where f/4 isn't an issue, but then go all the way
to 70mm and get better macro reproduction
than what you're gonna get on those competing lenses
where again, f/4 isn't a huge issue because
you're already getting such a shallow depth of field.
And to that it does an extremely good job
with great chromatic aberration,
great focus breathing, it's parfocal,
and really great performance all the way across the board.
It just comes down to f/4, light and small, compact.
I don't think I'm gonna get this one, I don't really think
that it serves a purpose for me, but as far
as whether or not I recommend it, I would say yes.
If it serves a purpose for you
based on its focal length, its aperture, its size
and weight and build and all that, then yes, quality-wise
I can definitely recommend it
as being an excellent performer for what it does
as long as what it does is what you need.
Alright... I'm done.
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