Sony FE 28 mm f/2 review - Distortion

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Sony FE 28 mm f/2

8 April 2019

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

While conducting our tests I routinely switch off or deactivate all compensations of lens or sensor aberrations in cameras I use. In the case of the tested Sony FE 28 mm f/2, though, not everything can be switched off. If you attach this lens to a camera the vignetting correction and chromatic aberration correction switch-off functions remain active so you can opt out of automatic correction of these. Still you don't have such a possibility when it comes to distortion because that menu position becomes inactive, simply changing into 'automatic'.

Of course if you are determined you can always check the level of distortion, provided by the Sony opitcs without any correction – it's enough you develop not only JPEG but also RAW files using the dcraw program.

The results of that operation show clearly that the producer forces distortion correction by camera's software for a reason. When not corrected, it reaches a value of −2.41% on the APS-C sensor so it is visible without any problems. Still you face real issues on full frame where you deal with a value of −4.82%, a very high distortion level for this focal length.

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If you stick to JPEG file format straight from the camera deformations are far less visible, due to correction of these deformation and cropping of images after the correction. On the APS-C sensor the distortion amounts to just −0.19% so it is practically zero; on full frame it increases to still not especially bothersome level of −0.60%