Sony FE 40 mm f/2.5 G
11. Summary
Pros:
- solid and sealed mechanical construction,
- excellent image quality in the frame centre,
- very good image quality on the edge of the APS-C sensor,
- slight lateral chromatic aberration,
- lack of problems with spherical aberration,
- moderate distortion,
- properly corrected coma,
- slight astigmatism,
- moderate vignetting on the APS-C sensor,
- good performance against bright light,
- quite fast, silent and accurate autofocus.
Cons:
- a bit of problems with longitudinal chromatic aberration,
- high vingetting on full frame,
- exorbitant price.
An idea behind a series of small fixed-focal lenses and their price-point are another matter. I do like the f/2.5 aperture fastness in 40 and 50 mm instruments – time and again I've suggested that much. In case a producer decides to launch small lenses with a moderately fast aperture, let them have something extra, a feature that would make them different from standard journalistic zooms. As many of these zooms feature f/2.8 the Sony FE 40 mm f/2.5 G offers you an advantage of a better maximum relative aperture.
One good decision doesn't mean the rest is good as well. An idea of small, moderately fast lenses might be successful under one condition: a good price. A price tag of 700 Euro is, in my humble opinion, far too high and it might be a serious drawback when it comes to the popularity of this series.
Please Support UsIf you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free. |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Another problem is the choice of focal lengths. The Sony FE system has a lot of 35-55 mm instruments - here you get next two added to that bunch, and they differ between themselves just by 10 mm. What is the chance anybody would be tempted to buy both of them? Not that high, in our opinion. On the other hand, if the first of them was a 30-35 mm instrument and the second one a 55-60 mm lens, the chances to sell them both would increase.
Still I trust it's not the last word of Sony when it comes to a series of small G lenses – we are going to see other models that will make the choice even richer. I can imagine they might launch constructions with such parameters as, say, 2.8/20 (eventually 3.5/20) and 2.5/70, of course preserving the same compact dimensions. Are we going to see such lenses in the not so distant future? Time will tell. Of course I will keep my fingers crossed for the next launches.
