Lens Review

Sony FE 24 mm f/2.8 G, FE 40 mm f/2.5 G, FE 50 mm f/2.5 G

Sony India launched these three lenses for Sony E-mount camera bodies on March 23, 2021. With this addition, Sony now has a total of 64 E-mount lenses for full frame and APS-C sensor bodies. These lenses are super light and make a perfect companion to vloggers, ilm makers and those starting with photography. They are well suited for ‘stills’ as well as ‘video’. You don’t have to buy all three together; you can buy them individually if you wish to.

Design & Build Quality

All the three lenses are from Sony’s wellknown G-series. They are physically the same size and also have identical size ilter thread – 46 mm. Though lightweight, they appear well made for the purpose. All have identical metal inish and are dust and moisture resistant. Each lens has ten contacts on the lens mount for communicating data to the camera body. Individual weights are: 162 g (24 mm), 173 g (40 mm) and 174 g (50 mm). The lenses are made in China. Let’s see how they fare on our test bench.

Key Features

As mentioned earlier, all the three lenses are very small in size and offer internal focussing so that the overall length of the lens is maintained.

These lenses utilise a Linear Response Motor which make manual focussing more responsive to the turn of the focus ring for easy and accurate focus – the photographer is in greater control over the changes in focus (allows better ine-tuning) as he/she turns the focussing ring. The Linear Response Motor also keeps focus breathing to a bare minimum during video. The Linear Motors also provide fast and accurate AF when focus tracking.

The aperture control ring has click stops (detents, in 1/3 steps) but the user can either opt for the click stops or a smooth transition using the provided ‘Click ON/Off’ switch. sing the click stops, a ‘stills’ photographer can accurately set the aperture even in dark conditions (three clicks means a change of 1 stop); a video photographer/ vlogger on the other hand can opt for the smooth transition which would prevent the in-built microphone on the camera body to pick up the clicking sounds as the aperture is changed. All three lenses offer real-time eye AF support with certain Sony camera bodies. This is a valuable feature, especially for video.

A neat Focus Hold Button is available. Once you focus at the required point, pressing this button will lock the focus; press it again to release the focus lock. The user can assign a different function to this button via the camera’s custom settings.

Ergonomics

We reviewed these three lenses using a Sony A7R III body. The lenses being very light in weight were easy to carry along the whole day. One thing I noticed was that attaching and detaching the lenses was a bit dif icult since the it was very tight. Other than that, the lenses were easy to use. All three have the same (46 mm) ilter thread.

Performance

All the three lenses performed very well. Autofocus was quick and accurate, and being quite ‘fast’, allowed us to shoot even in low light.