Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM

I feel bad about wide angle. Well maybe not bad, but like I’m missing something; as if it’s something I should be better at.

I am not a massive fan. There’s too much in the frame; too much to get right. I’ve been trying with the Olympus 9-18mm (more on that soon). I can cope with that a bit more because it’s tiny, so it doesn’t stop me from carrying a different more “normal” lens.

Then the London Flickr group proposed going for a photowalk at the Christmas lights, and naturally this got me thinking about lenses, and that got me thinking wide angle and…oh why the hell not.

Mount	Sony E (full frame)
Weight	680g
Rented	13-16th December 2024
From	Wex

In general you can say two things for the Sony G Master lenses. They’re absolutely lovely and they are super expensive. I own exactly zero of them. I was hoping that my experience with the 16-35mm would be similar to mine with the 24-70mm f/2.8. And, in short, it mostly was.

What you get here is a beautifully made lens that is sharp, very reliable with focus, has amazing colour rendition and renders out-of-focus areas smoothly.

Sony also do a 12-24mm f/2.8 G Master lens, and this to me illustrates a major saving grace of the 16-35m. Of the 110 photos I took in the weekend that I rented the lens, 28 were at 35mm and almost exactly half were above 24mm. An equal split each way from 24mm might not surprise, but this is a lens I rented because it’s wide! I inevitably took plenty of photos at 16mm just because I could and I wanted to try that end, but it’s the ones at 35mm that I like the most.

To this extent I can’t really blame or use this in a review of the lens; I can praise it for having a lovely 35mm image, and I can be thankful it’s not only good for the very wide. The fault lies with me; I find it hard to compose when so much is in the slot, and the slightest misalignment makes images wonky.

Part of the reason for me starting Lens Flair was to push me to use lenses; mostly those I owned, but the very first review was of a rented lens. It’s to make me use lenses and appreciate the different pictures that can be taken with different kit. To this extent the top picture of the two above makes me appreciate wide angle a bit more; to see that I’m shooting down from street level you need the wider view, and I like that it gives you a sense of a different (warmer!) world underground.

I was a bit surprised (again, lack of experience) how shallow the depth of field can be. The closest focusing distance for this lens is 28cm. At that distance, and wide open at f/2.8, your depth of field is 1cm at 35mm and 5cm at 16mm. I think in my picture of the remembrance rose above the depth of field is too shallow (I should have accepted a higher ISO here and gone for a tighter aperture). Again – fault of me, the photographer, not the lens, and it shows you that even wide a wide-angle lens you have the option for some really lovely background blur.

Here are a couple more taken wide:

I like both of these. The Christmas lights were in general a gaudy and naff experience, and Coco Chanel’s display was every bit part of this, but being able to fit it all in and capture good detail was nice. I really like the escalator; it’s one of those examples where using a longer lens and moving back wouldn’t get the same picture or sense at all. In this example the image is pretty sharp across the whole frame. Strangely it’s less so in the second image of this post (featuring the cathedral); in that case sharp in the centre but a bit blurry on the left edge.

There’s inevitably some distortion on these images that is quickly fixed in Lightroom (and no doubt in in-camera JPEGs). I like a bit of vignetting (so I don’t correct it), but there isn’t too much from this lens in my shots.

Something I hadn’t expected about a 16-35mm lens was how, in general, it’s pretty flexible as a walkabout lens (with one issue I’ll pick up below). In crowds you can get pretty close to people and still fit them in; sure they’ll look weird at wide angles so it’s not going to be the best choice for portraits, but for something while out and about, especially in a busy city scene where moving back isn’t always possible, it was pretty good.

I promised you a “but”. The lens is fairly large in all senses. 680g just feels heavy enough for it to be a bit of a burden at times, especially as it’s very wide (88mm) so more noticeable to take it in and out of a bag. The lens is 12cm long (longer with the hood on); not huge, but certainly this is something you notice when you’re carrying about.

The lens is built to last. The flip side of the above is that I had no worries at all about damaging this thing. It feels sturdy and even those this was a rental, and so will have had many hands using it (and it’s not a recently released lens either), the zoom and focus rings feel well made and smooth.

For a Sony G Master lens this has fewer buttons etc than I expected. I think the Mark I (this lens), coming out in 2017, was just a bit too early for all the extra bits you get on newer lenses. So there’s no aperture ring here, and obviously no click option or lock option for that ring. There’s no zoom-ring tension control; in fact all we have is an autofocus/manual focus selection switch and a custom button. I’m not complaining (although I do sometimes like an aperture ring).

I’ll firstly acknowledge that one weekend isn’t long enough to use a lens. It’s great for a first impression, but clearly I can’t say if this is a lens that I pick up when heading out. I can say I do often pick up the Olympus 9-18mm lens, which is perhaps the extreme budget version of this. Being objective this is a cracking lens. The quality is exceptional, with my only image-quality wish being an improvement to edge sharpness, not that it makes a big difference.

The best possible change for the lens would be it being cheaper and it being lighter/smaller. On the first point; it’s not going to happen. Interestingly Sigma, who make some just amazing lenses for Sony cameras but at about half the price of the Sony version, have no equivalent for this lens. Tamron, always ones for a weird lens, have a 17-28mm (too wide I think for me) and a 17-50mm f/4 (now that is interesting). But if you want the wider aperture and the more zoomed-in end of the focal range this Sony lens is unique.

Except it’s not any more. Sony have a released a version II, and on the second point above it is lighter and a bit smaller. And guess who has hired that one as well; review coming soon…

See the album of this lens’ photos on Flickr with the above photos.