First shots from FE 2.8/90 Macro G OSS

[biglouis]

First samples from the new Sony FE 2.9/90 Macro G OSS lens that I purchased yesterday.

 

NOTE: in each one of the samples you can click through to a full-sized jpeg. These may take some time to load.

 

Nice colours

 

f2.8 iso200

 

Not too sure about the bokeh in this one. A bit too swirly, I think.

 

f2.8 iso200

 

The main purpose for including the next shot is to demonstrate the incredible sharpness of this lens. Take a look at the passenger on the top deck of the bus in full size mode.

 

f8 iso320

 

This is where it gets really interesting. Take a look at the full size of this image and at the face of the performers in the next two photographs. Considering this is wide open I think it is pretty damn good.

 

f2.8 iso400

 

f2.8 iso400

 

An example for landscape purposes. Lots of detail even up to the edges (you can see how the pigeons on the left have found a convenient place to shelter).

 

f8 iso64

 

I took this final one in manual focus mode focused on the knot of shanks at a relatively slow speed. I think it demonstrates how easy it is to manually focus the lens and also the value of inbuilt OSS stabilisation.

 

f8 iso400 1/50

 

Bottom line, this is a very sharp lens, with very nice colouration. It compliments my A7R very well and I suspect it will also be very good on the upcoming A7RII. The AF to Manual override is very well thought out, you pull back the focus ring and it engages the distance scale. The scale itself is not only very clear but shows both the distance and the macro magnification factor (e.g. 1:1, 1:2 etc). The focus throw is large and very accommodating for macro purposes. The focus is very smooth but in my opinion not stiff enough. This means it is easy to overshoot your target but I expect with practise I will become more accurate. Viewfinder magnification and focus peaking are automatically engaged when manually focussing (although the magnification is a preference set in the camera and can be turned off).

 

From these samples I cannot fault the image quality, the colouration or the ergonomics of the lens. But beware it is a very big object and will take up the space equivalent to a large zoom lens in your camera bag.

 

LouisB

 

PS Quick addendum of a not very good shot taken on my desk of a size comparison between the 90, 24-70 and 55 FE lenses. I told you. It is a BIG lens. I can't believe how it dwarfs the 24-70 which I consider to be a big lens.

 

[PHIL RUDIN]

First day out with my new Sony A7 II and Sony 90mm F/2.8 macro. I am making the transition from Olympus OMD E-M1 and 60mm macro. No sharpening added to images. Head shot ISO-400, F/2.8, 1/250th, full shot, ISO-400, F/2.8, 1/2500th, flowers ISO-400 F/2.8 1/250th, yellow ISO-400, F/7.1, 1/125th,

band ISO-100, F/2.8, 1/125th.

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[foto-fanatic]

Great shots thank you heaps for posting this is exactly what we want to see real world images and thoughts, i'm disappointed sony still hasn't released this lens in aus at camera stores yet, disgraceful!

May i politely enquire as to how efficient accurate and fast is the auto focus in real world scenarios such as the images above?

[PHIL RUDIN]

After shooting with optical steady both on and off along on the lens along with the in body sensor stabilization my best results have come from having both lens and body IS turned on. My standard 1:1 (life size) macro test was done handheld for the two currency shots. The first is to demonstrate how I test every new lens for closes focus using a 35mm slide mount taped to a window for back light. Both shots were handheld a ISO-400, F/6.3 with the first at 1/20th of a second and the closer shot at 1/13th, both appear quite sharp for such slow shutter speeds at such high magnification. The close shot was taken with the lens in manual focus and zoomed to 1:1. The door handle shot used AF ISO-400 F/4 1/250th and all were shot in A priority. 

 

Sony has taken a great feature from the Olympus 60mm macro and adding a 0.5 meter to Life Size Focus Range Limiter. Many of the macro lenses being used with the Sony mirrorless cameras via adapter do not have this feature. It greatly speeds up auto focus within the range and is a must have for my work shooting macro and super macro underwater where you can't switch the limiting range once in the water. In LightRoom 6 I was not able to find a field in the meta data indicating if the image was shot with AF or in manual focus. 

 

The A7 II is the first full frame Sony camera I have used and besides finding my way through the menu which is always a strain with a new camera system these are a few of my preliminary bitches. First I would rather have the menu button on the right hand side of the camera where I only need one hand to access the menu, second the flash card door seems to pop open with very little pressure and I have found it not fully locked several times already, I also find the weather sealing for the flash card door to be for the most part non-existent, not good for a guy who spends a great deal of time photographing in and around the water. 

 

I am quite pleased with 90mm macro after three days, the game plan will be to use the lens underwater with the new A7r II and the new Nauticam NA-A7r II housing when it is released in the next few months. Until then I will continue to evaluate this new macro on land. 

 

P.S. If anyone is interested in checking out some of my underwater work the July/Aug issue of Underwater Photography magazine should be posting sometime tomorrow with three of my articles, go to uwpmag.com for a FREE PDF download. The reviews include the Canon G7X with Fantasea housing, the Olympus E-M5 mk II with Ikelite housing and a review of Ikelite's fluorescence equipment.

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[Reality Studio]

Thanks I always wondered about that. I wasn't sure if both lens and body stabilization worked in tandem for an even better result, or if the camera turned off lens ois when it was used in body.

 

 

After shooting with optical steady both on and off along on the lens along with the in body sensor stabilization my best results have come from having both lens and body IS turned on.

[foto-fanatic]

@PR~Yes why build a metal body only to have a cheap plastic door i agree and mine has way too much play in it, the gaps are too wide between spaces, i HATE poor tolerances in engineering and it comes open too.

I almost thought of dismantling the plastic door and casting it in aluminium and putting it back on with a home made rubber gasket, the port doors/covers on the other side are el cheapio too, very rude.

 

I sometimes knock the c3 button when changing aperture too, come off it soni, you want the pros to switch? make a pro camera in all aspects you cheeky beggars. I love my cam tho, have to qualify.

Thanks for the link il have a good look at it so far this lens is looking great to my eyes, my sony g zoom is meant to be dust proof, but it has some dust specs in it already, only 3 mnths old?

 

Im wondering if we could fashion our own lens mount rubber seal out of surgical latex cut into a circular gasket slipped over the mount etc,

what do you think Phil, worth a try?

I wonder if a fine bead of silicon gasket goo around the edge of the sd card door too?

[biglouis]

The more I use the lens the more I realise what a damn fine piece of kit it is. Sure, it is heavy but I have now understood the various feature a lot more. The focus limiter and the OSS are excellent and make hand held macro photography worthwhile.

 

I have mainly been using my A7S with the lens because hand held I can jack the iso up to 3200 and stop the lens down to f22 and get high speeds and good results. Once again the A7S proves why it is the high iso king.

 

I've done very little to these photos other than crop them in Lightroom and export them as jpeg.

 

I'm not saying any of these images are anything special but this is a lens which I feel will reward me over time the more I get used to it and once I settle down and (a) use a tripod which I really should do, and ( invest in a flash of some kind. In the meantime... some bug piccies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[foto-fanatic]

Amazing, great colours, look pretty sharp too, this lens may be the value proposition against the batis really, could even be better, in a more flexible way, this is just a hypothesis and pure speculative small talk. Good on you for posting up, i want this sony lens, they are taking forever to release it here in aus.

[landlover]

Just got my lens in time for a trip to Australia. Overall I love the image quality. For me the autofocus is still frustrating and I found it often really struggled to latch on to a very obvious subject. The manual is pretty good for close up shots though

 

 

 

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[foto-fanatic]

What af settings are you using?

[landlover]

I usually shoot wide open, with fairly low ISO on A setting. But often the lens hunts for focus up and down for 5 seconds then gives up.

 

 

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[seb]

I'll have the lense for a week now. And as there are not a lot of pictures with that lens yet. I'll share mine... I'm an amateur and shoot only for my lightroom and friends.

Sadly not much time to test it, but a few shoots were made:

 

https://flic.kr/s/aHskgcH3V7

 

All images are made out of RAWs without any postprocessing. A few of them may have automatic lens correction in lightroom.

As you can see, I tried different settings but not on a scientific way.

Low vs. high ISO, without vs. with flash (soft box, front flash, fill flash, hss,...), handheld vs. tripot, long vs. short exposure and different f-stops.

I made also some portraits and whole body shots. They are really great. color, sharpness and bouquet are stunnish. Only the quite slow AF was a little annoying. But that's normal with macros, I've heard. I'll never post portraits of people online, so you only find two face-shots of myself.

[christer]

Gevalias kryddor, Lindells våg; my youth. Even without the nostalgic effect, very nice pictures on your flickr site.

 

How effective did you find the lens IS?

[seb]

Hehe, thanks. My girlfriend lived for a while in Sweden. And we are up there about two times a year. Sweden is a part of my life.

 

Actualy I can compare it to an Contax-Zeiss Planar 85mm/f1.4 and the Sony-Zeiss 55mm/f1.8. Both without OSS. The A7 I'm using don't have IS.

With both lenses I'll getting troubles at 1/60sec and longer. With the 90/2.8 it feels much saver. But I didn't test it seriously.

 

If you look at the pictures. The first 6 are all handhelded. Most in macro-distance and "one shot only". So yes, It looks like the OSS of the lense works very fine.

[andyfowlie]

I have been using this fantastic lens with my Sony a6000 for the last 4 weeks, some results can be seen here...

 

http://500px.com/photo/114103199/hovering-by-andy-fowlie

 

http://500px.com/photo/115526391/butterfly-by-andy-fowlie

 

http://500px.com/photo/115067951/an-eye-for-an-eye-by-andy-fowlie

 

http://500px.com/photo/115226869/the-great-clock-by-andy-fowlie

 

I love this lens, especially how sharp and detailed the pictures are. If these are the results with the a6000 then I cant wait to try it on a full frame camera...

[Lotus Eater]

After shooting with optical steady both on and off along on the lens along with the in body sensor stabilization my best results have come from having both lens and body IS turned on.

 

Isn't that bound to be the case, though?

 

I haven't tested this with my lens yet, but my understanding is that when OSS is activated on lens, it uses a combination of the lens' OSS and in-camera stabilisation, which is effectively 5-Axis. When the switch is set to off, all stabilisation systems are deactivated.  You cannot switch off OSS on the lens and get 5-Axis in camera (and I don't see why you'd want to) - it is all or nothing.

[PHIL RUDIN]

This is something I am not clear on and that is why I tried different combinations. My understanding is that the longer the lens, especially for lenses over 300mm the less effective the sensor stabilization becomes and the greater need for in-lens stabilization. This is the case with the Olympus system which I have just left not sure with Sony.

[seb]

It looks like there is:

both (pitch/yaw from lens, roll/x/y from body)

oss (oss-lens with no-IBIS body like A7/A7S)

ibis (all from body, only available with non-OSS lenses)

off (no OSS-lens, no-IBIS body or turned off (either camera or lens))

both > oss > ibis > off

 

http://www.sony.net/Products/di/en-gb/products/v6cd/feature.html?contentsTop=1

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/55318989