Sony 20mm F2.8 E-Mount on A7r II in Crop Mode?

[Guest Colin Scott Johnson]

I've been playing with this little pancake as a potential street lens for the A7r II.

The crop mode of the A7r II gives an effective focal length of 30mm, so pretty close to 28mm and the RAW files are 18.8 GB.

The lens is tiny and light at only 69g, making the A7r II + lens = 694g compared to an A7s with 35mm F2.8 = 609g.

I can shoot it compressed RAW and in silent mode, because I don't care about artifacts for street work.

 

The only downside is increased noise but that's something the A7r II handles very well and for daylight shooting @ F8 on the street, this may be a great lens.

I'll have to wait for the rain to ease before I can test it more thoroughly, but inside the house it looked pretty good.

 

This was wide open @ F2.8

 

 

 

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[Guest Colin Scott Johnson]

That should be 18.8 MB - Happy Holidays

[Al Pha]

That should be 18.8 MB - Happy Holidays

 

Good update! 18.8 GB would be scary! Reviews on this have been better than for the 16mm but not exactly overwhelmingly good so I've been hesitating. Have you tried it for video? If yes, how's the breathing? Have you tried the 16mm on your A7Rii? I just sold my A7ii and will keep using my A6000 only until Sony's Spring announcements. However, I think that whatever new bodies they create (A9, A99ii ??) will be too expensive so I'll probably buy a used A7Rii as my next main body.

[Gilgenberg]

i like this lens also on my A7

 

here without Cropmode:

 

image quality is much better and sharper than here......don´t know why the uploaded file looks so blured?

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[Golem]

I really don't get why anyone uses crop mode

for stills. The posted non-crop photo is about

80% of the original maximum pixel count. This

I know cuz I use various Maxxum lenses on a

A7-II via an LA-E2, which not being an LA-E4

knocks off about the same amount of corners

and margins as seen in the posted samples.  

  

One of my faves is 28-70/2.8 which effectively

becomes a 32-80/2.8. I'm not about buy a new

100% full frame adapter just to recover such a

small loss of image area, especially since it's

at the margins and corners, which are not the

finest quality areas, cuz these are old film-era

lenses forced to deal with digital-era filter-and-

sensor packs.

  

FWIW, I use the digital zoom feature at 1.2X,

and sometimes at 1.1X, and this fills the view

with the clean rectangular part of the image so

I don't hafta compose my shots within a funky

fuzzy frame with blacked out corners.

  

It's the use of 1.1X and 1.2X digital zoom that

informs me that I'm using 80% of the original

maximum pixel count. I've also checked the

image size in post. Dependent on how much

digital zoom a given lens requires, the images

run about 18.5 to 20.5MP. Fortunately my old

24/2.8 suffers the absolute LEAST of all :-) It

just looses a coupla mm in each corner. 

  

Soooooo ..... forget about crop mode for stills !

[Gilgenberg]

Golem.......how does work  digital zoom on A7?

[Gilgenberg]

o.k........... i found out how digital zoom works but only for jpg........... not for raw files )-:

[Guest Colin Scott Johnson]

I really don't get why anyone uses crop mode

for stills. The posted non-crop photo is about

80% of the original maximum pixel count. This

I know cuz I use various Maxxum lenses on a

A7-II via an LA-E2, which not being an LA-E4

knocks off about the same amount of corners

and margins as seen in the posted samples.  

  

One of my faves is 28-70/2.8 which effectively

becomes a 32-80/2.8. I'm not about buy a new

100% full frame adapter just to recover such a

small loss of image area, especially since it's

at the margins and corners, which are not the

finest quality areas, cuz these are old film-era

lenses forced to deal with digital-era filter-and-

sensor packs.

  

FWIW, I use the digital zoom feature at 1.2X,

and sometimes at 1.1X, and this fills the view

with the clean rectangular part of the image so

I don't hafta compose my shots within a funky

fuzzy frame with blacked out corners.

  

It's the use of 1.1X and 1.2X digital zoom that

informs me that I'm using 80% of the original

maximum pixel count. I've also checked the

image size in post. Dependent on how much

digital zoom a given lens requires, the images

run about 18.5 to 20.5MP. Fortunately my old

24/2.8 suffers the absolute LEAST of all :-) It

just looses a coupla mm in each corner. 

  

Soooooo ..... forget about crop mode for stills !

@Golem 3 reasons. Read my post.

#1 lens size - the lens is the smallest I can find for the Sony A7.

#2 lens weight - at 69g it is hard to beat

#3 RAW file size. Approximately 1/4 the size of the A7r II uncompressed size. This is a BIG deal, because the A7r II locks up writing the big files to disk.

 

All of these are extremely important to a street photographer and someone traveling as light as possible...

I also happen to own the lens for my A6000 and it's nice to be able to re-use it and get reasonable quality.