Works great with A7. For the price, you can't beat it.
Before you whine about the performance, put the current firmware on both your camera and lens (as of this writing, that would be 3.20 and .2 respectively), and then go into the settings and enable Phase Detect.
AF is fast up to F4, after that the camera needs more time to hunt. For someone like me coming from a Canon 40 2.8 STM w/Commlite adapter, this is not a big deal, and is still way faster than any adapted lens.
Corners are soft and hazy wide-open. In any case, 99.9% of the time your audience is going to marvel at how blurred the background is, while the other .1% is measuring the bokeh balls with a caliper for uniformity. Who cares? It's a portrait lens, for crying out loud. Stop-down if it bothers you. Beyond F5.6, this lens is sharp as nails and produces landscape scenes with stunning detail.
This lens is light-weight. I can see myself traveling with just this lens.
It's a 50mm lens, it produces beautiful images on the A7, and most importantly, it doesn't cost half the price of the A7. Believe me, nobody is going to look at your image shot with this lens and say , "Aha! You didn't shoot this with the $900 Zeiss!".
Incredible lens. Beautiful and sharp! This was my first buy getting the Sony a6000. Keep in mind that with an aps-c sensor this is pretty close to an 85mm. I do lots of portrait so it was perfect for me. Not so great in close tight corners such as indoor photos that are limited to space.
It's extremely light and doesn't feel cheap, the materials are made of a hard plastic but has a great matte feel. You won't have to worry about finger prints, the focus ring is top notch, very smooth and fast auto focus as it is a native lens to Sony.
Great performance for a native lens for Sony's full frame E-mounts. I use this mostly for my portrait photography sessions with my models, friends and also promoting products if I don't need a macro lens for it.
Pros:
- Great price point for beginners portrait photography
- Wide aperture for a good shallow depth at F/1.8
- Sharp quality and sustains details
- Fast and native lens
- AF helps a lot on this and its quick
Cons:
- Feels like high quality plastic and some metal
I've shot some studio portraits with this lens and it works great - especially for under two hundred bones. Not as sharp as some pro lenses in the 55mm range but you can get some quality results.
This was the first lens I got for my A7R II. I wanted a lens right away and this was cheap and available. Its a bright lens at F1.8, but it's a bit soft at that aperture. Autofocus is not the fastest. And I was quite surprised by how loud it is. Probably one of the loudest, noisiest lenses I've ever owned. Which probably makes the autofocus feel even slower, listening to it hunt around for focus. Manual focus is nice and smooth though. IQ is fine, especially for the price, and it's a very lightweight lens for traveling. Overall, for the price, it's fine, not exceptional, but fine. I'd give it three stars but the price is just fantastic for a full frame 50mm f1.8. If you're on a budget, go for it. If you're not on a strict budget perhaps consider the Sony SEL28F20 FE 28mm f/2 or if money is no object, the Sony Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA Lens.
Feature Product
- Large F1.8 maximum aperture enables beautiful defocusing effects, 7-blade circular aperture creates beautiful defocused bokeh
- Compact, lightweight design ideal for full-frame E-mount cameras, Aspherical element controls spherical aberration and coma
- Double-gauss configuration suppresses field curvature & distortion, Metal mount adds solid durability as well as a sophisticated feel, Fast DC motor focus actuator system drives all lens groups
- 75mm (35mm equivalent) focal length with APS-C sensor. Angle of View (APS-C) : 32 degree
- In-the-box: Hood (ALC-SH146), Lens front cap (ALC-F49S), Lens rear cap (ALC-R1EM)
Description
This 50mm Full-frame E-mount Fast Prime Lens offers a focal length that is perfect for portraiture and a range of other subjects. A bright F1.8 maximum aperture, 7-blade circular aperture and aspherical element deliver impressive image quality with beautifully defocused background bokeh, all in a surprisingly compact and lightweight package. Minimum focus distance is 1.48 feet. Maximum magnification is 0.14x. When using a flash always remove the lens hood and shoot at least 3.3 feet away from your subject
I bought this as a gift for my parents who have a Sony A7 II. The lens itself seem fine but the box was clearly opened despite being new. I purchased it from Focus Camera as a "new lens." It was definitely not new given the condition of the box.
For the lens, I tested it against my Zeiss Loxia 50 (an excellent manual focus lens for the Sony FE mount) on a Sony A7R II and the Zeiss is unsurprisingly sharper with better colors/contrast but the difference was small at best - you'd have to be a real pixel peeper like me to see a difference. The Zeiss is also 4x the cost of this lens without AF.
Autofocus performance with the latest firmware updates is good but not great. It hunts but not that bad - biggest issue is that while hunting the loud AF noise can be annoying. If you're a casual photographer, this is perfectly serviceable.
This lens is for someone who is a casual photographer or just dipping their toes into photography with a Sony A7 or A7 II. For more advanced users, I would recommend the Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8 or the Zeiss Loxia 50 if you're comfortable with manual focus. However, this lens is still a great bang for the buck.
I ordered this lens after reading a mix of the Pro's and Con's of it all. Despite the very superficial "Con's" of this lens, I have to say the quality is beautiful and looks extremely sleek on the A6XXX series (I personally shoot on an A6000). It has great depth of field, perfect for portraiture photos.
The Con's? The two biggest con's I've read are: 1.) The AF is slow, 2.) The AF is too loud. I'll only address #1 because I think a beep being too loud is beyond ridiculous to bump this lens down a star or so for it.
The AF does take a little bit longer than what I think all of us would like. Sometimes it'll snatch what you're not trying to get, so you're back to square one (something that can happen with any lens). Without a doubt though it is a valid argument to say that the AF takes a bit. By "a bit" I'm talking milliseconds to maybe a second or so. But on the same token you never know what can be potentially missed if you're trying to fire off shots.
The price is great, even better if you can find a gentle used one. I got mine from SaveCentral and shaved almost $100 off and the lens has absolutely no flaws.
Of course people are going to unjustifiably compare this lens to higher-end lenses, but just focusing on this particular Sony - FE 50mm, get it! You definitely won't regret it and neither will your clients (if you shoot commercially or are looking to get into it).
This is a lightweight, plastic lens. It shoots beautifully, though I do see what some other reviewers are talking about with regards to sharpness at the lower stops. It’s nice for gimbal use, if you’re looking for a lightweight, tighter lens. I had actually bought this used from Amazon Warehouse, and the day after I received it the price for a new one dropped to below what I hadn’t paid for a used one, which is annoying. Regardless, this is a nice, inexpensive lens that’s a good part of a lower-end kit. I think you can pull off most of what you’d need with this and not need the $1K Zeiss. The construction seems to be about the same as the Sony 10-18mm, for reference.
I have a Sony A7ii and tried a Canon 50mm with the Sigma adapter. That's not function for my need. Sometimes it focus well and sometimes not like 50/50. So I decided to buy the Sony 50mm f1.8 FE after reading a lot of reviews and looked a lot of videos. I wasn't expecting a reliable lens but my surprise it is and works very well for the price of $200. I bought it from Cameta Camera on Amazon. They sent it and arrived in 3 days in a very protective box.
The Sony 50mm f1.8 it's very light and the construction it's completely plastic. Excellent for travel. I used it last weekend in a Family Photoshoot and the results was very good. It's not very sharp compare to a Sigma 50 f1.4 art lens or the Sony 55mm but for the price it's a win win. With this 50mm f1.8 FE you get better sharpness at f2.8
Autofocus... sometimes it's fast sometimes it struggle a little but for my type of Photoshoots I do it works very good. It has firmware version 0.3 so it's not the same as 2 or 3 years ago. Try it....you will like it for the price. For Weddings better select de Sony 55mm or the G Master.
I bought this already expecting it to have a loud auto focus from reading a few reviews that have addressed the topic.
I assumed for the price I would be able to ignore the noise. Unfortunately that was not the case and I returned the lens to Amazon.*
The image quality was great, especially for the price, with better than expected bokeh.
The auto focus was a little slow and could make quick shooting a problem. If you want a portrait lens or one for landscape photography I would recommend this for the money but I do mostly amateur level street photography when I travel and the auto focus issue was a deal killer for me. The sound was loud enough to draw attention to the camera and pulled people and worse (for me) wildlife out of the moment.
This is very unfortunate as the Sony FE 50mm F1.8 was small and lightweight, something I look for due to me mostly using while traveling.
If you need a good prime in the 50mm range this really is a great lens for the price. But for my use, it was a poor fit.
I do recommend the lens. It is possible I just got a bad one.
*The return process was fast and smooth. For me Amazon has one of the easiest return services of any online marketplace.
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