Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G Evaluation

Introduction

Ease of Use

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is a completely weather-sealed, ultra-wide-angle zoom lens with a devoted Sony E mount that’s fabricated from metallic. Communication between lens and digicam physique is supplied by means of 10 electrical contacts.

Word nonetheless that to be able to take full benefit of the weatherproofing, you will have to mount it on a equally weather-sealed physique, not like the Sony ZV-E10 digicam that we examined it with.

The weather-proofing evokes confidence that the lens will survive all types of inclement circumstances.

Contemplating how small and lightweight it’s, the E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens is nicely constructed, definitely on a par with the corporate’s different G-branded lenses.

Tipping the scales at simply 178g (6.3oz.) and measuring 69.8 x 55.0 mm (2-3/4 x 2-1/4 in.) in diameter and size, the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is an extremely compact and light-weight ultra-wide-angle zoom lens which you can carry round all day with out noticing.

The Sony ZV-E10 used for this check proved to be a superb match for the lens, providing very pleasing stability and quick and near-silent auto-focusing.

Though the zoom ring seems to function the lens parts straight as you’d anticipate from a typical zoom lens, it would not right here. As an alternative the ring merely actuates the 2 inside Linear focusing motors, instantly responding with just about no delay in any respect.

The ability zoom could be be remotely managed by way of suitable digicam our bodies, a distant commander or accent grip, and even whereas the digicam is mounted on a gimbal utilizing the Imaging Edge Cell utility.

In contrast to most zoom rings on ultra-wide-angle lenses, the FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G just isn’t marked with completely different focal lengths so you’ll be able to rapidly soar to the focal size you’d like to make use of.

As an alternative you need to depend on the horizontal scale and focal size which might be displayed within the viewfinder and LCD display, which slightly slows down the operation of the lens.

Along with the handbook zoom ring, there’s additionally a rocker lever for full energy zooming. Push the lever as much as zoom in and right down to zoom out.

It’s a management system a lot as you’d discover on the lens barrel of many superzoom bridge cameras and works very nicely right here, offering regular and utterly silent zooming that’s good for video work.

Importantly the zooming is totally inside so the lens barrel would not lengthen, making this lens ideally suited to make use of with a gimbal.

The E PZ 10-20mm F4 G zoom’s different primary exterior management is the adequately sized focus ring.

You’ll be able to rapidly and simply use the main focus mode swap to toggle the perform of the lens between AF and MF.

Handbook focusing is finished in a standard vogue, with the main focus ring electronically coupled to the transferring lens parts and working with linear-response, though there are not any onerous stops at both finish. Focusing is absolutely inside and the 62mm filter thread doesn’t rotate on focus.

With the E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens hooked up to a Sony ZV-E10 physique, focusing proved to be satisfyingly fast in most conditions due to the Linear Motor system which makes use of two separate motors.

This mixture is able to locking concentrate on a topic nearly immediately, even when alternating between shut and faraway topics, and it is just about silent too.

In excessive low-light conditions chances are you’ll expertise a little bit focus looking on the lengthy finish, not helped by the gradual F4 most aperture.

Regardless of being instantly adjoining to one another, the main focus and zoom rings are simple to differentitate as a result of there’s a slight however noticeable “step” between the 2, with the main focus ring protruding ever so barely greater than the zoom ring. This makes it simpler to function them by really feel alone whereas viewing a monitor.

This lens doesn’t characteristic built-in picture stabilisation, as a substitute counting on the digicam physique to provide it, which is able to show irritating for house owners of Alpha digicam our bodies with out IBIS, once more just like the ZV-E10 that Sony despatched us for testing.

The lens has a customisable focus maintain button which retains the lens locked to the present focusing distance, helpful in the event you’re auto-focusing and don’t need the lens to try to discover focus once more. It may additionally, amongst different issues, be usefully set to Eye AF.

Included within the field is a slim petal-shaped lens hood (ALC-SH169), which is simple to connect to the lens – merely line up the pink line with the pink marking on the lens and twist into place till it clicks. You can too reverse the lens hood for decreasing the general measurement when transporting the lens. This lens accepts 62mm entrance filters.

Focal Vary

The 10mm focal size gives an angle of view of 109 levels.

10mm

The 20mm focal size gives an angle of view of 70 levels.

20mm

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, usually seen as purple or blue fringes alongside contrasty edges, are usually not an excessive amount of of an issue with the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens, besides in areas of very excessive distinction.

Vignetting

With the lens set to its most aperture of f/4, there’s some gentle fall-off within the corners, requiring you to cease down by at the very least 3 f-stops to utterly forestall it.

10mm

20mm

Distortion

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G would not exhibit very a lot barrel distortion in JPEG recordsdata, as you’ll be able to see within the photographs under, due to in-camera lens distortion controls which might be routinely utilized (and which might’t really be turned off).

It is a completely different story for the Uncooked file, although, which displays tons of barrel distortion which you will have to both appropriate in post-processing or apply a lens profile.

10mm – JPEG

10mm – RAW

20mm – JPEG

20mm – RAW

Sunstars and Flare

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G is able to producing good sunstars when stopped-down to f/16 and f/22, as proven under, though the lens is considerably vulnerable to flare when capturing straight into the solar even with the provided lens hood fitted.

10mm

20mm

Macro

The Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G just isn’t actually a macro lens, but it surely does supply a usefully shut focus level of 20cm when auto-focusing and even nearer 13cm at 10mm and 17cm at 20mm when handbook focusing, with a most magnification of 0.14x for AF and 0.18x for MF.

10mm

20mm

Bokeh

Bokeh is a phrase used for the out-of-focus areas of {a photograph}, and is normally described in qualitative phrases, equivalent to clean / creamy / harsh and so on.

Sony have paid shut consideration to this facet of lens use, using a 7-segment diaphragm with rounded blades, which permits for extra pleasing bokeh.

In our view, their efforts have been pretty profitable for an ultra-wide-angle zoom lens – see the examples under to evaluate for your self.

10mm

20mm

10mm

20mm

10mm

20mm

10mm

20mm

Sharpness

With a view to present you ways sharp the Sony E PZ 10-20mm F4 G lens is, we’re offering 100% crops on the next pages.