Review: Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G

12 hours ago 2

Introduction

fe 24-50mm 24-50 2.8 g 2.8g sony 42mp 61mp a7rii a7riv a7riii a1 a9iii a7rv review resolution sharpness contrast bokeh vignetting coma

When it comes to standard zoom lenses, Sony offers a lot of interesting options. For those most interested in a wide zoom range the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G might be the most appealing option, but if f/4.0 doesn’t cut it and the 24-70mm 2.8 GM lenses are too big and/or too expensive, Sony also has a solution: this Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G. Can its optical performance keep up with the GM zooms? Let’s find out in this review!

Sample Images

You can find most of the sample pictures in full resolution here.

Specifications

This Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G has the following specifications:

Diameter: 75 mm
Field of view: 47° to 84° (diagonally)
Length: 92 mm (at 24 mm setting)
Weight: 440g (without hood and caps)
Filter Diameter: 67 mm
Number of Aperture Blades: 11 (rounded)
Elements/Groups: 16/13
Close Focusing Distance: 0.18 m at 24mm to 0.29 m at 50mm
Maximum Magnification: 1:3.4 at 24mm to 1:7.0 at 50mm (measured)
Mount: E-mount

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Disclosure

A reader lend me this lens for a few weeks to write this review. Thanks a lot!

Focal Lengths

Sony A7III | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G

Handling / Build Quality

Generally this Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G handles and feels very similar to the other recent G/GM primes and zooms – like the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G I already reviewed. We are getting an AF-MF switch, aperture ring, focus hold buttons and linear manual focus.

The rubberized focus ring has decent damping and it takes a little less than 180° from the minimum focus distance to infinity – no matter how fast you turn it, as the coupling is linear.
When you turn your camera off, the lens will remember the last focus position and will still be there when you turn the camera on again.

The zoom is mechanically coupled and there was no zoom creep. This is something that may still develop over time though.

The zoom ring is situated closer to the camera and has markings for 50, 35, 28 and 24 mm. This is not a parfocal zoom, if you change the focal length, focus needs to be adjusted. Unlike the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G this lens does not feature an “iris lock”, for locking the aperture ring.

At the bottom of the lens also a de-click lever can be found, maybe something of interest for the videographers among you.

The lens comes with a plastic bayonet-style tulip-shaped lens hood that can also be attached reversed.

Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G

The zoom design is very untypical as this lens is shortest at the 50mm setting and longest at the 24mm setting. This actually took some getting used to.

This lens is almost exactly the same size as the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G and noticeably smaller than Sony’s two 24-70mm 2.8 GM lenses.

Autofocus

I am not shooting sports or fast moving animals/humans so if you want to know if the lens is fast enough for this, or how it compares to other lenses in this segment, you may have to look for a different review with a more detailed assessment of this aspect.

The AF was always fast and accurate and it is also completely silent. The Sony FE 24-70mm 2.8 GM II features even more linear motors, so it is possible it focuses even faster.

Vignetting

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | Distortion corrected at 24mm

24mm28mm35mm50mm

f/2.8	2.7 EV	2.2 EV	2.1 EV	2.1 EV
f/4.0	2.0 EV	1.7 EV	1.6 EV	1.4 EV
f/5.6	1.3 EV	1.5 EV	1.3 EV	1.1 EV
f/8.0	0.9 EV	1.2 EV	1.1 EV	0.7 EV

As I already did for the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0G I am showing you the vignetting figures after distortion correction. This lens heavily relies on the digital correction of distortion and without that correction the lens creates pitch black corners at the 24mm end.

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 24mm | f/2.8

The vignetting figures after correction are actually similar to other f/2.8 standard zooms, even much bigger ones. Almost 3 EV at the 24mm end are of course still noticeable and in many of the sample pictures I used the correction profiles in Lightroom to correct this.

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | Distortion corrected

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

Sharpness

infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G

Because the lens is pretty much unusable without distortion correction at the wide end we will again be looking at files where the distortion correction has been applied.

As was already the case for the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G the wide end is the weak spot if you are picky about corner resolution. I guess the strong distortion correction needed might be the reason for that. The corners actually do look god at f/2.8, but they never look amazing – again similar to the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G. That being said, for actual pictures in the field I was always happy with the performance at f/2.8 at 24mm.

At the 28mm setting stopping down a bit is a good idea for better corner performance, but also here the corners never look amazing.

At 35 and 50mm the lens shows the most even performance already from f/2.8 and stopped down it hardly leaves something to be desired here.

The performance at the wide end strongly reminds me of the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G. The 24-70mm 2.8 GM lenses seem to show a slightly more even performance at infinity, whether that matters for you depends a bit on what you want to use this lens for.

In the field I couldn’t complain about the performance of this 24-50mm 2.8 G for infinity shooting at all, but if you are using a high resolution camera and you always zoom in on the corners you might not be perfectly happy with it.

Keep in mind there is more variance with these zoom lenses compared to primes, so your sample of this lens might behave slightly different.

close (42mp Sony A7rII)

24mm

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 24mm | 100% crops from center

50mm

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 50mm | 100% crops from center

As was already the case for the Tamron 28-75mm 2.8, also this Sony 24-50mm 2.8 G focuses closer at the wide end, offering a maximum magnification of 1:3.4 (compared to 1:7.0 at the 50mm setting).

Interestingly the performance is also better at 24mm here. For really crisp results it can make sense to stop down to f/4.0 at 24mm and f/5.6 at 50mm though.

The Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G does offer a more impressive maximum magnification of 1:2.6 at the 70mm end (which I generally find more useful), but it also showed very high field curvature as shown in my review. This 24-50mm 2.8 G does not show as high field curvature luckily.

Flare resistance

Generally, if you try hard and long enough, you can make almost any lens look bad in this category. Zoom lenses are often more prone to issues here, due to many air-glass surfaces and plenty of moving parts inside.

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 24mm

At the 24mm setting with the lens stopped down it is possible to create a ring flare with the sun in the dead center of the frame.

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 50mm

At the long end it is hard to create any artefacts at all, as you can see from the many pictures above: I sure tried.

A very good performance here.

Coma correction

24mm

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 24mm | 100% crops from corner

50mm

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 50mm | 100% crops from corner

The coma correction is actually pretty good. We can see some minor artefacts at f/2.8, especially at the 24mm end, but hardly anything that will be ruinous to your pictures.

Distortion

Sony A7III | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | f/5.6

Standard zooms often have barrel distortion at the wide end that turns into pincushion distortion at the long end. This is not the case here. The Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G shows barrel distortion throughout the complete zoom range which is – unsurprisingly – strongest at the 24mm end.

As you can also easily see here: it is really strong distortion at the 24mm end. Compared to the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G there is one benefit though: the distortion is mostly uniform and therefore easier to correct. I took many architecture pictures with this lens and here the correction does a really good job. I corrected the distortion for most of the pictures you see in this review in Lightroom with the supplied profile.

Sunstars

24mm

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 24mm | 25% crops

50mm

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 50mm | slight crops

Interestingly this Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G features an aperture diaphragm made of 11 blades, like most of the GM lenses. What is interesting about that, is that the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G features a diaphragm made of only 9 blades.
As is typical for Sony’s recent lenses the alignment of the blades is pretty good, so we see well defined sunstars between f/11 and f/22.
As this is a highly subjective topic may have a look at this article to see which kind of sunstars you prefer.

Bokeh

With this lens, bokeh is something you will mainly encounter at close focus distances. At longer focus distances – especially with the wider focal length settings – there will only be a very subtle amount of it.

The bokeh is actually not bad, but this is really not a lens you should buy if you are after shallow depth of field photography. The 24-70mm 2.8 and the 28-75mm 2.8 lenses do have an advantage in this category, as their long end has a bigger entrance pupil leading to a bit stronger blur.

Chromatic aberrations

Lateral

With Sony’s AF lenses lateral CA are automatically corrected and those corrections are also automatically applied in Lightroom and cannot be turned off. Long story short: unless you are using a more obscure raw developer you won’t be seeing any lateral CA in your pictures.

Longitudinal

Sony A7rIi | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | 50mm | 100% crops

We can see a small amount of bokeh fringing at f/2.8, not something to worry about.

Sony A7rII | Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G | f/2.8 | 100% crops from center

Purple fringing is corrected very well. In the sample above sunlight was hitting the chrome parts directly and we do not see any kind of discoloring.

Conclusion

good

sharpness (mostly)
flare resistance
coma correction
fast AF
correction of longitudinal CA
build quality/handling
size/weight

average

vignetting

not good

high uncorrected distortion

I am not sure after the “ZA” era I came across a dud among Sony’s new releases and as is easily visible from the table above, also this Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G is a well crafted lens without any outstanding flaws.

I do wonder a bit though, who is the target audience for this lens. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative to Sony’s 24-70mm 2.8 GM lenses, I think Sigma’s 24-70mm 2.8 DG DN Art lenses (especially the MK I version) make a bit more sense.

This leaves those looking for a more compact and lightweight f/2.8 zoom option. Here we also have the Sigma 28-70mm 2.8 DG DN C, which is pretty much the same weight and offers the 50-70mm instead of the 24-28mm range. Tamron’s 28-75mm 2.8 lenses are also only slightly heavier.

And then there is the Sony FE 20-70mm 4.0 G. Same size, same price and same entrance pupil at the long end. For me personally, the 20-70mm would be the more appealing option when deciding between those two.

The Sony FE 24-50mm 2.8 G is still a very good lens by itself though, so if the combination of fast f/2.8 aperture, somewhat restricted zoom range but starting at 24mm and small size are what you are looking for, I am sure you will be happy with it.

As said in my reviews of the Sony FE 40mm 2.5 G and 50mm 2.5 G I also think it is a great alternative to a set of those smaller G primes.

buy from amazon.com | amazon.de | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $1098

Alternatives

I think I already talked about the most obvious alternatives in the conclusion above. You can find many more of the recent E-mount standard zoom lenses discussed in our Sony FE Guide.

Sample images

You can find most of the sample pictures in full resolution here.

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My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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